Success is good. Success feels right. Success can be what we crave. It achieves results and creates smiles, pride and a wealth of stories. But what happens when we don’t succeed… and instead fail? Failures can unlock a determination more beautifully potent than is often understood. Life and leadership are about more than just low-level successes, they're’ also about spotting the potential and energy in any disappointment. So what happens when we fail, what does failure unlock in us… and how much more fulfilled can it make us? Buckle up... we're off to Vienna for the answer.
Success is a potion of many things. It’s a way of using our past to manage our present to influence our future. And success can be a healthy way of living. As a recipe, it works. A dash of ‘reason’, a spoonful of ‘why bother’, a sprinkling of ‘this is what will happen if we don’t succeed’, a flake of ‘needs of others’ and then chuck in a handful of ‘healthy-ego’ to keep things motivated. Stir them all up, and you have the promise of achievement. Our daily lives can contain more success-seeking than we’re often aware. But how did you react the last time you failed something important?
In October 1989, I went for some tests. They were military tests. I wanted to be a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force and I hoped the RAF would agree to pay me money to improve my education – do my A-levels - until I was old enough to start flying. The tests were reputedly very difficult, and most people failed. I found the tests difficult. And when I got home, I found out I’d failed, but only sort of. They wanted me to be an Officer, but my flying skills weren’t good enough to be a pilot. However, they informed me that If I accepted a scholarship to become the kind of Officer who works on the ground, they’d let me have one final go at the pilot tests a year later. Yes please. I accepted. Signed. Bring it on! Then I received a letter telling me how nobody passes the tests a second time round. Well perhaps sometimes, but only exceptionally rarely. I should prepare for a life on the ground.
And 12 months after failing the tests the first time, I was sat in front of Wing Commander M. I’d just had my final go at the tests. And he looked stern. Wing Commander M was an older man, perhaps about to retire. He looked at the file with my test-results and documents, then closed it. Pushed it aside.
His face was an experienced military face that held a thousand secrets. I’ll never forget it. He stared into me for a moment, then he asked me a strange question. He asked me, 12 months on, what was most important… becoming a fighter pilot or replacing the previous failure with success. I knew what I felt, but the words weren’t there. I bumbled something then he smiled. Before I left the room, he gave me my pilot-test results. I’d passed. I was going to be a military pilot.
But his words stuck with me. Some things, you hold close as you quietly grow. The unspoken answer to his question had been something to do with my ‘best’. One day, I’d have to help someone else who’d failed. But when would that day come?
Years later, I took a job teaching British English at Vienna’s Federal Teacher Training Academy. It was a fascinating place with truly exceptional professors and teachers. They had a policy of only teaching ‘British’ English. And the students mostly loved it. All Austrian, they all wanted to teach English to very young children in Austrian Primary schools. They were encouraged to get involved as much as possible. In their early twenties, they were excited. Mostly.
It was only after a while that I noticed in one of the groups the woman at the back on the left. She never did anything wrong, she just seemed a bit different. And she was a little older. Totally committed to what she was doing, just not as vibrant, not as ‘connecty’, not as much ‘fun’ as the others. And the day before her final oral English exam at the end of her final year, my boss spoke to me about her.
She’d been here before. And she’d failed. In a big way. In fact, she was a ‘failure-story’. They wondered whether she should be there at all. She wasn’t going to make it in English. As a result, she wouldn’t make it as a teacher. The way her results had gone over the last 3 years, everything now hinged on the result of her oral exam the following day. Apparently, after her initial 2 years of study, this student had failed English really badly then suddenly taken a year off without warning. She wasn’t one of their success stories. She needed at least a ‘D’ the next day to pass and become a teacher. The only mark she’d ever previously had in English was an ‘E’.
Given the circumstances, and as I was the only Mother-tongue English speaker, they asked me to conduct her final oral exam set for the following day.
When she arrived next day, she was twisted with nerves. As the oral exam began, I did my best to smile and keep things relaxed for her. She was doing her very best posh English (which the academy preferred), but it wasn’t good at all and the language wasn’t coming. She was so nervous she could hardly speak. She wasn’t going to pass and it was all falling apart. She burst into tears and ran out of the room. Something told me to stay there. About 25 minutes later, there was a knock at the door. I let her back in. With a red face and tear-blotched skin, she sat down. She was so sorry. She said she just found the posh English so false and unnatural. So I told her to speak the English that felt most natural to her.
“Really???” She then explained in German that she’d always been terrified that her English would let her down as a teacher, so 2 years ago when she’d failed, she’d decided overnight to take herself out of her comfort zone, give up her Viennese home and spend a year in England to truly learn English. She’d gone to a place called Essex and worked as a Nanny for a year. She found the people of Essex fun, honest, warm, and life-changing. While there, she’d asked herself why she was putting herself through all this. Why? And the English there was a bit different from posh English. Would it be OK to speak that instead of posh English? I asked her to do whatever she enjoyed the most, using whatever flavour of English tasted best. And then it came. She started to talk and it was simply unbelievable.
She looked and sounded every bit Essex English. Her language flowed, her smiles, her shrugs, her eye-rolling, her pleasure of life, her everything. It was unbelievably fluent British-English. Just the Viennese-Essex way. And for 30 minutes it continued. At the end, I thanked her for her time, shook her hand and she left the room. I knew which mark to give her. She’d done amazingly. I told my boss. He was speechless, but he understood. I gave her a B+. This meant she was now a qualified primary school teacher. About a week later, she saw me in Vienna, walked over the road and gave me the biggest hug. She then started crying and we sat down, as she had something to explain.
She’d always kept it quiet, but when she was 7, her mum and dad’s car was hit by another car. Her mother and father were killed immediately, and she was severely injured. Her injuries meant that when she grew up, she wouldn’t be able to have children. Yet she adored children. And becoming a teacher was life itself for her. As we said goodbye, there was a sparkle in her eye. “Jonathan, I failed then ended up in Essex for a reason. I’ve got the English now. But it was more than that. When I was there, I realised that my failure had shone a light on the very best I could one day be. Failing showed my how brilliant my future could become. I simply had to enjoy living my life to unlock it. And I’m going to do things very differently with children. I’ve got an idea. Just wait and see. Goodbye Jonathan”. With a kiss on the cheek, she was gone.
9 years later, I was in Vienna doing research. And one evening, the TV was on. I looked up from my papers and saw it. Austrian TV News was proud of something. A new primary school had opened for children who couldn’t speak properly. This primary-school was a world-first. Young children would learn language while playing funny games and pretending to be someone else. The school was achieving amazing things with these children. And its headmistress was suddenly shown. She was being asked how she’d managed to pioneer something so difficult for children. As she answered, she was holding two of the toddlers. "The route to every person's best is to let them enjoy everything they are." The headmistress was smiling while tears rolled down her face. Her tears were the same ones she’d tried to hide from me 9 years previously.
Success is great. But sometimes, it’s what happens when we don’t get it right first time that unlocks the truest power of who we are and what we’re capable of. Our disappointments brim with the scorching energy of our potential. We just have to ask what the biggest piece of learning is around what we’re experiencing. The greatest success people will ever enjoy comes from the truest power of their own life. Life’s constantly throwing challenges at us. So this week, let’s throw a few challenges back:
Life, you’ve been really good so far, but come on… are you capable of being even better?
:-) Jonathan
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