Changing our attitude toward failure is vitally important to successful leadership. We will continue to explore this idea in the next few articles In my previous article, “Learning Not to Fear Failure,” I concluded by saying that organizations must reject the idea that failure is an expense, and

Learn to see failure as an investment in an education.

In my book Untapped Potential I described the scenario of an up-and-coming executive who makes a mistake that costs her employer $100,000. The bright young woman was trying her best to serve the organization well; however, she completely misinterpreted market conditions and her project failed miserably. The young executive arrives at work one morning and finds a memo from the CEO: “Please come to my office at 10:00 AM.” The miserable young woman is certain she will receive a tongue-lashing and a pink slip. She has no inkling that she is about to step into the presence of a Leader’s Leader.

She enters the CEO’s office, her stomach churning. “I understand we’ve had a setback on the New Project campaign,” the CEO begins. Immediately the young executive begins to talk, admitting her failure and trying to point to her good motives and her thought processes. She realizes she is babbling, but fear drives her on. After only a few sentences have poured out, she is startled to see a reassuring smile spread across the CEO’s face. “I didn’t call you in here to fire you, or reprimand you,” the CEO says evenly. “The way I see it, this company has just invested $100,000 in your education, and I want to hear what you’ve learned from this project. Tell me what our company can learn from all this. I want to see what kind of return on investment we’ve gotten!”

Failure is a wonderful source of negative knowledge - knowledge of how NOT to do something. The immutable laws of logic tell us that in order to know what something is, we must also understand what it is NOT.

Therefore, if we shelter future leaders and prevent them from failing, we deprive them of the some of their most valuable on-the-job-training! If a young manager tells his supervisor, “I’m really learning how not to do this,” the Leader’s Leader does not frown. Rather, she replies, “Great! You’re gaining insight as to how a successful operation doesn’t work; now you will thoroughly understand how it does work!” Changing our attitude toward failure is vitally important to successful leadership.