We all feel shame sometime in our lives. Usually we feel this powerful emotion when we do something that doesn't quite match up with our personal values.
As a child, we might feel shameful if we told a lie to our parents or were mean to a friend. As a teenager, we might feel the shame of shoplifting, cheating on a test or doing drugs. As adults, there is all kinds of shame that we might feel in not living up to our own expectations. However, one of the most powerful shames we can feel is the shame of business failure.
When I was in my early thirties, I thought I was on the top of the world. By all accounts, I was successful, I had recently been happily married to a beautiful woman, the love of my life, and had a child on the way. I had a good income and was able to support her to go back to university and complete her master's degree. We had money in the bank and we were building a new house. I was a partner in an expanding business that was successful and profitable. I was recognized locally and was sitting on the board of a national association.
What happened next was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. We decided to expand the business and I made some poor decisions. As a result, the business lost money - hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next three years. When we look back decades later, three years seems like nothing. However, when you are going through a tough time, a week can feel like an eternity, never mind three years.
Personally, I went from feeling that I was on top of the world to being in a pit of despair. I felt like I had let everyone around me down. Our family income dropped by 70 per cent. I had trouble paying the bills and my wife had to take a job. We had to sell the new house we had built and downsize to something older and much smaller.
From a business point of view, I felt like I had failed my partners and lost their money and their confidence. While our customers and community might have thought the business was successful because it seemed like it was going well and I managed to put on a brave face, each and every day I felt like I was a fraud.
I didn't want to talk to our suppliers when they called and avoided our bankers at all costs. While I gave direction to my staff, often I felt like those directions were futile in the sense that I had lost my vision. On the days after payroll, I kept a low profile just in case one of the paycheques bounced. I was intensely aware of my failings and felt the shame of that failure.
So how do we deal with those intense feelings of shame? Frequently we might see people dealing with shame by blaming others and raging with anger. When my business was failing, I wanted to blame a certain contractor who had large cost overruns. It took me years to get over that anger.
Sometimes we want to escape our shame by trying to block it out. We see this in the use of drugs, or alcohol to make the pain of our shame go away. In business, we often have the sense to cut and run.
I was recently talking with an owner who of a struggling business who said that the best thing might be for them to shut the doors and take all their equipment out and then leave the community.
I get it. I remember back to the days when I thought it would be easier to disappear and start over somewhere else leaving all my problems behind. However, imagine the shame that could cause. The truth is that problems like money and banks tend to follow you with bankruptcy proceedings no matter where you are. You might run but you can't hide for long.
Sharing our struggles with our staff, admitting our weakness to our family and explaining our financial situation to our suppliers is not only humbling but it relieves the weight of our shame. It's amazing what happens when the people around you start to look at you as human, not the superman figure that you have built yourself up to be.
Admitting our failures can be deeply healing. One of the best suggestions my partners made after our business failure was asking me to write down what went wrong and sharing that with them. It's easy to blame ourselves for the brunt of all the failure but the reality is often that there are contributing factors that we need to acknowledge.
Forgiving ourselves is often the hardest part of dealing with shame. Despite what others say or how they might forget our failings, the shame from our losses lives on in our memories if we don't let go. One of the key factors of moving beyond the shame of any failures we might have in business is to realize that the sum of who we are is much larger than our entrepreneurial ventures. We need to recognize that to become the person our families and communities need us to be we must be gentle on ourselves, learn from our mistakes and have hope in a future that is bright with possibilities.
-- Dave Fuller, MBA, is an award-winning professional business coach and the author of the book Profit Yourself Healthy. There is no shame in emailing dave@profityourselfhealthy.
