In the arts, there’s a lot of rejection to cope with - much of it personal (as my folder of eighty unsuccessful job applications will attest to), but a lot of it organisational too. Some of it is the traditional kind - you apply to a funder and they turn you down. Some of it isn’t really rejection but it feels like it is - audiences deciding not to come to your show / concert / exhibition. And some of it is rejection by inaction - the invitation, or the tentative email, sent to a funder, philanthropist, fellow arts leader that goes unanswered. It all sucks. Although your skin can’t help thickening given how often this happens, I still find myself, on occasion, taking rejection personally and feeling like an unsuccessful funding application or a low audience turnout means that, somehow, I’m not good enough.
I think part of the challenge is that, as a leader, I often feel the pressure to bring the optimism, to help the rest of the team get up and dust them off and reassure them that it’s not us, it’s them, and get everyone ready to get back on the horse and keep going. This approach, whilst often necessary, can leave me (and potentially my colleagues) with little opportunity to think back or learn from what’s happened. So here are some thoughts about how to deal with rejection a bit more productively. (I say thoughts rather than tips because these are the things I should do, often not what I actually do - so this is, in part, an attempt to help build myself some healthier habits.)
Feel sad / scared / angry for a bit
Rejection can sting. Not all rejections, not all the time, but some of them can really catch you off guard. I can remember funding applications that felt like a relatively safe bet suddenly getting turned down, or shows that I believed in so passionately not getting the audience of reviews that I thought they deserved. Also, when you’re leading an organisation, a lot of rejection comes with a financial consequence - if you miss your box office target by miles, you’re also staring down the barrel of a significant hole in your budget. This is scary. So let yourself feel the fear, or sadness, or anger, or whatever else it is that you might feel, rather than immediately jumping to trying to make something constructive out of the situation.
Is it you?
This is an awkward, but, I think, necessary question to ask. Because sometimes, it isn’t them, it’s you. Maybe the funding application that got rejected might not have been very good. Maybe the bad reviews that a production received contain within them some kernels of truth. Maybe the audiences that aren’t coming haven’t heard about your event, or haven’t been told about it in a way that made it feel like it was for them. These things can be painful to acknowledge, but, in reality, they teach invaluable lessons and make rejection something that can help you improve. You’ve learned that there are things that you could do differently (and, in some cases, might still have time to do differently) that could make for a better outcome.
There’s a reason why this one comes after the feeling of the feelings - because when you’re angry or sad or terrified, it’s incredibly difficult to think objectively about what might be going wrong. I’d also say that this is not a thing to do solo, and involving people that aren’t as close to what’s happened is useful. If there are colleagues who understand the world of funding but didn’t write the unsuccessful funding application, they’re in an ideal position to help you analyse whether there was anything more that you could have done.
What’s the fallout?
With your most neutral, non-judgemental hat on, it’s important to assess exactly what the impact of this rejection is or is likely to be. Sometimes, the impact is minimal - you got in touch with a venue who you hoped might be interested in receiving or co-producing a production or event with you and they didn’t reply. Sometimes, the individual impact is minimal but the cumulative impact isn’t - this was one of ten venues you reached out to and whilst it doesn’t matter that this one hasn’t responded, it definitely matters if none of them do. And sometimes, it’s existential - you were relying on this venue to reply and now you haven’t got a home for your production and/or you haven’t got the financial contributions towards it that you’d budgeted for. Understanding exactly what the impact is allows you to answer the next important question…
What’s the plan?
Depending on the situation, you might need to come up with a plan of action to resolve any financial or logistical pickles that you find yourself in. I think the crucial thing about this stage is to avoid the blame game at all costs. At this point, it doesn’t matter who did (or didn’t) do what when - you and your team just need to solve the problem that you’ve got in front of you. This also means not blaming or berating yourself and not, as a consequence, making the new course of action a solo mission as a kind of guilt-fuelled compensation. When you’re trying to find a creative solution to get you out of a tight spot, more brains are usually better than one.
What did you learn?
Often, once any immediate problem solving has occurred, it’s worth sitting back and asking yourself whether there’s anything to learn from this situation. Sometimes, there really isn’t - for example, if you’re submitting a lot of funding applications, an inevitable consequence is that some will be rejected. But other times, there’ll be something valuable to take - whether that’s changing the wording or structure of the application to make it more likely to succeed, or realising that you need to shift your model to incorporate some other income streams. Whilst I don’t think blame is ever useful or appropriate, taking responsibility is, and if you’ve created a supportive culture where people are able to own any mistakes they’ve made, you’ve got a much better shot at figuring out how to make your chances of success better in the future.
If (or, let’s be honest, when) I get stuck in the moping, self-flagellating aftermath of rejection, I try to remind myself that, as in so many other fields of life, rejection is an almost inevitable consequence of putting yourself out there. In the arts, we’re constantly creating new things, which involves finding partners, asking for money and connecting with audiences who might want to come and see it once it’s made. This is a vulnerable, exciting and scary thing to do, and sometimes we’re going to fail at some or all of it.
Seth Godin, writer of my favourite blog, recently wrote about the differences between dreams and plans. Of the latter, he said: “Plans embrace boundaries and reality, they don’t ignore them. Plans thrive on scarcity and constraints. Plans are open for inspection, and a successful planner looks forward to altering the plans to make them more likely to become real.” The phrase that struck me was “look forward”. Is there a world in which we could look forward to rejection? It seems unlikely…but then, if we could reframe it as something to embrace, rather than something to fear, perhaps our ideas and our dreams could be even bolder and more brilliant.