Fall down. Get up. Fall down. Get up. Fall down. Get up.
The flip side of failure is resilience.
Anyone who’s ever followed an underdog sports team until they finally won a big game knows just how important repeated failure is to building up endurance, tenacity and grit.
And speaking of sports, an HBR survey of 2,000 NCAA coaches came back with four things all resilient athletic teams have in common:
1 – They believe they work better together, with an ability to effectively complete tasks as a team.
2 – They have a common mental teamwork model.
3 – They improvise well.
4 – They trust each other.
This last point is critical for a team to persevere until it wins — and this generalism extends far beyond the sports world into the corporate world as well. Teams that trust each other are willing to take individual and interpersonal risks. They also feel comfortable sharing creative or offbeat ideas.
Members of resilient teams don’t fear ridicule. And that frees them up to innovate.
