Just started listening to this interview with Deb Liu:

Succeeding as an introvert, building zero-to-one, and why you should PM your career like you PM your product | Deb Liu (CEO of Ancestry, ex-Facebook, PayPal, eBay)

Deb Liu, Ancestry CEO & ex-Facebook VP, on PMing your career, overcoming perfectionism, and turning failures into success

Lenny's NewsletterLenny Rachitsky

Haven’t gotten very far into it yet, but the thing that is resonating so far is what Deb shares about turning failures into “stepping stones for success”. While I probably wouldn’t put it that way, I would agree that some of my most significant learnings have come from my most significant failures.

Failure can look like a lot of things. It can be missing opportunities, getting negative feedback, not getting a job, losing a client, not delivering a new product. In the moment any of those things can be blinding and discouraging. I’ve dealt with most of the above.

The thing I’ve found to benefit me out of those moments is capturing details of the situation while you are in it. For me that looks like writing in a notebook. When I’m dealing with a situation where I feel like I’ve failed, I write down how I’m feeling, what’s going on, the outcome I wanted, how I reacted, and some thoughts on why I think it didn’t work out the way I wanted.

Once things have settled down, I come back to those notes with fresh eyes, with perspective untainted by the emotion of the situation. From there I go back over the thoughts and patterns and do a mini review of my behaviour and actions to see what I can do differently next time, both in terms of avoiding similar outcomes in the future but also to change my response so that if I do find myself in that situation again I can better manage the way I react in the moment.

I think self-reflection like this is really important for those in leadership. You have to be self aware, and able to review your own behaviours objectively because in some situations if you don’t do it, no one else will.