Failures – what is important for you? – part 2

Let me continue the burning topic of failures and mistakes.

Funnily enough, this article from NLI popped up in my LinkedIn news feed this week. It talks about a kind of a common mistake and options to cope or mitigate the impact which I find quite good.

Today I wanted to share one of my “failures” and how it can be seen as a success at the end. For some reason when I hear the “failure” I immediately think about job search: yes, I had two very lengthy job search episodes in my career.

Let me tell you the story: once during one of those episodes I applied to a big company for a fairly interesting role, and got through several rounds of interview. I had a feeling that the last one was not really a blast, and probably that was a mutual impression. So, a day later the recruiter calls me and shares the news that I did not get it and also shares the feedback that I am an introvert, and this is not really the right profile for the company. Bingo! Well actually I am a horrible introvert, that is true, but that does not mean that introverts cannot work well.

Reflecting on that: even if I would fake it and try to show up as an extrovert – that won’t be me, and I would never be happy and thriving in such an environment where I must pretend all day long. So, we can look at it as a “win”, as probably it saved me a burn-out, and potentially another episode of job search.

And yes, I still believe that being yourself is important and what I learned from this experience was how important the environment can be.

And a coaching question from this experience: What is important for you?