Is The End Near for Public Education...? By Don Peppers

“It’s time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody’s role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It’s no surprise that our school system doesn’t improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy.”

- Albert Shanker

For more than 30 years prior to his death in 1997, Albert Shanker was a pivotal force in the teachers’ unions, serving as President of both the United Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers. But as hard as he fought for teachers’ rights, he also felt the public education system in the U.S. was sadly inadequate.
And with good reason. State-sponsored public education in almost every country in the world is unsatisfactory and inept, a scandal we’ve tolerated far too long.
The origin of comprehensive, state-sponsored schooling in the industrial era can be traced to 19th Century Prussia. In the early 1800’s Prussian military rulers implemented a national schooling program to ensure a supply of disciplined young soldiers capable of resisting any future Napoleonic-style invasion of their country. Under the guise of teaching young boys how to read and do numbers, Prussian schools grouped students by age, rather than by knowledge or ability, sat them at rows of desks facing a teacher, rather than arranging them in discussion circles, and rang a bell regularly, so as to discipline their day while they studied a variety of subjects.
The British adapted the Prussian model when they needed to create their own cadre of professionals to administer their far-flung empire. And Horace Mann, one of the early proponents of public schooling in America, returned from an 1843 visit to Prussia full of ideas for implementing the same kind of system in the U.S.
Teaching “reading, writing and ’rithmatic” was not the main purpose for these early school systems, however, because the vast majority of adults in Prussia, Britain, and the young United States were already literate, even before public schooling was instituted. The printing press had unleashed a tidal wave of demand for literacy, and most people either learned on their own, or were taught by a combination of parents and non-public, for-profit schools. Instead, one of the primary objectives of the public school system in most countries was to raise a disciplined work force and maintain the social order.
In Matt Ridley’s ambitious book The Evolution of Everything, he dedicates a full chapter to a sweeping story of how people educate themselves, when left to their own devices. If you look at how schools develop “in the wild” today, outside of government programs, you'll be amazed at the kind of systems that evolve on their own – simply because parents want to educate their children, and they’re willing to spend money to do so, especially when they see that a state-sponsored system is dysfunctional.
And why not? After all, no one thinks a government monopoly is necessary to ensure an adequate supply of fitness centers, or hotels, or grocery stores, right? But just like hotels and groceries, non-government schools maintain their quality because they compete with each other; state schools do not.
Ridley cites the work of James Tooley, Professor of Education at Newcastle University, who documented the evolution of low-cost private schools in city slums and remote villages around the world. In the cramped and sewage-infested slums of the old city of Hyderabad, India, for instance, there is an association of five hundred private schools catering to the poor. A school might have unglazed windows and stained walls, but for the equivalent of $2 a day or less, the children of rickshaw-pullers and day laborers get what amounts to a first-rate education. In Ghana, one highly popular teacher has built a school with four branches teaching some 3,400 children a year. Scholarships are provided for those who can’t afford even the modest tuition fee of about $50 per term. In Somaliland, Tooley found that in a city with no water supply, paved roads or street lights there were twice as many private schools as state schools.
In virtually every region, all over the world, low-cost private schools out-deliver state schools. They have consistently lower costs and they generate consistently better results than public schools, Tooley found, simply because parents vote with their feet.
Now add technology to the equation and you have a formula for rapidly evolving, non-state-controlled education, not just in the developed world but in the developing world as well.
You may have already seen Sugata Mitra’s prize-winning 2013 TED talk about how poor kids in an Indian slum were able to teach themselves English, along with advanced concepts in biology, chemistry and mathematics, simply by following their own curiosity and helping each other with the use of a single personal computer and access to the internet. But if you haven't yet watched this, you are missing out on what may be one of the most important insights in the last couple of centuries into how the most effective kind of education actually happens.
Mitra's research suggests that the schooling system itself may soon become obsolete, replaced by what he calls the self-organized learning environment, or “SOLE.” His plan is to have three to five children share a computer with internet access, then propel their learning simply by giving them questions to answer on their own, like figuring out puzzles. Can trees think? Why do we dream? How does an iPad know where it is? Why do humans breathe, and what happens to the air we breathe?
The galloping pace of technology requires us to upgrade our capability to learn. But unfortunately the public schools, saddled with bureaucracy and undisciplined by any real feedback from customers (i.e. students) will simply not be up to this task. No top-down, take-it-or-leave-it process ever could be.
When the end finally does come for public education it's unlikely to be by government action. Instead, at some point in the next two or three decades public schools will simply find themselves completely outdated by technology, to the point that they will stand alone and unused, rendered as obsolete as public phone booths, or secretarial pools.
Whatever replaces the current system will be an emergent, evolutionary phenomenon, demanded by individual consumers (i.e., students and their parents), and augmented by technology. We can only hope it emerges sooner rather than later.
KINGSMITH.

The real truth about the people you work with By Penelope Trunk.

Penelope Trunk

The real truth about the people you work with

Empathy is one of the key signifiers of workplace success. Exhaustive research shows that when businesses fail, it is often because leaders have stopped focusing on understanding different types of environments and instead remain insulated in their own domain. And the Harvard Business Review shows that empathy is key to successful product design.
To leverage empathy as a competitive advantage, The Fortune 500 obsesses over personality type. Young, promising executives take a test to discover their own personality type and they receive training to understand personalities of those around them.
But there's also a slew of other kinds of behavioral research that helps you understand what your co-workers are doing and why. Here are some of my favorite examples:
Givers are at top and bottom of the ladder.
I have said many times that in order to be successful you need to help other people. Adam Grant, professor at Wharton, adds an interesting twist to the idea of being kind at work: givers are not only the most successful people, they are also the least successful ones. They are found on the very top and the very bottom of the career ladder. "Takers" and "matchers" are in the middle.
Men are rewarded for faking an 80-hour work week.
There are a lot of ways to get out of doing work. Delegate. Cut corners. Overestimate the time a project will take. The list is endless but the results are the same: you get credit for carrying a huge load while doing a lot less work. And those people who are adept at faking long hours get the same promotions as their workaholic counterparts. If those people are men. Women are much less likely to fake long hours and instead, women ask for accommodations, such as shorter hours and less travel. And women are penalized for asking. Of course.
The child prodigies are suffering.
A major downside of being a prodigy is that everyone expects you will grow up to become a genius. But the skill of being a child prodigy is qualitatively different from the “skill” of being a creative genius. Child prodigies master an adult domain that has already been invented and defined, whether it is perspective drawing, mathematics, chess, tennis, or music. On the other hand, the adults we classify as creative geniuses are individuals who have invented or discovered something new, something that changes their domain. (So for those of you feeling the need to wallow in schadenfreude, your time has come: those little upstarts suffer once they realize how shallow their talent really is.)
Your peers are in intimate relationships with each other.
Men are likely to mentor women they want to sleep with, and this is probably good for women, as long as they don't capitulate. (Women have more power when men want sex from them. Duh. But here's the research.) The people most likely to find a lover at work are those with unusual work schedules. Wondering who it is? When laughter breaks out in a group of people, each one will instinctively glance at whichever other individual they feel closest to in that group. This is a good way of spotting who is secretly sleeping together at work.
People in their 40s are a wreck.
All of them. For one thing, our salaries top out around age 40, but that's just the time when our financial needs ramp up, often to pay for college. On top of that, most creative breakthroughs happen in our 30s, and our lowest point in the happiness scale is at age 46. This is true for apes, also, which makes researchers think we are biologically set to have a slump in middle age. However our 50s are---for people in a wide range of cultures---a time of re-calibration, when they begin to evaluate their lives less in terms of social competition and more in terms of social connectedness. So all those people who are getting kicked out of the company for being too old are about to start feeling a lot happier.
Senior executives have open networks.
The number-one predictor of success is how open your network is. If you spend time with people who all know each other, you are not exposed nearly to the level of ideas as someone who spends time with a wide range of people from different walks of life. It's a spectrum: the further to the right you go toward a closed network, the more you repeatedly hear the same ideas, which reaffirm what you already believe. The further left you go toward an open network, the more you’re exposed to new ideas. (Good news is you can get this type of power network even if you hate networking.)
People who wear the same thing every day have good focus.
Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are both known for a repetitive wardrobe, and their laser focus on their company's product. These men, and others, have said they don't want to use their brain power to choose what they will wear each day. And that's an explanation people are increasingly open to when their co-worker seems to never change clothes. However there's a difference between having ten of the same outfits for ten days and having one outfit for ten days. The biggest difference, of course, is smell. Gross, yes, but also a good way to understand your co-workers because you can smell their mood. Really.
People reveal their thinking patterns with their eyebrows.
Mac Fulfer, an expert in jury selection, says your eyebrows match with certain personality traits. For instance, he shows how people with straight eyebrows appreciate facts, ones with curved arches learn best from real-world applications, and those with angled brows like to be in charge.
This type of emotional intelligence is a key factor for being able to construct a career that works for your life. The more you are able to understand people around you, the more you are able to get what you want from them. And, done right, striving to succeed at work makes you a better person: Because if you assume your co-workers are thinking good thoughts, it's likely that they will think good thoughts about you.
KINGSMITH.

Stop Making Excuses And Be A Starter By Robert Herjavec.

Robert Herjavec

I’m not embarrassed to admit that I started my first business out of necessity – I was fired, and had a mortgage payment to make. Even though it was out of necessity – I still had to find the courage to be my own boss.
When you’re out today, think about how many small businesses you see and interact with. For each small business you see, someone made a courageous decision for it to exist. Whether it was to prove a point, to satisfy an itch, to beat the odds, to pursue a dream, or even to make ends meet, the courage to strike out on your own is worth celebrating.
I was like most people, afraid to fail and with very little guidance and NO experience as an entrepreneur. There are plenty of reasons why people make excuses not to start their own business — I’ve heard them all. When you fall into the trap of making excuses, you limit yourself from going after your dreams. “I can’t” is the lie you tell yourself so that you don’t have to try. In honor of Global Entrepreneurship Week (Nov. 16-22) and Small Business Saturday (Nov. 28), I wanted to share with you the top three excuses that I hear from would-be entrepreneurs, in the hopes that you might recognize your fear and find the courage to face it.

Now isn’t the right time.

Mark Zuckerberg didn’t create the concept of social media, but is now among the top 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world. You don’t have to be first to the table. Sometimes when you put something off, “later” becomes “never.” It will never feel like the “right” time. Nothing is ever perfect, and you’ll always feel like you’re too busy and you don’t have the time. The bottom line? We all have 24 hours in a day; it’s up to you what you do with it.

You don’t feel prepared to run a business.

You don’t know the right people, you don’t have the money, and you don’t have the right skills. I know all too well that these are legitimate concerns for someone who wants to start a business, but to achieve the skills, connections and cash to start your business, you will have to earn them. Shadow a mentor, get a part-time job or volunteer, read books, search the web, reach out on social media, talk to friends and family, speak with a financial advisor and look into loans. Our connected world is at your fingertips.

You’re afraid to fail.

Everyone has advice, but no one knows what you have to go through to start, grow, and scale a business until they live it. I’ve lived it, and I know that the fear of failure is very real. Business, as in life, is a series of trial and errors — failure and success. If you suppress your fear of failure and are open to the lessons, you can learn each time you make a mistake you will be stronger for it. Failure can be embarrassing, but if you never try, all you will end up with is regret.
KINGSMITH.

How To Live Job Gracefully By

While some people approach it like the end of a relationship, leaving your job shouldn’t be as dramatic as a break up. There are ways to make sure both sides learn from their experiences together without leaving an employee feeling unappreciated or an employer feeling upset. There are steps that you can take to help you keep emotion out of your departure while letting your previous employer know why you’re leaving, and maybe help them improve things for the co-workers you’re moving on from.
Ask yourself why you’re leaving
People leave their jobs for many reasons: they may feel like they’re underpaid or that their careers have stalled; there could be a problem with a manager; or, the company might have undergone changes and they just don’t feel like they fit in anymore. Sometimes passion is the best indicator of whether it’s time to move on. If you dread going back to work every Monday, or you find yourself phoning it in, it’s probably time to go. And that’s okay.
Having an honest conversation with yourself about why it is time for you to leave will make it easier to explain your decision clearly without getting emotional, or even potentially allow you to discuss these problems internally to see if they can be fixed before you start looking for jobs with other companies.
Remember, it is just business
When you're leaving a company, think of it as a business relationship coming to an end. It’s not personal, even if you’ve come to see your co-workers as family. You probably want some of those relationships to continue even after you’ve left, and the personal relationship doesn’t have to change just because you’ve decided to explore other professional opportunities. You have a lot to lose and very little to gain by getting too emotional when you leave a company. The people you work with become part of your professional network, and you never know when you’ll run into someone again.
Keeping emotion out of your departure also helps any constructive advice you might have to improve the company experience from getting tainted. If things become heated, instead of listening to what you had to say, your previous employer might just be happy that you’ve left. Leaving emotion out of the equation makes it easier for your voice to be heard as you leave the company.
Use tact if you’re looking for other jobs
Looking for other jobs can feel a little dishonest. There you are, working at one company while trying to land a position with another. Some people don’t want to feel like this, so they tell their bosses that they’ve started to seek positions with other companies. But sometimes that level of honesty isn’t always the best idea or even an option.
It becomes a tricky balancing act. Sometimes it’s important to signal to your company that you’re looking for other opportunities, especially if you’re in a leadership position and have been working there for a while. But there will be times when telling someone you’re thinking about leaving can prompt concerns about team morale and questions about your own productivity. So if you have the trust and have built a solid relationship with your manager, consider being honest about your situation, but realize it’s not going to be an easy conversation to have.
Don’t overestimate your importance
Recognize that the company can and will run without you. It might seem like nothing could get done if you’re not there, but the reality is usually the opposite. When you leave a company, hopefully with a replacement lined up, life will go on fine without you. That might be hard to accept, but it’s true.
I sometimes ask people we’re hiring if they can start at Credit Karma in two weeks. Sometimes they tell me that they’ve given their two weeks’ notice, but that they might stay on several weeks longer because they don’t want to leave anyone in a lurch. I appreciate the loyalty on display. I think I’d want that too, but you have to cut off the relationship somewhere. Move on. Take accountability for your last projects; rearrange things around your end-date; and, make things happen. Otherwise, you’re just delaying the inevitable.
Focus on the positives of your experience in the job
At Credit Karma, not only do we use exit interviews to solicit feedback, but also to give employees some closure. If there's anything they need to get out of their system to help them move on, we encourage them to tell us what’s on their mind. We don’t want people feeling badly as they leave. Usually, handing in your notice and focusing on the future is a relief for people as they get excited about their next steps and sentimental about their time in the job.
As you leave a job, focus on the things that you’ve learned and what you’ve accomplished. It’s good practice for an employer to recognize the work you’ve done for them, rather than chastise you for leaving. It should be a celebration of sorts, which might never arrive if you make your departure too personal.
KINGSMITH.

If Hard Work Doesn't Guarantee Success, What Does? By Liz Ryan.

For decades we heard that hard work was the number-one factor in a person's success or failure, in business or in any other arena.
We worked hard in school and were rewarded with good grades and approval from the grown-ups, so we brought our hard-work mindset into the workplace.
Hard work is important. I subscribe to the old adage that anything worth doing is worth doing well. Still, I learned long ago that hard work is not the key to success -- not by itself. I hope you got that memo, also!
Many people have gotten the memo by working incredibly hard for a company that turned around and laid them off.
They invested enormous time, energy, heart and brain cells in a job that they thought would take their career in all the right places.
Then their job disappeared or they ruined their health from overwork and have little to show for it. Millions of people are in the same boat.
That's okay! We learn from our experiences, positive and negative. Any snake that bites you once won't get you a second time.
Once you've given heart and soul to a job that disappeared out from under you, you know something important. You're going to be more wary next time, and more protective of yourself. Who could blame you for that?
Mother Nature is the best teacher!
Hard work is not enough. Look how many people around you work hard and invest in professional development and make sacrifices to succeed at work -- and how frustrated they become when their efforts don't bear fruit.
They are overlooked for opportunities or their hours are cut, even though a few months earlier the boss may have said "I could see you being a manager here."
It's exhausting just reading the signals that fly through the air at work sometimes. It's too hard, and I don't want you to spend your precious mojo that way. You have bigger fish to fry than worrying about what boss thinks about you this week.
You can't depend on other people to take your career forward. You have to power your forward motion by yourself. Your success in business or in any endeavor relies on these three things:

• Your passion for your mission
• Your ability to take complete responsibility for everything that happens to you -- and to learn from it, and
• Your sensitivity to changes in your environment and in your own heart.

Hard work as a key to success doesn't even make our Top Three list, because if somebody has to tell you to work hard, then something about your mission or your commitment to it is already off-kilter.
No one has to tell us to work hard when we're working toward our mission, and when our work is aligned with who we are. It isn't even work when we love what we do. It's art!
Any job can have your creative spark in it, and you can bring your heart energy to any job, as well as your great ideas. The job description is important.
The important thing is your connection to the work, and the the energy in your workplace.
If the people you work with get you, then they deserve you. If they don't get you, they don't deserve you. It's that simple!
You deserve a job that brings out the best in you, not just a job that pays your bills. I don't want you to work in a place that crushes your spirit.
Your spirit is a huge part of you. If you can't be yourself at work, they couldn't pay you enough to make that trade-off worthwhile.
I don't say that to make you feel bad about your current job but rather to inspire you to look higher, because you deserve more than just a paycheck. You have gifts that you use at work and maybe other gifts that no one gets to see.
What kind of work would let you use more of your gifts and bring more of yourself to your job? What kind of work would celebrate the parts of you that make you who you are, instead of stifling them?
Any artificial barrier that we once believed existed between our work and our 'real' life was only a facade. The notion that work is prim and formal while home life is warm and breezy is just part of the same tired Godzilla structure that still powers many organizations.
It's made up. We don't have to do business in the old-fashioned, crusty, dusty way. We can be human at work now. We deserve to be ourselves at work, and our customers and shareholders deserve to encounter us at our mojofied best!
There is nothing inherent in work or business that makes it formal, stiff and grey. Work can be lively and stimulating. It must be! Human power organized around a mission is the strongest force on earth.
We can bring ourselves completely to work and make art every day in any job, but to do that we have to give up blaming other people or the world for our difficulties.
"I'm too old" or "I have the wrong education" or "My last boss was a jerk" act like very short-term band-aids for our bruised egos.
Most of us have experienced getting angry and lashing out when we are frustrated at work or on a job search -- but we know that when we blame other people and phantom enemies for our difficulties, we aren't operating at our highest altitude.
Once we start looking at the question "What do I want in my life and my career?" and stop blaming people and circumstances for our challenges, we can get the altitude we need to see the landscape and our path clearly.
From altitude you can see, for instance, how your nasty former boss Doris turned out to be a great teacher. Doris helped you find your voice. You had never spoken up for yourself before you worked for Doris.
She could be difficult sometimes. A couple of times Doris started to go off on you about something she was unhappy with at work, and you gently stopped her. You spoke your truth and Doris backed up.
She brought out confidence and truth-telling in you that had been dormant before. Doris was a great mentor, as difficult as her lessons were to receive.
From an altitude we can see the obstacles to our success, down on the ground.
We can see that the barriers we have created won't be hard to knock down, tunnel under or sail over. It will take a little courage, but you are courageous -- look at the barriers you've surmounted in your life already!
If you haven't thought about your career and your life from altitude before, now is a great time to do it. Pick a time when you can think without distractions and bring a pen and a journal.
Think about your life so far and your goals for the rest of your life. Think about yourself at work on a project that supports your mission and fits into your life. The exercise is fun - and challenging!
Write about what you want from your life -- what you want to leave behind you here on our planet. What do you want to accomplish, experience and contribute while you are alive?
If you could step into your perfect job or career situation tomorrow, what would that job be? Write about it. Write in as much detail as you can.
Reinvention is sometimes scary. Many people in reinvention say "I'll stick with what I know" even when it's obvious that the ground has shifted and their path lies elsewhere.
Change can make us anxious. One way we push the anxiety away is to put up barriers and say "Look at the barrier! I can't make a change -- it's impossible!"
Your success relies on your ability to say "I know what I want, I'm going to keep trying things and keep learning to pursue my mission, and I take responsibility for everything that has happened to me up to this point."
You can't make anything -- other people's opinions of you, your own fears, your financial situation or your education or your age -- bigger than you are.
You can't give your power away to shadowy bogeymen like Age Discrimination or Bad Recruiters -- not if you want to take control of your life and career.
Rather than tick off the reasons you don't have the life you want, you can go and get it!
When you take control of your life and career, you'll say "This spot where I stand right now is exactly where I'm supposed to be. Everything that has happened so far was supposed to go just the way it did. I'm in charge of my life and I am on my path."
When you take responsibility for every decision you've ever made, for your present work and life situation and for every challenge and obstacle in your way, you're going to see right away how liberating an act it is.
You'll say "Yes!" to things you'd always said "No!" to before.
You'll see that taking any step for the first time is only scary for a second, like your first jump or dive off the high dive.
The instant your feet leave the diving board, you're aloft in thin air and the fear is gone. In any case, it's too late! You're diving, or belly-flopping, from the high dive and you're in the moment. Then you're in the water swimming and saying "I want to do that again!"
Real life works the same way.
It's only new ground once. When you try everything that might teach you anything, change your views or your habits in every imaginable way and open yourself up to new influences, your career will move forward.
Your learning will accelerate and broaden. Your mind will wander more expansively than it is does now. You'll think about your own possibilities differently.
First you'll think differently, and then you'll take steps. "Hard work" in the sense of throwing your shoulder to the wheel because somebody told you to has little place in business success today.
Hard work pushing somebody else's agenda doesn't get you brownie points, job security or even credibility as a businessperson these days.
Committed, step-by-step movement toward your own mission on the other hand won't feel like work and will speed you down your path.
You can succeed in business or anything you want to pursue. You can have the career and life you want. No one stands between you and your vision but if you want to drive your life and career, you have to grab the wheel.

KINGSMITH.

How To Use Failure To Your Advantage By Dr. Travis Bradberry.

Dr. Travis Bradberry

One of the biggest roadblocks to success is the fear of failure. Fear of failure is worse than failure itself because it condemns you to a life of unrealized potential.
A successful response to failure is all in your approach. In a study recently published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers found that success in the face of failure comes from focusing on results (what you hope to achieve), rather than trying not to fail. While it’s tempting to try and avoid failure, people who do this fail far more often than those who optimistically focus on their goals.

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” –Winston Churchill

This sounds rather easy and intuitive, but it’s very hard to do when the consequences of failure are severe. The researchers also found that positive feedback increased people’s chances of success because it fueled the same optimism you experience when focusing solely on your goals.
The people who make history—true innovators—take things a step further and see failure as a mere stepping stone to success. Thomas Edison is a great example. It took him 1,000 tries to develop a light bulb that actually worked. When someone asked him how it felt to fail 1,000 times, he said, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”
That attitude is what separates the successes from the failures. Thomas Edison isn’t the only one. J. K. Rowling’s manuscript for Harry Potter was only accepted after twelve publishers denied it, and even then she was only paid a nominal advance. Oprah Winfrey lost her job as a Baltimore news anchor for becoming too emotionally involved in her stories, a quality that became her trademark. Henry Ford lost his financial backers twice before he was able to produce a workable prototype of an automobile. The list goes on and on.

“If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.” –Henry Ford

So, what separates the people who let their failures derail them from those who use failure to their advantage? Some of it comes down to what you do, and the rest comes down to what you think.
The actions you take in the face of failure are critical to your ability to recover from it, and they have huge implications for how others view you and your mistakes. There are five actions you must take when you fail that will enable you to succeed in the future and allow others to see you positively in spite of your failure.
Break the bad news yourself. If you’ve made a mistake, don’t cross your fingers and hope that no one will notice, because someone is going to—it’s inevitable. When someone else points out your failure, that one failure turns into two. If you stay quiet, people are going to wonder why you didn’t say something, and they’re likely to attribute this to either cowardice or ignorance.
Offer an explanation, but don’t make excuses. Owning your mistakes can actually enhance your image. It shows confidence, accountability, and integrity. Just be sure to stick to the facts. “We lost the account because I missed the deadline” is a reason. “We lost the account because my dog was sick all weekend and that made me miss the deadline” is an excuse.
Have a plan for fixing things. Owning up to a mistake is one thing, but you can’t end it there. What you do next is critical. Instead of standing there, waiting for someone else to clean up your mess, offer your own solutions. It’s even better if you can tell your boss (or whomever) the specific steps that you’ve already taken to get things back on track.
Have a plan for prevention. In addition to having a plan for fixing things, you should also have a plan for how you’ll avoid making the same mistake in the future. That’s the best way to reassure people that good things will come out of your failure.
Get back on the horse. It’s important that you don’t let failure make you timid. That’s a mindset that sucks you in and handicaps you every time you slip up. Take enough time to absorb the lessons of your failure, and as soon as you’ve done that, get right back out there and try again. Waiting only prolongs bad feelings and increases the chance that you’ll lose your nerve.
Your attitude when facing failure is just as important as the actions you take. Using failure to your advantage requires resilience and mental strength, both hallmarks of emotional intelligence. When you fail, there are three attitudes you want to maintain.
Perspective is the most important factor in handling failure. People who are skilled at rebounding after failure are more likely to blame the failure on something that they did—the wrong course of action or a specific oversight—rather than something that they are. People who are bad at handling failure tend to blame failure on their laziness, lack of intelligence, or some other personal quality, which implies that they had no control over the situation. That makes them more likely to avoid future risk-taking.
Optimism is another characteristic of people who bounce back from failure. One British study of 576 serial entrepreneurs found that they were much more likely to expect success than entrepreneurs who gave up after their first failure. That sense of optimism is what keeps people from feeling like failure is a permanent condition. Instead, they tend to see each failure as a building block to their ultimate success because of the learning it provides.
Persistence. Optimism is a feeling of positivity; persistence is what you do with it. It’s optimism in action. When everybody else says, “Enough is enough” and decides to quit and go home, persistent people shake off those failures and keep going. Persistent people are special because their optimism never dies. This makes them great at rising from failure.
Bringing It All Together
Failure is a product of your perspective. What one person considers a crushing defeat, another sees as a minor setback. The beauty is that you can change how you see failure so that you can use it to better yourself.
KINGSMITH.

What My Boss Taught Me about Leadership By Colin Shaw.

Let me set the scene. My career was plateauing. I had done well, but things had started to get a bit stale. Then, I had a meeting/interview with Neil Hobbs. Neil would have the biggest impact on my professional life.
Neil had a reputation of being a tough boss. He set high standards and expected people to achieve them. He didn’t suffer fools gladly. I was nervous. The meeting went well. I told Neil what I thought about the organization both good and bad. And it seemed to hit the right chord--Neil offered me the role of running Marketing then and there.
To say I felt surprised would be an understatement.
After working for him for a while, I realized Neil spotted hidden talent in people, talent they didn’t see themselves. I was no exception; he saw something in me I didn't see myself. He gave me the confidence to express myself and encouraged me to take risks. It turned out to be the break and the environment I needed to find my stride as a leader.
Neil wasn’t an easy boss as he was demanding, and rightly so. He was tough, but in a good way. He removed me from my comfort zone. He set high standards and expected me to deliver. He forced me to do my best work, and never accepted anything less than my best effort. His style of management was inclusive, but also you knew who was boss. He had an ethos of debate and then decision. His phrase (which I often use today) was, “Once we agree, we do.”
But let me be clear: to the outside world he was a tough businessman. To his team, on the other hand, he was protective, understanding, and loyal. He would put his neck on the line for you.
I remember on one occasion I had taken a risk and things had gone wrong. He didn’t chastise me but instead applauded me for trying. Then, he went out of his way to protect me, putting himself in harm’s way politically as he did so. As a result, I would have walked over hot coals for Neil.
He took great pleasure in seeing the people he spotted moved on to bigger and better things. He moved me from Marketing to Customer Service, which was quite a surprise for people. This position, incidentally, set me on the path to Customer Experience.
Despite his tough exterior, there was nothing he wouldn’t do for one of his team. He was exceptionally loyal and protective of everyone. These traits inspired loyalty from his team. In some ways, you could say he established a cult. Now I realize the word cult normally has a negative connotation, but it can be good. In other words, if you were a square peg, Neil made sure you were in a square hole.
Key things I learned from Neil:

• Take a risk on people; it can pay huge dividends.
• Be fanatically loyal to your team.
• Be approachable.
• Be demanding and push people to do their best work.
• Build a ‘cult’ in your team.
• Think outside the square.

To this day, I believe a great part of what success I have, is down to Neil for which I thank him. I hear him in the back of my head when I am managing my team or presenting to an audience or listening to a client. I ask myself what Neil would do when faced with a tough decision. I hear him questioning my reasoning when I argue a point with myself. His wisdom, fierce loyalty, and demanding demeanor shaped me into the leader I am today. I can only hope to live up to his estimations of my ability and be the leader he always believed I could be.
KINGSMITH.