Why People Fail

November 17, 2009

Interview with Dr. Tim Irwin, author of the book Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership  

www.drtimirwin.com

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Mike Carruthers:
It’s not all that uncommon for very successful people to get all the way to the top and then fail in a big way - and there’s some lessons there for all of us.

Dr. Tim Irwin:
Failure is really about character, not in the sense of being dishonest or fraudulent but rather a failure of character in the broader sense – for example arrogance or being dismissive.

Dr. Tim Irwin

Dr. Tim Irwin, author of the book Derailed, looked at six top CEO’s who derailed their own careers and he says it’s clear that…

Character trumps confidence – you have to be confident in your job but ultimately how we treat other people, how we regulate ourselves, our courage those have a much bigger impact on whether or not we are successful.

Tim says lack of self-awareness is a very common denominator in people who derail their own careers.

I find that people who lack self-awareness really don’t do a very good of regulating themselves or managing their relationships with other people.  And oddly enough all the people that I’ve studied who derailed seemed to lack this self-awareness.

In this job market in particular this self-awareness is critical because…

Companies typically don’t lay off their “A” players. Often companies use the recession as a way to maybe help some of their less than stellar performers leave the organization. Now certainly in as big of a recession as we are in right now that’s not always the case but I’ve seen in many times in the past.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here.