They say the mirror never lies, but I would add a qualifier – people can lie to themselves about what they see in their reflection. I use this analogy because, after a setback or failurethe first task of business leaders is to face the facts.

Steve Jobs did this when he joined Apple after losing a boardroom battle and leaving the company. Elon Musk did it when one of his SpaceX launches failed. Mary Barra did so just days after taking over as CEO of General Motors, when she faced the full scale of a ignition switch malfunction which had caused 124 deaths.

I call it mental toughness.

Harvard Business Review launched the CEO Genome Project to show that the qualities of a successful CEO do not necessarily correspond to the popular image of the impeccable leader. What these people have in common is the ability to be very serious about obstacles. As a CEO myself, this is why I say that true mental toughness is the determination to face challenges objectively and persistence in finding solutions.

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Denial is not an option

If the object in front of the mirror represents reality, the image in the mirror represents the subjective lens through which we perceive reality. So mental rigor is the ability, first of all, to separate the facts from the influences that distort what we see, such as unconscious biases, emotions and negative self-verb.

Sometimes, failure itself is subjective and one person's obstacle may be another's bane. But if we look directly into that mirror, we'll find some commonly accepted examples of failure—such as not doing your business plan, losing a major customer, or missing your sales target after a product launch. Barra faced a public relations nightmare when he took office and was immediately forced to begin recalling the vehicles in 2014.

She knew denial was not an option. After launching an investigation led by a former US attorney, it was found that employees had been too afraid to voice their safety concerns, and Barra began dismantling GM. the toxic culture of bureaucracy. This experience shows that every good leader is likely to face failure at some point in their career. But it's how you handle failure that defines your leadership, not the “failure” itself.

Assess what went wrong

Jobs famously returned to Apple despite the humiliation of being fired from his company. In between, he founded the computer and software company NeXT, using $12 million of his own money, but it never went on the market. Failure? He ended up selling NeXT to Apple for $429 million and rejoined as CEO.

Jobs never let his emotions determine what happened next. There are three basic steps leaders can take to ensure that “failure” is not the last word:

• First, find out what happened. What was missing? What did you not achieve? Then, accept the reality of the failure, setback, or mistake.

• understand why this has happened. What are the missing pieces of the puzzle that caused the failure?

• This is easy to say and hard to do – now fix the problem.

None of this is possible unless the leader separates facts from emotion, because fixing what led to failure is not about how people smelt about what happened. It's about getting the balance and taking action.

Connected: How Steve Jobs turned obstacles into success

Be open to different points of view

Sometimes, action to address a failure must be swift, decisive and deliberate. Barra wasted no time transforming GM and even installed a hotline for employees to voice immediate vehicle safety concerns. Other times, an innovative approach that challenges convention may be required.

It all comes back to the degree of correlation between the object and the image (how well you understand reality) – but here's where it can get tricky. An artist may appear to have a lower correlation because they are looking through the lens of their rich inner world. How we value that view depends on what we prioritize – accuracy or vision? Convention or thinking outside the box?

The two should not be mutually exclusive. The Harvard Business Review found that CEOs who equated setbacks with failure were 50% less likely to thrive. These are people who see the facts, but define challenges as a chance to change their approach. Innovators and the visionariesalso, are able to see beyond what is presented.

For example, Jobs' preference for minimalistic, user-friendly interface and a smaller feature footprint attracted skeptics at first, but came to define Apple's iconic products. In other words, staying true to yourself while maintaining the ability to face facts objectively is the kind of mental toughness that sets leaders apart.

Mirror, mirror: Who is the brightest of them all?

Musk's Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the launch pad and took with it the payload, a roughly $200 million communications satellite. He saw the problem, fixed the engineering flaws, and moved on. In fact, the “failure” allowed SpaceX to take over more risks in the development process and save money in the long run. A good leader never strays from the truth. Some embrace it.

In the same year that GM recalled over 30 million vehicles, the company posted record sales and its image was transformed inside and out. As Barra said of the recall crisis: “I never want to put this behind us. I want to place this painful experience forever in our collective memories.” now, that IS mental toughness.

The mirror itself is only an optical system (imperfect at the same time) that helps us learn how we interpret reality. The mentally tough leader accepts the facts, but then does whatever it takes to create a new reality in favor of their company.

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