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This article will attempt to guide you through the mental process of leveraging the failures of others for your own benefit.
The failures of your competitors can act as springboards for your success, but only if you play your cards right. The product you develop will be propelled toward success if your competitor’s product crumbles under negative reviews. The colleague you’re up against for a promotion will say the wrong thing at an important meeting, opening up a chance for you to come in with exactly what superiors want to hear. Our competitions’ failures allow us to present our successes with contrast and clarity. Others’ failures open up the stage for us to shine. However, many of life’s performers stumble up the steps to the well-lit stage.
This article does not encourage you to propagate their failure or cause its occurrence. The advice written on this page is meant for those who aim to maximize their chances of success in whatever domain they compete against others in. This is fully about you, not those who’ve failed.
Noticing When Others Come Up Short
Failure can searched for within the most granular acts that a person commits. In times of intense competition, simply saying the wrong word can result in failure. In athletics, stepping half an inch over the line can define who comes out victorious. Learn to notice when others fail in ways the ones around you don’t yet see. Notice when your competitors say the wrong word and commit the wrong action. Be in tune with how the people who judge from the side perceive certain actions, thoughts, and behaviors.
In order to become skilled in noticing when your competition fails, practice, and take risks with your observations. The formula is simple. The reception of those who dictate the winner of a certain competition should the primary focus in this realm. If you’re selling women’s clothing, then the women who wear the clothes of your competitor, as well as your own, are the target of your analysis. With every action the people who compete against you commit, watch it, study it, then glance at those who judge the competition.
How’d they perceive your competitor’s action, thought, or movement? Keep tabs on all the instances in which the people you compete against receive an unfavorable response from those who watch or judge. These are the points which you will need to ace when you perform. In order to take advantage of others’ failures, figure out when they occur, and what exactly it is that your competition didn’t do right.
Your window to notice how others come up short is sometimes small. You may see the person interviewing for the same job for only a brief few seconds while they make their way out the room. For this reason, tune your sights to a granular lens when analyzing people. Understandably, an ability to do so can’t be taught in a single article online. Try your best and practice.
Highlight Their Failure by Performing, Not by Mentioning
Take your findings back to the lab. The negative reception that your competition has attained, is now a loaded springboard for you to bounce up to levels you’ve not reached prior. Focus on the aspects in which those you compete against have failed. If the singer before you sang too softly, then ensure that you project your voice to all. If the interviewee for a job before you stumbled on the handshake while making his way out, then ensure your handshake is firm when it’s your turn to give it.
Do not mention how the ones you compete against have failed. The act of mentioning your competition’s failures in explicit ways is seen as a cheap way to get ahead. People won’t respond well to your cheap attempts to come out on top. Do not mention what the other did or didn’t do, simply highlight their shortcomings by not failing at that thing yourself. Performing with tangible, measurable acts of excellence, should be your only focus.
Present yourself as being unaware on how your competitor has failed. Present your act of capitalizing on their failures as simply your normal, day to day state of doing things. The more unaware of how your opponent failed that you present yourself to be, the better. There is no point in voicing how others have come up short and arguing that what you do is better. Show them, collect more evidence, then show them some more.