I’ve been recommending the documentary ‘All or Nothing: Arsenal’ to OSA members and to my own team for the many hard-hitting lessons about leadership and teamship it delivers, it’s a couple of years old but its full of valuable lessons. It takes you behind the scenes of Arsenal football club during the 2021/22 Premier League season. Manager Mikel Arteta and his team start the season with grand ambitions and many big goals, all of which they technically fail to achieve. Their big goals quickly get a bucket of cold water in the face when they have the worst start to the season in the club’s history. The media and fans are calling for Arteta’s head to roll. He sticks to his plan and his principles and his belief in what he is building. He makes the tough decisions like getting rid of his star player and top goal scorer, team captain Aubameyang, because he has no choice – Aubameyang is not being a team player and undermining what Arteta and the team are building. Manager and team go through many highs and lows together for the rest of the season and narrowly miss out on their last big goal of a top four finish – which means a place in the UEFA Champion’s League competition. They finished fifth.

Let’s examine what happens to high-performers when they technically fail? And think about how you and your team deal with any so-called ‘failures’. At the end of a disappointing season Arsenal could fall apart, they could bicker and blame and point the finger, they could wallow in self-pity. Or they can use it to get stronger. Goal keeper Aaron Ramsdale summed it up when he was asked what he makes of the season they just had. He said, “Ultimately, it’s been a season of progress.” That shows you what goes on in the mind of winners. They bounce back quickly from any temporary disappointments because they use the so-called failures to make them stronger. That’s progress. One of Arsenal’s most promising young players, Bukayo Saka missed a penalty while playing for England that put them out of the Euros. That’s a really hard thing for a football player to deal with. But here’s the crux of it – experiencing that failure makes him a better player. It gives him the opportunity to strengthen his mindset, his resilience and resolve and tenacity. The failures are the learning experiences (that become hardwired and never forgotten because they were tough) and make greater future success possible. The most experienced players are the ones that have had the most failures, they’ve been through the most, they’ve dealt with the most, and that’s what makes them such valuable players who can have an impact on the belief of the entire team.

And so it is with your practice, with one caveat – experience is not just about the length of time you’ve been doing something. What really counts is experience reflected on. There has to be striving and trying new things, and dealing with difficult situations and failure that is then dissected on and reflected on so the lessons are found. Experience that has been reflected on is worth its weight in gold. It’s the leader’s job to make sure that the individuals on your team are learning and reflecting on the experiences they are having so that they learn and grow. You also want your more senior team members who have more reflected experience to influence the less experienced team members to build them up and make them believe in themselves. It’s a trap to let newer members on your team to take things for granted – to not share the hard-won lessons of your experience is a disservice to them. For example, my new team members haven’t experienced the zero sales days and unprofitable months we had in some of the early years, they haven’t dealt with all the interpersonal issues that had to be resolved while we were growing our team, they didn’t go through the upheaval of a complete and dramatic practice re-design and the teething problems that came along with taking frames off display and doing sit-down dispensing, they haven’t had the screaming clients that came from a handful of screw-ups that we made, and on and on. They haven’t had, the literally thousands of hours of reflection and learning and discussion about the way we operate and why. Our job is to make damn sure they learn the lessons from their daily experiences in the practice because that is what makes them strong, that is what creates personal growth and that is what makes work fulfilling and meaningful.