Success, Failure. How is it influencing you?
Five years ago, I wasn’t thinking about what success or failure meant to me. I was either successful, or I was failing. And when I was failing, I learned from the experience and moved forward. In reality, I was progressing technically, but I wasn’t developing my self‑awareness.
Later on, I began to reflect on myself and dig into what success and failure were triggering in me, feelings, emotions, thoughts, and ultimately the way I reacted.
If you’re willing to explore this facet of yourself, here is a quick guide I built to help you dive deeper. It invites leaders to examine how their personal relationship with success and failure shapes the way they show up for others. It moves from concrete images to emotions, values, and leadership behaviors.
How it works ?
The list of themes and associated questions is designed to help you explore different facets of how you lead.
Answer all the questions, there is no right or wrong answer, only where you stand today.
Once you’ve read your answers, notice the questions that make you uncomfortable. What creates that discomfort?
If you want to go deeper, just send me a message and we’ll have a conversation.”
And by the way: leader = anyone who takes initiative and action to move things forward.
How You Experience Success as a Leader ?
Success is not only about outcomes; it’s about how you lead others through the journey.
- What might success look like for you in a leadership context?
- When you imagine a successful moment, what are you doing? How are others responding?
- What tells you, internally and externally, that you’ve succeeded as a leader?
- How does your leadership presence change when you feel successful?
How You Experience Failure as a Leader ?
Failure often reveals your deepest beliefs about responsibility, identity, and expectations.
- What might failure look like for you as a leader?
- When you picture a moment of failure, what is happening around you?
- What signals, from yourself or from others, make you think you’ve failed?
- How does your leadership presence shift when you feel you’ve failed?
Individual vs. Collective Success ?
Leaders often carry both personal ambition and collective responsibility.
- From your perspective, what are the differences between individual and collective success?
- When you succeed personally, how does it feel compared to when your team succeeds?
- Which form of success feels more energizing or meaningful to you, and why?
- How do you celebrate success with others?
Values Under Pressure
Moments of failure often reveal the values you protect the most.
- In moments of failure, which of your values feels most impacted?
- What does this value represent in your leadership?
- How do you tend to react when this value feels threatened, do you withdraw, push harder, take control, seek support?
- How does this reaction affect your team?
Emotional Signatures of Leadership
Emotions shape leadership more than leaders often admit.
- Which emotion resonates most with success for you?
- Which emotion tends to appear in moments of failure?
- How do these emotions influence your tone, decisions, and interactions with others?
- How aware are you of these emotional shifts in real time?
The Inner Narrative
Every leader carries an internal story that activates under pressure.
- When this emotion arises, what thoughts usually follow?
- Are these thoughts supportive, protective, critical, or demanding?
- How do these thoughts influence your next leadership actions?
- Which of these thoughts belong to your current reality, and which belong to old patterns?
Integration: Your Leadership Pattern
This final section helps leaders connect their emotional world to their leadership impact.
- What patterns do you notice across your answers?
- How do your emotions and values shape the way you lead others?
- What would shift in your leadership if you related to success and failure differently?
- What new behavior or mindset would you like to experiment with in your next leadership challenge?
Coaching or Mentoring: Your Choice, Your Growth
I’m Franck Dervault, drawing on years of professional experience and now advancing toward certification as a coach. I offer two distinct paths:
- Coaching to help you unlock your own potential through reflection, presence, and guided discovery.
- Mentoring to share lessons, strategies, and insights from my career so you can navigate challenges with confidence.
Whichever path you choose, my goal is the same: to help you realize that you are wiser than you think, with immense potential waiting to be unlocked.
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