[July 09, 2015] At the United States’ premiere National Training Center located in the Mojave Desert of southern California, my Infantry Company conducted a classic dawn attack on a “simulated” enemy. We failed miserably in the attack. But our senior leaders turned it into a tremendous lesson on how to succeed on the battlefield; something I employed years later in Iraq. Good leaders are students of failure because it is a way to learn that has few substitutes.
When I went to apologize to my battalion commander for my failure at the NTC, he told me that he was proud of our performance and at once I learned that our best leaders will let you fail and yet not let you be a failure. Failure is a mistress often scorned in our risk-adverse society. Fortunately, our military readily accepts failures as a way to improve performance on the battlefield.1
“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” – Bill Gates
“Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.” – Colin Powell
Two of my favorite quotes above allude to the fact that failure is one of our best teachers. Failure can be a motivator, it teaches us perspective and persistence, it educates us in the finer ways to succeed, and it is something we cannot do without. In academia, failure is usually treated with derision but in the world of great organizations and fine leaders, failure is welcome. Thomas Edison once said that he never failed, but “found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
I know of no great leader that has not only failed but failed spectacularly plenty of times. No one likes to fail and so the extra motivation to prevent it is a key result. It takes considerable mental resilience to take failure for what it is and use it to one’s advantage. Most people, frankly, cannot tolerate failure and thus avoid making bold and decisive decisions that could have distinguished them in the eyes of their family and community.
Failure is something that address occasionally in theLeaderMaker.com. Below are a few previous posts that are worth reading:
- Failing to Deal with Failure: https://www.theleadermaker.com/failing-deal-failure/
- Success is the Daughter of Failure: https://www.theleadermaker.com/success-daughter-failure/
- Learning from Failure: https://www.theleadermaker.com/learning-failure/
- Characteristic #35: Learning from Failure: https://www.theleadermaker.com/characteristic-25-learning-from-failure/
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- Safety however is a concern. The failure to take proper precautions that result in serious injury or death of a soldier in training is not something that is taken lightly and will be punished. This is why we closely study failures in safety so that those we command do not make the same mistakes.