Last Friday evening, I was back at the Stade Raoul-Barrière with my family, watching AS Béziers Hérault (ASBH) take on Stade Aurillacois (SACA). It was a thoroughly entertaining match, although not quite for the reasons we had hoped. By the final whistle, Béziers had lost 24–25, just a single point separating the two teams. For anyone looking at the result the following morning, it was another defeat, another missed opportunity and another disappointing entry in the league table. But having watched the match unfold, I felt that the final score told only part of the story.
With only seven minutes remaining, Béziers were trailing by fifteen points (10–25). Yet there was something noticeably different about their performance. They were competing well, enjoying a good share of possession and showing a level of determination that, from my perspective, represented a considerable improvement. Even as the scoreboard suggested otherwise, there were reasons to be encouraged by what was happening on the pitch.
Then, in those closing minutes, something remarkable happened. Béziers fought their way back into contention, scoring fourteen unanswered points and closing what had been a substantial gap until just a single point separated the teams. There were missed opportunities along the way, moments that might have changed the outcome, although the same could undoubtedly be said for their opponents. That’s the nature of competitive sport. What struck me was not simply how close Béziers came to winning, but how much their performance had improved and how they continued fighting when the result appeared to be slipping away.
The scoreboard recorded a defeat, and rightly so. Béziers hadn’t won the match. But I left the stadium thinking about the difference between a disappointing result and a disappointing performance, and how easily we can confuse the two. It’s a distinction I’ve encountered many times in business, particularly when leading teams through the disappointment of narrowly losing an important sales opportunity.
When the Scoreboard Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story
During my years leading a software business, I experienced something remarkably similar on numerous occasions. Our sales process could be lengthy, sometimes stretching over many months as we worked to understand a prospective customer’s requirements, demonstrate our software, develop proposals and build relationships with the people involved in making the decision. These opportunities often required considerable investment, not simply from the salesperson managing the relationship, but from colleagues across the business who contributed their expertise and time.
Sometimes, despite all that effort, we would lose the opportunity to a competitor. Occasionally, the difference between winning and losing was surprisingly small. Perhaps the competitor offered a particular feature that appealed to the customer, had an existing relationship with someone involved in the decision, or simply presented a proposal that was better aligned with their priorities. Whatever the reason, the outcome was recorded in our CRM system in much the same way as a rugby score: won or lost. There was little room in that final classification to recognise the quality of the engagement, the relationships developed, the improvements made along the way or how close we had come to securing the business.
Of course, losing a significant opportunity mattered. Sales targets still needed to be achieved, revenue was important to the continued growth of the business, and a promising sales pipeline was of little value if it never translated into actual customers. However, I never wanted our team to become comfortable with losing or to use the effort invested as an excuse for disappointing results. At the same time, I believed that we won and lost together as a team. Success was rarely the achievement of one individual, and when things didn’t go our way, I didn’t believe the responsibility should suddenly become theirs alone. As the leader, I often carried much of that responsibility myself, recognising that the outcome reflected not only the efforts of those directly involved but also the support, direction and decisions made across the business.
The challenge was to look beyond the outcome without dismissing its importance. If we lost an opportunity, I wanted to understand why, but also what we had done well and whether we were becoming more effective as a team. A narrow defeat might reveal areas where we could improve our approach or strengthen our relationships. Equally, a successful sale didn’t necessarily mean we had done everything well. Sometimes we won despite weaknesses in our process, just as a sports team can win a match without playing particularly well.
What Happens After the Final Whistle?
One of the things that stayed with me from that Friday evening was my son’s reaction as the match unfolded. Like any passionate supporter, he was frustrated and disappointed, particularly when Béziers found themselves fifteen points behind with so little time remaining. I tried to encourage him to look beyond the scoreboard and recognise that, despite the result, the team was actually playing some good rugby. They were showing determination, creating opportunities and competing in a way that suggested progress, even if the points on the board weren’t reflecting it. Of course, that’s not always an easy argument to make when you’re watching your team lose, especially when you’re young and desperately want them to win.
I’ve often thought that leadership presents us with a similar challenge. When a team has worked hard towards an objective and fallen short, the disappointment is real, and it shouldn’t simply be brushed aside with a few encouraging words. People invest a great deal of themselves in their work, particularly when they believe in what they’re trying to achieve. A lost sale, an unsuccessful project or a missed target can be personally disappointing, even when everyone understands that setbacks are part of business. How a leader responds in those moments can have a considerable influence on what happens next. If the immediate reaction is frustration, criticism or an attempt to identify who was responsible, the team may become more concerned with defending their decisions than understanding what could have been done differently.
That doesn’t mean avoiding difficult conversations or pretending that everything went well. In my experience, some of the most valuable discussions followed opportunities we hadn’t won, particularly when we could examine the process openly and recognise where a different approach might have helped. Perhaps we had misunderstood an important requirement, failed to recognise a change in the customer’s priorities or missed the moment when another colleague’s involvement could have strengthened our position. These weren’t necessarily failures of individual effort or commitment, but they were opportunities to improve our collective judgement. Recognising when to bring the right person into a situation, and being willing to acknowledge that someone else might have a better perspective or particular expertise, is an important part of effective teamwork.
I also believe that leaders need to be careful about judging past decisions entirely through the knowledge gained from the eventual outcome. It’s easy to look back at a lost opportunity and identify what should have been done differently, particularly when the reasons for the customer’s decision have become clearer. But those decisions were originally made with the information available at the time, often under pressure and with competing priorities. The purpose of reviewing a disappointing outcome shouldn’t be to demonstrate that someone made the wrong decision, but to understand whether we could make a better-informed decision next time.
Ultimately, the way we respond to disappointment helps shape the culture of the team. If people know that an unsuccessful outcome will be examined fairly, with an expectation of learning rather than blame, they’re more likely to speak openly about what happened, acknowledge uncertainty and ask for support when they need it. That openness doesn’t remove the responsibility to deliver results, but it creates better conditions for improving them.
Progress Is Not an Excuse
There is, of course, a danger in focusing too heavily on the positives of a disappointing result. If every defeat is explained away as an improvement, or every missed target is celebrated as a valuable learning experience, we risk losing sight of why we were competing in the first place. In sport, teams ultimately need to win matches. In business, organisations need to secure customers, deliver on their commitments and generate the revenue necessary to sustain their operations. Good intentions, considerable effort and encouraging signs of progress are important, but they cannot indefinitely substitute for results.
I encountered this tension regularly in business. There were times when I could see genuine improvements in how our team approached prospective customers, communicated the value of our products or worked together to develop a proposal, even when the eventual outcome was disappointing. Those improvements deserved recognition because they represented changes in the way we operated and, potentially, improvements in our future prospects. But the important question was whether those improvements would eventually translate into better outcomes. If we continued losing opportunities for the same reasons, then something needed to change. Encouragement alone wasn’t going to solve the problem.
I think this is where leadership requires a degree of judgement that cannot easily be captured in a performance dashboard. A single result tells us what happened, but it rarely explains why. A series of results, considered alongside changes in performance, can begin to reveal whether a team is moving in the right direction. Reacting too quickly to a disappointing outcome can undermine a promising approach before it has had time to produce results. Equally, persisting with an approach that consistently falls short, simply because we’re seeing some encouraging signs, can be just as damaging.
The challenge is to distinguish between progress that genuinely improves our prospects and activity that merely makes us feel better about disappointing outcomes. Are we addressing the weaknesses that have previously held us back? Are we making better decisions? And are the lessons we’re learning actually changing what we do? If the answers are yes, then there may be good reason for encouragement, even when the immediate result falls short. If not, we may simply be finding more comfortable ways to explain why we haven’t succeeded.
For me, recognising progress and expecting results have never been mutually exclusive. In fact, I believe they should reinforce one another. Recognising genuine improvement gives people the confidence to continue developing, while maintaining a clear expectation of results ensures that improvement remains purposeful.
Beyond the Final Score
As we left the Stade Raoul-Barrière that Friday evening, I found myself thinking less about the disappointment of losing and more about what we had witnessed. There was something encouraging about watching a team continue to compete when the odds were firmly against them. Whether that determination will translate into better results in the coming weeks remains to be seen, but it certainly gave me reasons to be optimistic.
I wonder how often we overlook similar moments in our own organisations. We become so focused on targets, deadlines and outcomes that we sometimes fail to notice the quieter signs of improvement taking place around us. The growing confidence of a colleague, a team beginning to work more effectively together, or someone recognising that they need another person’s expertise. These developments might not immediately appear on a performance dashboard, but they can make a considerable difference to what happens next.
And perhaps that’s something worth remembering the next time a team gives everything it has but still falls short. Before we begin examining what went wrong, it’s worth considering what went right, and whether the people involved recognise that we’ve noticed.
When your team has given everything and still comes up short, what do they hear from you first?