Season 2 | Episode 5

Face Your Failure

Pullela Gopichand

Former Indian badminton player and Chief National Coach of the Indian Badminton team, Pullela Gopichand talks about how winning isn' t everything. As a sportsperson, when you lose, you have to admit in front of the world that you have failed. Having gone through a crippling accident that nearly dented his career, he talks about how one can learn more from one' s failure than one' s success - "If you don' t fail, then you probably haven' t aimed high enough."

Episode Transcript
  • INTRO (Poornima Pandey): (00:00:10)

    Join me, your host Poornima Pandey, on this episode of LeaderCraft to meet Pullela Gopichand; an iconic sporting name and institution all rolled into one. A much-awarded former badminton player for India, and the current head of the Indian Badminton team as the Chief National Coach. He's been awarded the Arjuna Award, Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan. The Gopichand Badminton Academy has seen several badminton players being mentored, including PV Sindhu, Gurusai Datt, Arundhati Pantawane, Srikanth Kidambi, Arun Vishnu, Saina Nehwal, and Parupalli Kashyap. In his avatar as a mentor, he has also recently launched Badminton Gurukul. Badminton Gurukul, in partnership with the Tata Group, has set up 28 training centers at 14 cities across India, where over a thousand students undergo training. Mr. Gopichand's success as a player, as a coach, and now as a mentor, is much storied. But on this episode, we would like to dive headlong into a less glamorous, but perhaps equally significant aspect of his story; that of facing your failure.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:01:29)

    Thank you, Mr. Gopichand, for making it for this episode.

  • Pullela Gopichand:(00:01:32)

    Thank you very much. It's a pleasure being here.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:01:35)

    You've publicly said that winning isn't everything. As a sportsperson, you cannot hide your failure. You have to admit it in front of people and say loudly, "I am the loser!" What is the role of failure in your life? And how does one face failures and learn from it?

  • Pullela Gopichand:(00:01:52)

    Well, I've learned a lot more from failure than anything else. Because if you don't fail enough, then probably you've not aimed enough, you've not tried enough. For me, the entire journey of sport was only by chance. I never thought that I would take this as a profession. I started playing, more so, because I was breaking a few window panes, neighbors were complaining, and Mother took me to the stadium to play some sport, so that I would get less into trouble from the neighbors. And I ended up playing badminton. And luckily, my first failure, majorly, was I failed the engineering exam, which helped me for a time. Actually, I got a year to play badminton, and in that year, changed everything. I won the Junior Nationals, I played for the country, and also, more importantly, for my mother, I got a job in Tata Steel. And that was the beginning of my badminton career. Because otherwise, I wasn't sure how long I would have continued. So for me that started off. Then in the year '93-94, when I was the number one player in the country, as a 20 year old - I was kind of supposed to be the player to watch out for the future - I got an injury to my left knee; had an ACL tear. And I had multiple surgeries year after year, in '94, '96 and '98 on the same knee. And luckily, between the years '98 and 2001, I didn't have any injuries. And in 2002, I had another surgery on my right knee this time, wherein I had to kind of stop playing. But in between so many failures, I would win some matches. And every time I failed, I learned from it, I would move on. And for me, that was very important. So when you fail, to come back with enthusiasm and learning and be smarter each time is, I think, what is important. And the whole journey continues from failure to failure to failure and success in between, and how we can motivate ourselves to be moving from failure to failure with enthusiasm is, I think, what the most important thing for me is.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:04:31)

    What a wonderful thought! "Move from failure to failure with success in between." And, you know, it's the reverse that you often hear in public narrative. In fact, you know, the last six months, all of us, and that was also at the outset, you know, that I spoke about the fact that today as individuals, teams, organizations, communities, many of us are standing at the edge of this precipice. You know, do you find that there are many parallels and, you know, are there some thoughts that you have about how to take that leap? Even though you know that, you know, there aren't too many safety nets. And how does one face failure during these times when all rules are up in the air and there's so much uncertainty for many people at one time?

  • Pullela Gopichand:(00:05:16)

    I think one of the things which would be important for us, is the fact that change is uncomfortable. And it's important for us to confront fears head on, rather than be afraid of them. Because I faced this big challenge when I was coming back from injury, and I would still have a limp. I would walk in, people would say, "Ey tu abhi langad raha hai". People would say, "Why'd you jump so much? Because your knees are already gone. Yeh ab tootega." But I would say if it has to break, I'm ready to get it broken, and fix it again. And when I would feel that there is a problem, I would rather do it first, rather than stay with the fear that it might happen. So I think it's very important that we take these challenges head on. And many of the times, it's not as bad as the fear, the actual reality is not as bad as the fear. When I coach people, and if they are in a match, sometimes they just freeze. And sometimes. I have to go in and tell them that "Now, in this match, just think that you've lost this match. What's the worst thing that can happen? We lose this match, okay. So what?" You take it from that point, and then you free yourself. And that would be very important. To free ourselves from the fear, and to open up and live the spirit, and to be ready for the fight, and to be prepared for the fight is important. So the example which I gave, and this is when I kind of finished the playing career and I could sense that I was more valued as a coach than a player. So the example which I think of is that you're hanging off the cliff, and you have a choice to jump off the cliff and land somewhere and take the momentum to jump up again to the future, rather than be afraid of falling off the cliff, which you will eventually anyway have to fall off. So I think if you sense that there is fear and you have to do it; might as well do it now, when you're in control, rather than any other time.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:07:44)

    This is actually such a strong visual of a fighting spirit. And one of the aspects of fighting spirit is actually just, you know, having a very strong goal. And what we often observe and feel is that not everyone may have the discipline, or motivation to do this. In a world of short attention spans, you know, are there some ways that you have found in order to be able to overcome this lack of motivation or discipline?

  • Pullela Gopichand:(00:08:11)

    I think, for me when I was, and I go back again to the injury. Because for me, many people have said, "Gopi, if you didn't have an injury, those injuries, you probably would have been such a great player." On the contrary, I think if I didn't have those injuries, I would have not been the person I am, the player I was, or the coach I am. I have benefited so much from those injuries and failures. For me, as a player, when I was in bed, every time I had an injury or a surgery, or I would come back limping back on court; there would be somebody who would come back and say, "Gopi, write me your short term goals, your medium term goals and your long term goals." And I would write them down. And the next day morning I was injured, and I threw all of those things into the dustbin, because plans had changed. To the point where a time came when I said that "Forget about the code, and let me focus on what I can do today." And that freed me out. Because I wasn't anxious about what was coming or whether I would achieve what would come. But I would say "If my left knee painting, then I had the rest of the body to work with. If my right knee was paining or both knees were paining, then I would have the upper body to work with. And if my whole body was paining, I would have my mind to work with. So for me, the entire objective had changed. From fixing goals to figuring the process, and when I figured the process, I figured that the goals actually became much more achievable, rather than me writing down. If I had written down my goals when I was 16-18 year-old, I don't think I could have planned this far in my career. I could never have dreamed or imagined, or written a goal that I want to become an all-Indian champion. It would have been much lesser than this. So for me, I think the fact which helped me was that I never worked on my goals, I only worked on my processes. And when you actually do that, you become the best of what you can be.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:10:46)

    And through your initiative, which is Badminton Gurukul, your focus has been on the introduction of a strong and sustainable physical literacy program across India. Can you tell us a little bit more about this journey of yours, Badminton Gurukul, and how you hope to achieve physical literacy through this, you know, very unique initiative?

  • Pullela Gopichand:(00:11:05)

    For me, the year 2015, there was a certain moment which happened in April, where I was coaching a young kid and I was throwing shuttles to players. And this kid was supposed to catch and throw the shuttle back to me. She failed. And I thought it was just a lack of attention. So I, kind of a bit annoyed, I said, "Come on, be more focused! Catch and throw me." And she missed. And I kind of walked off because there were many other kids. She came up to me after the class and said, "Sir, teach me how to catch." And that singular question made me think and relook at sport the way I have in the last few years. To me, in our country, the last few years, we have grown alphabetically and numerically, but we've gone down physically. Our parents, our grandparents, are much fitter, much physically literate than our next generation kids. If you are a kid growing in an open society, how many of them have run the fastest they can, thrown the ball to the furthest it can go, or jump the highest they can jump? If we, as a society, and kids, cannot explore the boundaries of their physical being, how can they be visionaries on any front? So this aspect made me think and relive that sport. Because the more we tried to produce champions, the more we alienated a certain segment of the population, a major segment of the population. So for me, sport, now, has more value than it has ever had before. Because for me, sport, for everybody, is something which is supremely important. And we need to find ways in which we can devise, this thing happens. And it is a mindset and the structure which we're talking about at Badminton Gurukul. Wherein we want kids to enjoy sport so that they can take up sport for life, as an activity. Kids, who have a good experience in childhood about physical education, so that 30 years from now, they will all be active and wanting to do physical activities. So, for me, that became very important. And this initiative has come out of those thoughts.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:13:50)

    That's a very, very aspirational thing for many of us to think about, and also note. You know, with time, and you have spoken about your life as almost a little bit of a journey, do you still feel that you aim high enough and fail often enough?

  • Pullela Gopichand:(00:14:06)

    For me, every day, I don't really aim or do things. I think I just refine my daily activity. So when I do things well, the outcomes take care of themselves. To be physically stronger, to eat better, to focus on things which I'm doing much better; that's all we need to think of. The rest of the things will take care of themselves is what I believe. We don't know how far we can go. We just need to keep walking, and one step leads to another. And when we walk those steps, we would have reached so much more than what we would have planned for.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:14:52)

    Any last thoughts on, you know, what has, you know, just a quick summary of what has failure meant to you?

  • Pullela Gopichand:(00:15:00)

    I think when you talk about these words of "failure"; so integral to me, as in, they just remind us that you can be better, or you need to look at things differently. When the whole world was rejoicing and thinking about how Sindhu had won the Rio Olympic medal, that night my thoughts were about my Sub-Junior kids who had lost at a tournament, and how they can be better, and how we can actually work. So that night, for me, that failure and to focus on that was the most important thing. So failures actually tell us where we have gone wrong, and what we need to correct. And that is very, very important. So there is, my biggest problem is when people do bad things and succeed. It gives them a notion that you can get away with that. So would really love, and if I had a wish, I would ask God; that if I do bad, if somebody does bad, punish them quickly, because they learn from those mistakes quickly. Because it's very, very important that we learn from our mistakes, and we correct ourselves and move on. And the entire journey of life is about failure to failure, and with enthusiasm.

  • Poornima Pandey: (00:16:33)

    Wonderful! Thank you so much, Mr. Gopichand.

  • Pullela Gopichand:(00:16:36)

    Thank you!

  • OUTRO (Poornima Pandey): (00:16:44)

    There couldn't be a better learning from sports than the importance of failure, as Mr. Gopichand has just taught us. It is inevitable to face failure as you go through life's challenges, but it doesn't need to define you. How you face it, overcome it, and move past it; that is what defines you. For more such enlightening conversations, join me next week on another episode of LeaderCraft.

  • NA

    NA

  • NA

    NA