Rally

Recognize when to rally.

Don Shula is the all-time winningest coach in the NFL. Spending 31 years as a pro football coach, he holds the record for most career wins and is the only coach to have had teams in six Super Bowls. Shula had a “24 hour rule,” a policy of looking forward instead of retreating from the loss. He allowed himself, his coaching staff and his players only 24 hours to celebrate a victory or wallow over a defeat. During those 24 hours, Shula encouraged them to feel their emotions of success or failure as deeply as they could. The next day, it was time to put their focus and energy into preparing for their next challenge.

Like the best coaches, managers should routinely stress to employees that everyone makes mistakes, and the sooner they accept this fact, the easier it will be to recover.

As Margie Warrell noted in a recent article: “If you’ve made a mistake – whether taking the wrong job, or not delivering the right result, or simply not managing yourself or others as well as you’d have liked – the most important thing is never to let it define you.”