
But how can business leaders, faced with major setbacks, respond to these situations?
Here are five tips on how to overcome defeat and use it to your advantage.1. It’s the response that counts
Remind yourself that any challenging event is ‘just an event’. What matters is how the event affects a person or an organisation. You can get bogged down in the negatives and on ‘what went wrong’, or you can decide to learn from it and focus on moving forward.2. What can you learn?
Facing setbacks, like losing an almost certain deal, is part of business life. It might not be a sales/order situation; it might be some other activity that will certainly damage the organisation. Once it has happened, it’s happened. Allocate a fixed amount of time to promptly identify what you and the organisation can learn from it. Make sure that key players and stakeholders are part of the analysis and that the main lessons are shared. Don’t wallow in the negatives – find the lessons, then move on.3. Analyse the winning solution
4. Putting your house in order
In addition to identifying the factors that caused the loss or failure, the leader should also take some time out to reflect on his organisation – its structure, policies and procedures. Despite best intentions, could the same thing happen again? Are there any changes you need to make to the organisation’s structure to minimise the risk of such failures in the future?5. Review your strengths, successes and your vision
Once the lessons have been taken on board, the organisation should always re-visit its vision, beliefs and values. Individual disasters do not mean that everything is bad. Remind staff and key players of all that is good with the organisation and what you are working to achieve. Re-visit some previous successes. Re-energise staff for the longer journey, for the bigger goal ahead. Steve Gilroy, chief executive of Vistage, Britain’s oldest peer-to-peer mentoring organisation for SME owners, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary in the UK. Vistage ensures that SME owners get expert advice and moral support from fellow owners at regular monthly meetings.Share this story