Have you ever looked at your organization, your team, or your department as an easel upon which you paint your own attitudes? Certainly many forces at work create a culture, but one of those is the leader’s own personality, character and makeup. Consider some common examples: Leaders who value excellence create organizations with that same culture. CEOs who are into growth create growing companies. Driven, high-demand bosses push their systems, resources, and people to the brink. Laissez faire leaders have a more relaxed culture that often reflects how they stroll through life, i.e. creatively, expansively, and with the attitude that being a little disorganized never hurt anybody. Look at the easel of the organization and it usually will tell you something about the artist, the leader.

If you take that view for a moment, think about your own personality in one area: your views on failure. How do you look at it? How do you experience it? Do you avoid it at all costs? Or do you see it as something that you will certainly encounter because you like to try new things and take risks? When it occurs, do you learn from it and see it as a growth experience that you can take with you into the next venture? Or do you scold yourself and beat yourself up for not getting it right the first time?

Those are important questions to ask yourself as a leader - not just for you, but for the people you lead and ultimately for the organization itself. How you view and experience failure will say much about how your team and organization performs. In my view, good character and good leadership practice in this area are very much the same. The leader with a healthy view on failure will create teams and an environment that has the same. Here are some things to think about as you look at failure.

First, failure is not a bad thing. In fact, it is the path of learning and innovation. Many, if not most great products, practices, and inventions come out of the pile of things that did not work. Many medications that you use and depend on, for example, were developed for a different use that failed. In the failure, companies found that the drug caused some unexpected good effect, and now that is the drug's main use. This could only occur when leadership had the right attitude: "Try it - if it does not work, that is ok, because we might discover something in the process. Take risks, and be open to what you might find."

But if leadership had communicated: "Go develop new products - but if they don’t work, you better run for cover because you are in major trouble.”, then that is not an environment in which anyone would have had the creative energy to embrace the process of failure and grab something out of it. They would have been too busy blaming, excusing, covering up, and hiding. Too often, the leader’s emotional attitude toward a bad result makes for that kind of atmosphere. Discovery is difficult in a room full of anger, shame and browbeating.

It starts with you, the leader. How do you see your own failure? Do you view it with gracious acceptance while at the same time taking a hard look at its reality? Only that combination will move you forward. Or do you get angry at yourself, condemn yourself, and feel like a loser? If you do that, chances are slim that you will be able to resurrect anything out of it. Chances are huge that the ones around you will lose the opportunity too, as you communicate that attitude towards them.

Second, even if failure does not lead to a new product, process, or discovery, it should lead to some kind of learning about how to do things better the next time. Leaders with a mature character regarding failure have the grace to accept it without condemning or getting angry at themselves, but also the orientation towards truth and reality to put their arms around it and do a good autopsy of the failed project. Like a football coach looking at the game films after the big loss, leaders review their failure with acceptance, but ask themselves and others, “What did we do wrong? What do we need to change to not have this happen again? What was wrong in our thinking or systems that allowed this to happen? What do I need to do differently or how do I need to change personally? What help do I need to bring to the picture? Is this even the right direction or business for us to be in?"

If you put yourself in that meeting where those questions are being asked, you can see the importance of the leader’s attitude. If he is critical and negative towards people who have not gotten it right, then that meeting is not going to be a good one. But, if he or she is one who has a graceful, learning approach to failure, that meeting could be one of the most invigorating times that the team has.

Think of other settings where this is true. When people have a relationship failure, like divorce, and go to divorce recovery groups, they learn about themselves. They examine their relationship patterns which led to picking the wrong person, or even led to the failure of the relationship itself. It is only in an accepting group, one with grace, that they feel the freedom to take those hard looks at themselves. If they were getting shamed and condemned for what they did wrong, they would not learn. And that atmosphere is set by the leader’s own personality.

Third, balance the freedom to fail with strict accountability. Grace and truth mean both. You can be accepting, and at the same time have very strict limits. The best organizations are the ones where if someone fails and in the process used good values, judgment, practices, diligence and thinking, they are not only accepted, but rewarded for trying. But, there are other situations where failure is not allowed to happen again. If the failure was done from not exercising the values, good judgment, diligence, etc., then those things are confronted, corrected and even disciplined. If someone makes the same mistake repeatedly, that is not allowed to continue either. When acceptance and grace does not lead to learning, it may become enabling. A culture that accepts failure does not have to be one that encourages it to go on!

It starts with you. If you are afraid to fail, then you might not take the risks that lead to greatness. You might stay in a very small circle. Or if you do take a risk, but beat yourself up when you fail, you might not learn from that valuable failure the lessons or even profits that it holds. And if you are like that inside yourself, chances are that your teams will be under that same kind of atmosphere.

But, if you are open to growth, accepting of the missteps along the way, and look at them with graceful but severe glasses of truth, then that attitude of yours will become that of your organization as well. And that is a good place for people to hang out, grow, and ultimately win.

God Bless, Henry Cloud, Ph.D.

So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot.

(Ecc. 3:22)

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What one leader had to say about the Ultimate Leadership workshop experience...

I thoroughly enjoyed and valued the Ultimate Leadership workshop. Going to the workshop was a risk for me for various reasons—the cost, the fear of discovering more aspects of my self, and doubts over whether the workshop would meet my needs and expectations. I needed Ultimate Leadership to be a significant week. I was at a pivotal point in my life and needed to make important decisions about moving forward. I dove into the experience with purpose and intentionality, from the first Sunday night group to the final process group. I loved it. It was intense. It was challenging. I felt loved and cared for by my group members, by the facilitators, by Drs. Cloud and Townsend themselves, and by the CTR staff. It was one of the most healing, helpful, and growth-producing experiences of my life— emotionally, functionally, relationally, and spiritually. I feel deeper and more whole as a result of the time spent there. The action plan challenged me to consider ways to pursue continued growth when I returned home. I did not leave Ultimate Leadership with all of my questions answered, all of my decisions made, or all of my life whole. I did leave with one more building block in my journey of becoming more of what God made me to be.

Randy Wood, licensed mental health counselor
West Lafayette, Indiana

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