As a longtime startup investor and judge on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” Barbara Corcoran has a lot of practice gauging which entrepreneurs will ultimately become highly successful — and which ones will struggle.
Specifically, Corcoran likes to watch what entrepreneurs do when something goes wrong with their business, she told journalist Katie Couric’s “Wake Up Call at Work” newsletter, which published on Aug. 28.
“I pay close attention to who takes responsibility and who plays the blame game,” said Corcoran. “Six months after ‘Shark Tank,’ something always goes wrong — the supplier didn’t deliver, the molds were wrong, an employee messed up. But the minute an entrepreneur starts blaming the next guy, I know it’s over and they’re going to lose my money.”
Entrepreneurs are typically responsible, legally and financially, for any mistakes or failures that happen within their company, whether they personally caused them or not, according to Corcoran. So it’s important to address missteps head-on, and it’s just as crucial to learn from them afterward, she told author and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss on a March 2024 episode of his podcast.
“Recovering from failure, in my book, is 95% of life,” Corcoran told Ferriss. “If you’re going to have a good life, you’d better be really good at getting back up, like a jack-in-the-box, boom, boom, boom. Just get back up.”
Corcoran’s best, and highest-earning, employees all share this trait, she added. Those employees are resilient enough to bounce back quickly from any missteps, which also helps give them the confidence to seek out new opportunities rather than avoiding them out of a fear that they will lead to some inevitable mistakes.
“When it comes down to it, it’s how well you get back up and how long you take to feel sorry for yourself,” Corcoran added.
Constantly blaming others when mistakes are made, or obstacles arise, is a surefire sign that someone doesn’t have emotional intelligence — a trait with a strong correlation to workplace success — according to bestselling authors and communication experts Kathy and Ross Petras.
“People who are emotionally immature often won’t take responsibility for their own actions when something goes wrong,” the authors wrote for CNBC Make It on Feb. 1. “So what do they do? They extricate themselves from situations by immediately stating that they are not to blame.”
Instead of seeking a scapegoat when something goes awry, take ownership so you don’t look defensive, CEO and Harvard-trained career expert Suzy Welch told CNBC Make It in 2019. Then get a clear understanding of what went wrong so you can rebound quickly and avoid making the same misstep twice.
“Everybody screws up sometimes,” Welch said. “But one mistake isn’t the end of the game for you unless you let it be.”
Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank.”
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