The Power of Negative Thinking: How to Balance and Embrace Losses and Wins Equally
Discover the benefits of fully immersing yourself in the moment of loss and how it can help you achieve extraordinary results.
♾️ ENDURE: Cultivating Growth
In the pursuit of success, it's easy to focus only on the positive and ignore or downplay failures. However, as Justin Su'a points out in Shane Parrish’s The Knowledge Project podcast, the "Sometimes you win. Sometimes you learn" mantra can be misleading.
“There’s a phrase out there that says, 'Sometimes you win. Sometimes you learn.' I can’t stand that phrase. And the reason I can’t stand that phrase is because it implies two things. It implies that you can’t learn from winning. Like you win or you learn? No, you can learn a lot from winning. Success leaves clues. What it also implies, losing is some word that no one says of, 'Oh, I didn’t lose. I learned.' No, you lost. Own it. You lost, you got beat today, and that’s life you’re going to lose sometimes. And instead of flowering it up and saying, “No, no, I didn’t lose. I just ran out of time. I didn’t lose.” No, you lost.” — Justin Su’a
While it is true that we can learn from both wins and losses, we often downplay the loss—preferring instead to put a positive spin on the loss and / or to minimize our time wallowing.
As someone with a generally positive disposition and a strong bias towards problem-solving and “action”, I used to shy away from negative emotions believing that wallowing in the loss was a waste of time.
I then came upon John Keats term “negative capability” a few years ago.
Negative Capability
negative capability, a writer’s ability, “which Shakespeare possessed so enormously,” to accept “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” according to English poet John Keats, who first used the term in an 1817 letter. An author possessing negative capability is objective and emotionally detached, as opposed to one who writes for didactic purposes; a literary work possessing negative capability may have beauties and depths that make conventional considerations of truth and morality irrelevant. (Source)
While clearly not a precise interpretation of what Keats’ meant, the idea of possessing the ability to be “objective and emotionally detached” while simultaneously and somewhat paradoxically, “making conventional considerations of truths and morality irrelevant,” appealed to me, and ultimately led me to realize that by not allowing myself to fully feel the loss, I was missing out on valuable learning opportunities.
I was missing an essential tool required for resilient leadership.
I learned that it was vital for me to fully immerse myself in the moment of loss, admitting that I lost and allowing myself to feel, dissect, and chronicle all the negative emotions that come with it. Then, over time, begin the recovery process by actively repairing and rebuilding myself to be more resilient in the future, and sharing my journey with trusted colleagues and mentors.
Again, as a high-energy and generally optimistic person with a positive disposition—admitting this and learning the how of “negative capability” was difficult. Practicing it, even more so. Ironic given my professional tendency to push the boundaries—which inevitably leads to many, many losses.
Adding negative re-framing tools to your toolbox
As a new team leader, how can you re-frame your thinking around failures and losses? More importantly, as you step into your new role, how can you introduce this tool into your leadership toolkit so that you help yourself or perhaps your team to become more resilient?
As my aforementioned journey foreshadowed, the key is to balance and embrace losses and wins equally. Practically this means pre-mortem and post-mortem the losses and wins, documenting your feelings and findings, and then making it all visible so that you drive accountability.
“Forcing yourself to make your thinking visible gives poor thinking nowhere to hide.” —Shane Parrish
Here’s a simple (but not easy) 3-step action plan for you to consider:
Engage with the loss: When you experience a failure or loss, take the time to fully immerse yourself in the moment. Allow yourself to first feel all the negative emotions that come with it. Journal it. This will help you fully internalize the experience and lay the foundation for you to facilitate a discussion with your team.
Action: Engage your team and have them all share their insights and feelings on the loss. If you or they are uncomfortable doing this in person, have them Think, Write, Share their thoughts anonymously. You, as the team leader, can then read them aloud in a small team setting so that you model the right behavior and make the space for psychological safety.
Pro tip: Resist the temptation to jump immediately to problem solving. No “solutioning”. Set a firm time-bound window (e.g., 1 day, 1 hr, etc. — you don’t want to dwell on the past too long) but allow everyone the space to speak up and share. Then move on once every one has been heard.
Conduct a post-mortem analysis: After you conclude your time engaging with (aka wallowing in) the loss, take a step back and analyze what went wrong. Now you can solve problems! Ask yourself questions like (not exhaustive):
What could I/we have done differently? Why?
What factors contributed to the loss? Why?
Who were the impacted audiences and stakeholders? Why?
What did I/we learn from this experience? Why?
What should I/will we do differently going forward? Why?
Action: Regroup as a team and make the post-mortem visible, easily accessible, and searchable.
Pro Tip: Ask “Why” as many times as possible until you get to a single root cause and / or a single SMART objective / task to accomplish. It is okay to start identifying owners in this step, if applicable.
Future proof your resiliency, drive ownership: Use the insights and lessons learned from your post-mortem analysis to inform future decisions and actions. This will help you embrace resistance, avoid making the same mistakes, and improve your chances of success.
Action: Start all of your pre-mortems by first reviewing all of your post-mortems. Then identify any systemic trends that need to be addressed; again, make them visible for the whole team, easily accessible, and searchable. To assure accountability and improve team engagement, assign single owners that are accountable to each of your improvement areas.
Pro tip: Shared accountability is a myth and, in my experience, is often a nefarious disguise for “no accountability.” In the wise words of Pat Summit, "Responsibility equals accountability, accountability equals ownership, and a sense of ownership is the most powerful thing a team or organization can have."
There is nothing inherently wrong with the “I’ve never failed because I always learned something” mantra. The issue is the “never failed” component—it is not realistic nor healthy for you and / or your team’s mental health. We need to normalize “failure” and allow ourselves to feel the weight of the negative feelings. Remember that failures are an inevitable part of the journey towards success, and by fully embracing them, you can come out stronger and more resilient in the end.
As my good friend, and Big Things F@$t co-conspirator, Marcus reminds us, “Failure is permissible. Learning is continuous. Not learning rather than “not failing” is the true crime.”
Words matter: change the lexicon, evolve the mindset. Take this opportunity to re-brand “failure” as “experimentation”.
What is the one thing, the one action that you can make to re-frame your, and your team’s, thinking around failures and losses and use them as opportunities for growth, learning, experimentation, and increased accountability?
