We often talk about how important it is to catalogue your successes in a resume or executive 
bio, but what about learning from your failures? Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management and founder of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute, has written a book about failure, Firing Back: Great Leaders Rebound After Career Disasters. As he notes in an interview in Fortune, failure builds professional character:
“It makes a hero. Joseph Campbell wrote about this. The hero has certain consistent qualities in every culture: a common touch, a call to greatness, a critical trial and a setback. Failure punctuates truly great leaders. They aren't great until they've failed. Failure is the crucible, the test. They deal with it, and their confidence and capabilities are enhanced.”
As Sonnenfeld notes in the interview, we tend to live in an avoidance society, where failure is often overlooked or ignored and we only focus on successes. That’s a mistake. Leadership comes from learning lessons taught by failure. People rebound from failure because they choose to learn from their mistakes. He cites success stories of high-profile executives like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase who rose after being fired from Citigroup, and Jack Bogle who founded Vanguard after being fired from Wellington Management. Look how Martha Steward has rebounded after serving time in jail.
Failure is liberating, and something you can use to guide future decisions. Understand not only where you failed, but why and use that knowledge to guide future career decisions. Embrace your failure and catalog what you did wrong, and how you can correct or avoid those mistakes in the future.
To paraphrase Nietzsche, if failure doesn’t kill you, it only makes you stronger.
