Setbacks Are Not Failure: Your Response Shapes Your Career

Play Ball

Most people think the promotion process ends when someone gets the job.

It doesn't. The moment someone else is selected, another evaluation quietly begins. Your response to not getting promoted often becomes part of the decision the next time that your name is on the table.

For everyone who wasn't selected, the next few weeks are the first chapter of the next promotion process. That’s something that I didn’t realize early in my career. Looking back, it may be one of the most important lessons for aspiring leaders.

The Opening Innings

I spent seven years in recreation leadership before making the career change into casino security. Less than a year later, I applied for promotion to a Supervisor position. I didn’t have the security or the casino experience of any of the other candidates, but my past leadership experience, work ethic, and quality of work since starting put me in the running.

Afterwards, I found out that I was the runner-up of a heated debate. The hiring managers were deadlocked for hours and had to call in the department Director to be the tie-breaker. The position ended up going to a candidate who had been an officer with the property for years and had a long file of glowing customer reviews.

I had options on how to handle myself from there. I was disappointed. My career change had moved me from leadership back into a frontline position and it came with a pay cut at a stage of life when that mattered. But disappointment and professionalism aren’t opposites.

There was never a doubt that I would handle myself professionally. However, the real moment of truth came the first time I saw the other candidate coming off the floor after the promotion announcement – I walked up to him, gave him a big smile, congratulations, and handshake. I told him it was well deserved – because it was. He had earned every bit of the opportunity.

That’s what we often lose in a promotion process when we’re sitting so close, when we let our thinking be overtaken by the feeling of disappointment: someone else’s story involved and the time they’ve spent working for that same opportunity. I believed that I was a good candidate and I believed that I had earned the opportunity to continue to prove myself at the next level. However, I also understood that there was another candidate that I respected that had built a résumé over years that justified the decision that was made.

In hindsight, seeing that kind of excellence rewarded speaks volumes for the decision-makers. Organizations should recognize people who consistently perform at a high level over many years. Watching that happen reinforced that promotions weren't just about potential, they were also about honoring proven performance.

Promotion decisions aren’t made in a vacuum. It’s not just, “Am I capable?” or, “Am I good enough?” There are other talented people that are pursuing the same opportunity. Being passed over for one opportunity doesn’t mean you’re not good enough. Sometimes it just means that someone else was the right choice that day.

Accepting that reality doesn’t make the disappointment disappear. It simply allows you to respond with perspective instead of resentment. I made a decision that day: when another opportunity came, I would leave no doubt that I had grown from this experience.

The Late Innings

So I went back to work. I kept learning the business – both casino/gaming and security. I continued to volunteer for extra responsibilities – more training, input on policy reviews, and sometimes just picking up openings on other shifts to make my work more visible.

When the next promotion opportunity became available, I applied and put the same amount of effort into it as I did the first time. I made one change to my personal strategy, though. I had a strong idea of who in the group hadn’t been for me the last time and I intentionally sold myself to them. I literally turned my chair slightly in their direction and maximized my eye contact with them. I didn’t ignore the others in the room or breeze over their questions, but I made sure that I focused on filling the gap that I had left in the last process.

This approach may seem obvious when reading this, but I don’t think it’s natural in the moment. We gravitate towards those we resonate with the most. That’s natural human behavior. The normal response would have been to continue my same approach and just sell harder, give those that supported me before more ammunition to win the argument this time around. “These guys liked me, let’s make them feel like they were right all along.” No. To me it was more important to strengthen the whole of my candidacy for promotion, to remove every reason that someone might hesitate. I didn’t want a louder “yes,” I wanted to eliminate the “no.” 

What happened from there reinforced the lesson that I still carry today. The manager who hadn’t been convinced the last time was my highest scorer and biggest advocate this time around. What was a four-hour debate before turned into me getting a phone call with an offer before I even got home from the interview.

The promotion wasn’t won in the interview. It was won in the days that followed the first interview and then in the months between the two processes. Every extra assignment that I took on, every new responsibility, every effort to understand the business at a deeper level, and every decision to respond with professionalism instead of resentment quietly became part of the next interview before I ever walked into the room.

We call it the “daily interview.” Long before you're officially sitting across from a hiring panel, people are quietly forming opinions about your leadership, your character, and whether they can trust you with more responsibility. It’s how you tell those above you in the organization who you are before you officially step into the room. And a large part of that daily interview is how you react to a setback, how you handle perceived failure. Before your name is back on the table, people have already been watching how you handled the last disappointment.

The Final Score 

Years later, I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of many promotion decisions and had the responsibility of delivering that same disappointing news to others. I’ve seen employees increase their call offs for the next month. I’ve watched potential future leaders give up training assignments they once pursued enthusiastically or walk away from “step up” opportunities because they decided that the effort was no longer worth it. I’ve even been cussed at while delivering the decision.

None of these reactions changed the promotion decision. In fact, they often reinforced the decision that was made before that may have been a tough call (maybe even an hours long debate). More importantly, those reactions became part of the employee’s reputation moving forward.  

Because when your name comes back onto the table months or even years later, people won't just remember how you interviewed. They'll remember how you responded when the answer was "not this time."