Paralysed By Failure

Episode 61:  Mad Dogs And Servicemen

Frank:     That man is a psycho and for some perverted reason these two want to play games with him.

Hawkeye:    We are just following Sid Freedman’s advice.

Trapper:    You get a soldier who has hysterical paralysis and you treat him as though he is really paralysed and he’ll become sick just to rationalise the guilt of leaving his buddies at the front.

Hawkeye:    Sid feels if you take a patient like that back to a nice clean hospital it just deepens the guilt.  You send him home and it sets it in concrete. 

Trapper:    Yeah, he has been treating his patients as close to the front as possible with the idea that they will return to their unit.

Hawkeye:    Otherwise, they get sent stateside and one moment’s failure on the battlefield becomes a lifetime disability.

A GI is brought in by ambulance suffering from hysterical paralysis. Hawkeye attempts to treat him with a new method being used by Psychiatrist Sidney Freedman, against the protests of Frank Burns and Margaret Houlihan who question his condition.

I am sure most of us understand what it means ‘to be paralysed by fear’; to be so terrified of something, real or perceived, that you are unable to move.  Imagine being paralysed by failure; to be crippled by your mistakes to the point where you can no longer function.  This is a critical condition for any leader because failure comes with the territory! Identifying “failure as an indispensable, irreplaceable part of learning and growth,” John Ortberg stresses “failure does not shape you; the way you respond to failure shapes you.”  So, you can choose to allow failure to paralyse you or propel you towards new discoveries.  Don’t allow a moment of failure become a lifetime of disability.  

A Matter Of Perspective

Episode 21:  Sticky Wicket

Henry:    Look, you’re losing your perspective.  You’ve got your 

          guts in a knot because one patient has gone sour.  In 

          an outfit like this, that’s bad.

Hawkeye:  I don’t buy that.

Henry:    You don’t buy it because you’re dedicated.

Hawkeye:  Well, shouldn’t I be?

Henry:    Depends… on whether you’re dedicated to your patient 

          or your ego.

After insulting Frank Burns’ surgical skills in the OR, Hawkeye gets a patient that has complications causing him to become consumed by his inability to figure out the problem.  Colonel Blake challenges Hawkeye to get a bit perspective.

There are moments for every leader when something we organize or lead doesn’t turn out to plan, or when those we lead don’t respond to our leadership as we expect.  It is in these moments that I find myself doing a whole lot of self assessment to try and figure out where I’ve gone wrong.  If I’m not careful, my failures can easily distort my perspective of my successes. Perspective enables a leader to step back from their failures and to right-size their reality.  I have found it helpful to engage other trusted people in my circle of influence to broaden my perspective when I am consumed by a failure or problem.  More often than not, an alternative point of view reveals that things are not as bad or broken as first thought and provides shared wisdom to find effective solutions.