Owning the Role in Our Own Failures

I’ll be completely transparent here, the only things I had going for me leading up to that interview for the behavior-based safety facilitator role was that I was willing to work hard and I had been actively involved in a few aspects of the process. I hadn’t touched a text book since high school, and barely did then. While I was present for pieces of the new observer training, I contributed very little to the actual delivery. I had some very limited exposure to entering data from the observations that served as the backbone of the process, that was only in a controlled environment where I could wreck the program; my exposure to computers at that point was almost non-existent. Oh, I had zero experience interviewing for a position that required anything more than physical effort. I went into the interview confident, but saying that confidence was ill-founded is quite the understatement.

I don’t remember bombing the interview, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know at that point. I’ll spare you the details, I barely remember them myself, but I was not offered the position. To my surprise, a fellow from the same department as me was. He had been through the initial observer training but hadn't really been involved since. Where edge had a leg up, though, was having completed an associate’s degree and moving into an off-shift supervisory role a year or so before interviewing for this position. He had significantly more exposure to computers and had been interacting with a wider range of management team members daily.

I won’t kid you, him being offered a role to lead a process that he had limited familiarity with and almost no involvement in kinda pissed me off. At the time, I thought the primary qualification for supervising others was having expertise in the work being done. (We’ll look at that more later.) I can’t recall every aspect of what followed, that was more than twenty-five years ago. Not only has a lot transpired since, I was still engaging in the occasional liquid refreshment in those days so there are more than a few foggy spots.

Regardless, I have a very clear recollection of soliciting feedback from Terry and Dennis on how I could perform better in future interviews. To this day, I’m not sure if I shared my frustration about the other guy being offered the position with either of them. What I am sure of is that both gave me feedback that would help me not only interview more effectively, but on steps I could take to be more prepared for any aspect of the next position I had interest well before being offered an interview. Their feedback served as some of the most significant seeds I’ve ever found from adversity, seeds that have provided far greater benefit than that position could have at the time - and I’ve experienced that benefit ever since.

Before going any further, I’ll share that I was never angry with the guy who was offered the position. He and I had always gotten along well before that and we have ever since. That undoubtedly played a key role in some of the decisions I made moving forward and we’ll work through those next. The reality, though, was the feedback I received from Terry and Dennis forced me to take yet another look in the mirror. The true pain in bad situations isn’t the failure - it’s knowing we contributed to; owning that unlocks seeds of personal responsibility and resilience. For now, I’ll challenge you to take a few minutes to list a recent stumble and honestly note your role in it. What’s one lesson it offers? What’s one seed of equal or greater benefit that will require nurturing?