52 Seven Growth Steps to Recover from Failure

If failure has ever made you question yourself, this episode of Joyfully Unstoppable will help you see it through a completely different lens. Becky Hamm shares seven practical steps to help women leaders recover from failure, learn from setbacks, and use challenges as fuel for growth, stronger leadership, and long-term success.

In this episode, you’ll learn how to process failure without getting stuck in shame, identify the lessons hidden inside setbacks, and take strategic action that improves your leadership moving forward. Becky also explores why successful women often struggle to talk openly about failure and how transparency, reflection, and accountability build stronger leaders.

Whether you’re navigating a leadership mistake, a missed opportunity, or a professional disappointment, this conversation will help you recover from failure with clarity, confidence, and resilience.

In this episode:
 ✔ Why failure is valuable data for growth
 ✔ How to recover from failure without damaging your confidence
 ✔ The importance of processing emotions after setbacks
 ✔ Questions to ask yourself after a professional failure
 ✔ How leaders can communicate setbacks with confidence and accountability
 ✔ Why mentorship, coaching, and community matter during difficult seasons
 ✔ How to turn lessons learned into long-term success

If this episode encouraged you, share it with another woman leader who needs this reminder today.

Subscribe to the Joyfully Unstoppable podcast for practical leadership strategies, sustainable success, and authentic conversations for women leaders.

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Transcript

Becky 0:05

Welcome to Joyfully Unstoppable, the podcast for women who are ready to succeed without the stress. Whether you're leading a team, a classroom, a boardroom, or your own big, beautiful life, I am so glad you found us. I'm your host, Becky Hamm, leadership coach, speaker, and founder of Women Lead Well. Join me each week for straight talk, practical tips, and a dash of encouragement. Hello, friend. I hope you are having a great day. Today, we're gonna talk about failure. I know, but it is a very natural part of life, although many of us are taught to fear failure because of the premium that's been put on success. And so today, we're gonna dismantle that faulty belief, and we are gonna replace it, and we're gonna start with one of my core beliefs, that there is opportunity in every situation, even failures and setbacks. We are going to dig into one of my most useful realizations, thing that is... You wanna talk about a game changer for me as an adult, it was this, and that is that failure is a gift. I know. That was a hard lesson for me to learn. I was the have to succeed, go out, and I was suc- I have always been successful. I'm very lucky, and I work hard and, and all the things, and so this idea that failure was a gift or that failure was good for me or something that I should be grateful for or embrace, no. That took a while to learn. We're gonna cover it on the podcast today. So in case you too are like,"Absolutely not," just give me 20 minutes, and let's see how you look at it at the end. And just quickly, let me lay out for you, failure is a gift because it shows you where something that you thought would work did not work, and clearly the thing is important to you or you wouldn't have put your time and energy to it, right? And so you want it to work, and that failure gives you the most important data that you could possibly receive. The thing that should have worked out did not work out. The failure is showing you where to turn your attention to get the thing that you want. Right? To get the success in the area that you want. The opportunity that's in failure is the invitation failure provides you to grow. It is a spotlight on your next level. And if you have been programmed to avoid failure, if you've got that fixed mindset more than that growth mindset, well, that spotlight can be highly motivating. And so you can use it, you can use failure or setback to propel you to a new level of growth. And so that's what we're doing today on the podcast. We are going to rebrand failure so that you will experience it differently. You will improve as a result of your failure. And I have seven steps to do it. These are your immediate actions to take following any failure. Let's get into'em. Step one, first you gotta feel your feelings. You gotta get'em out of your body. I know that might not be where you thought I was gonna start, but if you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you know that I am a big fan of feeling your feelings. Why? Well, because we can stuff our feelings. We can push them away because we don't wanna deal with them, and that is a missed opportunity. One, your feelings are your feelings. They're a natural part of being human, and so just be a human. Two, when you stuff those feelings down or you avoid them, they get stuck in your body. They don't metabolize, and so they stay there, and you're just carrying them with you, and they just do slow you down. They keep you up at night. They mess with your digestion. They mess with your focus and your concentration. They undermine your confidence. They give you that, like, low hum of anxiety that so many women in leadership positions carry with them. So get the feelings out of your body, step number one. Reason number two why I think this is so important is because, the steps that are to come rely on you being clear-eyed and focused on the opportunities for improvement that are, that exist inside of your failure. And if you're still wrapped up in the emotion of the failure and that avoidance of the,"No, get it away. I'm just gonna move on. I'm gonna wipe my hands," and what- however you are trying to avoid the feeling- That is gonna cloud your judgment. That is gonna waste your opportunity at growth. You will not level up as a result. You will stay stuck because those feelings won't allow you to progress. And so whatever you've gotta do, if that is taking some time and doing some box breathing, if that is going for a walk, if that is getting on a punching bag and just getting some frustration out, if that Whatever that looks like to you, however you metabolize your feelings, fully embody the feeling. Put a name to it,"I am frustrated, I am angry, I am disappointed. This is me feeling disappointed. This is me feeling angry. This is I am fully frustrated right..." And just let yourself feel that feeling. Let your body do what your body naturally knows how to do to discharge that feeling, and then move on to step two. Okay, step two. You, now you have felt your feelings, and that could take five minutes, that could take a day or two, that could take a few weeks, that could take six months. Depends on the failure or the setback, but you have felt them, and now you've gotta ask yourself very honestly with curiosity, not judgment, what did I learn through this experience?" And that could be a bunch of different things. Maybe you learned that you're just not good at something, and so you need to up-level some skills. Okay, great. That's really important information to have. Maybe you learned that you just don't enjoy something. It's not in your zone of genius. It's not in your zone of competence, and so maybe it makes sense to offload a particular task to a team member where it is in their zone of genius or competence. Brilliant. That would be a great insight to have. Maybe you've identified that you've got a system or a process that needs some tweaking. Whatever it is, now that you have regulated yourself and you have felt your feelings, now that you're in a place where you can be open to learn something, really ask yourself,"What did I learn from this experience?" And be curious. Put be- put on that detective hat, and really peel back the layers. Not just the superficial lessons, but the deeper lessons as well, and write it down. Maybe you're thinking about this while you're working out or in the shower or taking the kids to school or commuting, whatev- That's fine. Think about it wherever you're gonna think about it. But you wanna write these lessons down because you're gonna take action on what you've learned. This isn't just insight for the sake of insight, this is insight for the sake of improving your performance, right? All of this is in service to your growth. So ask yourself, what did I learn? If it's appropriate, depends on the failure, right? But if it's appropriate, ask your team the same question. They are looking at the issue from a different vantage point, and so they might have great insights into how to improve going forward. All right, next step, and this might sound a little woo-woo. I know you thought feel your feelings was woo, this might be, too. Don't care. It just is. So be it. Step number three, be grateful for what you've learned. Take a moment. You've felt your feelings. You've gained your insight. Take a moment and really express gratitude for those insights and how you're gonna take action, how those insights are gonna help you grow as a professional. Why do I want you to do this? Because it's kind of a check on the feel the feelings. You're validating. Because failures, setbacks, freaking hurt physically. Feels like you've been kicked in the gut, feels like you've taken a punch to the face. Does not feel good, right? Feels so painful. We feel it in our body. But this ties back to that core belief that I mentioned at the beginning. In every setback, in every failure, there is opportunity, and I am encouraging you to take the time to express gratitude for what you've learned because that opportunity is there. But you have to, one, be intentional about finding it. That is the take the time to learn the insights to get the lessons. Two, you have to be intentional about receiving the insight and the lessons, seizing it, taking it, so that, three, you can capitalize on your insight and actually grow. Well, steps two and three come from a place of gratitude. If you're still wishing the failure hadn't happened, if you're still stuck in the frustration and the anger and, and the whatever, if you haven't actually felt your feelings, like all the way down yet, then you haven't fully accepted that something wasn't working You're still clinging to a reality that doesn't actually exist. You're clinging to this, like, alternate universe where you succeeded and didn't fail, and I get that. I get... I've, I, look, hey, done it myself. I get it. It's comforting there. But you will never move forward from that place. You simply won't. Growth does not come from a place of denial. So find what you can be grateful for in the failure. Maybe it is the opportunity you have to grow. Maybe it is with hindsight you realize that, eh, it probably wasn't the best idea to begin with, and so it's a good thing it didn't succeed because that would've prevented you from some, uh, something else that would've been good for you. Whatever. Find your gratitude and move forward from that place. And now here's your next step. So you have felt your feelings. You have asked yourself,"What did I learn?" You've expressed gratitude for the lessons for those insights. Step number four, now you're gonna make some decisions. Now you know what you know, what are you gonna do about it? Does that insight mean that you need to reassign something, that you need to, um, give responsibility to someone else who is better suited to do the work? Does it mean that you've got a skills gap or a team member has a skills gap that needs to be developed, that needs some specific attention and cultivation? Does it mean that you've gotta plug a policy or an SOP or a process so the mistake of the failure, whatever it was that caused the failure, doesn't happen again? What is it? What are, what is the action or actions, sometimes it's more than one, that need to happen in order to prevent that failure in the future? And y'all, like, this ain't for funsies. This is for real. You're gonna do these things that you are deciding on now. But get super clear on what are you gonna do, when are you gonna do it, like literally where is it on your calendar, what are the follow-up actions in your calendar so that they shall happen or on your team members' calendars if it's work for your team members to do, what stakeholders need to be involved, do you have the authority to do what you need to do, is there any money attached, do you need permission to spend the money or is it in your budget, whatever. Plan it all out. How are you gonna take the action? And then you're gonna freaking take the action. But before you do that, we're gonna do step five, and that is- You wanna sit down with your leadership, maybe you have a boss, maybe it's a board, whoever you're accountable to, and you're gonna talk through the failure or setback. Not from a,"Oh, I screwed up," point of view, but you do without the ego. You wanna inform them what happened, what you learned from it, and what actions you've identified to ensure success going forward, right? You walk them through your steps one through four. You don't necessarily have to communicate the gratitude part, that might just be more personal, or the emotional suffer- self-regulation part. They might not need to know that. They will tell that you are regulated from how you present,"This is what happened. This is what we learned. This is what we're gonna do to prevent it in the future," and then get their feedback. Take their feedback from them, and then use that feedback to improve your plan and your action steps. And I'm gonna pause briefly to say this part. We can sometimes not want to share our failures, particularly not with our boss or the board or the people we're accountable to. If we are insecure, if we have imposter syndrome, if we don't believe in the strength of our value, what we provide, and our competence, how well we do our jobs, we can try to hide our failures because of this fear that if people saw that we failed, they would realize that we actually weren't any good at what we're doing, right? That a failure is because we are failures. We would identify with the failure. And I'm gonna say, friends, no. Come on. You are too successful for that. You are too senior for that. You have done too much for that, and even the most junior person listening to this podcast, you are too good for that. You have value. You are competent because of the decisions that you make and the actions that you take, and any one failure is just showing you it is simply data for how you can improve going forward. It in no way speaks to your value or your character or your worth. We do not hide failures. We own the failure, what we learned, what we're gonna do to fix it, and we communicate that, and by doing that, we demonstrate profound confidence in our ability to problem solve, in our ability to diagnose problems, proactively take action to, um, address those problems, and follow through and actually address the problem. And when we do that- Our board, our boss, whoever we're accountable to, they end up having more confidence in us because we are showing them resilience, and problem-solving, and effective action. We don't break down, and crumble, and hide from the failure. We step into the failure as the opportunity for growth and improvement that it is. So step number five, really, really important. Your mindset of how you walk into step number five, really important. And that leads us into step number six. You don't have to do this alone, right? This is what I do as an executive coach. I help women gain the insights they need and turn those insights into action so they can achieve professional success. Womenleadwell.net/coaching. Get there. There's a link. You can schedule a strategy call. We can have a conversation. I would love to have that journey with you. It is a true passion of mine. It could be me, it could be a different coach. Doesn't have to be a coach, it could be a mentor, somebody you work with. Doesn't have to be a mentor. It could just be your girlfriends who you can have this conversation with over a cup of coffee on the weekend, and they might not know the specific details of your industry or the work that you're doing, but they might be They, they can hold you accountable. They can breathe that confidence into you, right? I would say this is a very real reason why I launched the Women's Executive Leadership Lab. Inside of WELL, we have women in senior leadership roles from across the country, from across industries, women who know what you're going through, who are amazing. They are sitting in director, VP, C-suite level roles just like you. They are clearly high-capacity women. They know how to get it done. But because they're from different industries, because they don't necessarily know each other outside of WELL, they bring fresh eyes and fresh perspectives. And so we have had the most amazing kind of cross-industry, cross-fertilization in the conversations in our group coaching calls. And so maybe something like that would be beneficial for you to support your brainstorming of what your next steps are, and then to have the accountability for following through on those next steps. That's womenleadwell.net slash well if you'd be interested to learn more about that. But my point is, you are gonna take those insights, and you are going to take action on them. And when you work with a coach, a mentor, or inside a community of other high-performing women, you are simply more likely to follow through on the actions and continue to iterate until you find success than if you try to do it alone. That's just human nature. And that takes us to our final step, step number seven. Once you've started taking action, you're gonna evaluate how it's going. You're gonna reflect on the actions that you took, and you're gonna ask yourself the same question,"What did I learn from this?" And then two other questions that I love, anyone who knows kind of process improvement or institutional research, What would tell me this is working?" Like, how would I know? And then go get the data. Is this working? Do I need to tweak something? How am I gonna step up and continue to improve? And the vital question, if I continue doing what I'm doing now, having taken the action that I've taken, what's the likelihood that I'm gonna fail in the same way again, right? This is you stress-testing or failure-proofing the solution that you've developed, and you can take all of that new data that you've got, run that past your coach, your mentor, your tribe, your community, and keep going until you've achieved the outcome you're working toward. And then you have the next beautiful step of making that sustainable and repeatable, right?'Cause you don't just wanna achieve it once. You wanna achieve it over time to continue achieving it. Okay. Those are your seven steps. You gotta feel your feelings. Don't stuff'em. Feel them, metabolize them. You've gotta learn the lessons. What are the opportunities there for you in that failure? Be grateful for the failure and the opportunities that it's providing you, the insight that it's giving you. You gotta decide on your next steps. You gotta brief your leadership. You gotta take action, and you gotta iterate. That's it. Okay, friends. I hope you will join me next week when we're gonna be talking about being the only woman in the room. If you have ever walked into a meeting and quickly realized you're swimming in testosterone, you won't wanna miss it. Now, if today's episode spoke to you, I would love for you to share it with a friend. We need more women leading from alignment, not adrenaline. And if you haven't already, make sure to like this episode and subscribe so you don't miss next week's drop. And last thing, if you haven't signed up for my weekly newsletter, what are you waiting for? You can join at womenleadwell.net/newsletter. Remember, joyful, sustainable, and authentic leadership is possible. And you deserve to enjoy every minute of it. Until next time, I'm Becky Ham, and this is Joyfully Unstoppable.