A Blog about Leadership

Many failures are merely mistakes and everyone makes mistakes. Those who achieve success are those who persevere after mistakes.

A Peter Drucker quote:
“The one person to distrust is the one who never makes a mistake. Either he is a phony, or he stays with the safe, the tried, and the trivial.”

I want to share a paragraph out of John C. Maxwell’s book, Failing Forward:

“Every successful person is someone who failed, yet never regarded himself as a failure. For example, Wolfgang Mozart, one of the geniuses of musical composition, was told by Emperor Ferdinand that his opera The Marriage of Figaro was ‘far too noisy’ and contained ‘far too many notes.’ Artist Vincent van Gogh, whose paintings now set records for the sums they bring at auction, sold only one painting in his lifetime. Thomas Edison, the most prolific inventor in history, was considered unteachable as a youngster. And Albert Einstein, the greatest thinker of our time, was told by a Munich schoolmaster that he would “never amount to much.

“I think it’s safe to say that all great achievers are given multiple reasons to believe they are failures. But in spite of that, they persevere. In the face of adversity, rejection, and failings, they continue believing in themselves and refuse to consider themselves failures.”

Many failures are merely mistakes and everyone makes mistakes. Those who achieve success are those who persevere after mistakes. As a leader, it is particularly important to understand this. You don’t cover up mistakes, you acknowledge, learn from, and move past mistakes.

The same is true for your team. Your team members may make mistakes. Don’t make them an example, but lead them to acknowledge what the mistake was, what can be learned from the mistake, and how to move past it.

As the quote from Peter Drucker reminds us, the person you should be weary of is not the one who makes mistakes, but the person who does not make mistakes. Are they trying their best, are they growing as a professional, are they expanding their knowledge and skills, or are they merely stagnant with the tried and true.

Especially, in our demanding economic times, change is constant. You cannot stop change, but you can get out in front and make the most of it. In the process of working with change, you and your team may make mistakes – that’s an indication that you are trying. Now you merely have to respond positively to mistakes – persevere – and don’t allow failures to consume and paralyze you and your team.

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One of the more popular pages on this blog is the article I wrote “3 Step for How to Respond to Failure.”

Failure

Failure is a difficult topic for many people. One fellow blogger, Ron from The Road Map, wrote a comment on the article that “So many times we just shutdown and struggle to learn from the experience.” That’s so true. Failure for some can be devastating. It can be paralyzing. But does failure always have to bring about an end?

Leadership quote about failure from Thomas Edison:
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Failing Forward

I first read the quote from Thomas Edison in the book Failing Forward by John Maxwell. John takes the position that everyone will encounter set-backs on the journey to success. The difference between those who succeed and those who do not is how they respond to set-backs and failure.

Learning

A big portion of life is spent learning. There’s the old saying, “Live and learn” and those who try to encourage repositioning by saying, “learn and then live.” The most important thing to remember is that you still have to learn – create a lifetime habit of learning.

I remember an old chaplain from the Army, Major Frye (no relation to me). Who talked about how glad he was when he was finishing college, because it meant he would not need to spend a lot of time reading and learning the materials for classes. But soon after college, he realized that he was spending more time reading and learning for his job. He had to research, analyze, critically assess, and write about many topics on the job. He realized that living was a journey of learning. Once he learned to embrace learning, his attitude changed and he started to enjoy it – he created a lifetime habit of learning.

Learning from Failure

The best way to respond from failure is to learn from it. I must strongly emphasize that I do not mean to dwell on failure for that could lead to the paralyzing effect and, frankly, regrets are waste of time; you cannot change the past. You can change the future. If you learn from your failures and create a roadmap for how you would have done things differently, you would then have a plan to guide you through similar situations in the future.

Committing to not Fail

That last part that I would like to touch on is commitment and perseverance. I wrote an article title “3 Facets of Commit” and laid out three key considerations for commitment. A quote that is commonly attributed to Thomas Edison is, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” This quote speaks a lot about commitment and perseverance. It also speaks volumes about learning. You don’t try the same thing over and over again and hope for different results, you learn what doesn’t work, make adjustments, and try again. When you make a commitment and persevere, you learn how to succeed.

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This is the third and final entry for the series: How to Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential.

In Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential Part 1, I wrote about:

1. Recognize what you know that you do not know, write it down, and then learn.

2. Recognize there are things you don’t know that you don’t know and create a lifetime of continuous learning.

In Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential Part 2, I wrote about:

3. Take time to write out your thoughts on leadership.

4. Learn daily and start learning today.

5. Practice leadership daily.

For this 3rd part, I want to mention an analogy from the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt that John Maxwell wrote about in his book, Leadership 101.

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” ~Theodore Roosevelt

6. Know that you may fail, but, in the end, success as a leader is built on turning the stumbling blocks of failures into stepping stones on the journey of leadership development.

Nearly a decade ago, a generation-older friend of mine told me that I would probably be happier in life if I found a normal job, started a family, and just lived and lead in a community. I have always been focused on the highest offices of leadership – the leaders of nations and leaders of national, regional, and global change. I am a far distance from interacting or participating in such leadership roles, but I knew then as I know now, that I would rather run for higher offices, try to make the most difference, and fail in the process than to settle, compromise, or stifle my interests and ambitions.

I do not know what the next decade or three may bring in my life, but I am focused on learning as much about the world that we live in as I can, on creating a career foundation (financial and experiences) to be able to try, and then, when the opportunity is there, I will run for a public office – whether I win or fail, whether I can be a Senator or merely a candidate. I would rather try and fail, than to merely be normal and “happy.”

I encourage you to create a foundation for developing your leadership potential. Know that most important of all, you may fail, but that does not mean you are a failure. It means that you have created an experience in life to learn from.

To be a leader, you must take action. You must lead to be a leader.

The final thought today is from John Maxwell in another book of his, Failing Forward:

“The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.” ~John Maxwell

Take action!

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Last week, I started the new weekly article series with How to Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential with the first two steps:

1. Recognize what you know that you do not know, write it down, and then learn.
2. Recognize there are things you don’t know that you don’t know and create a lifetime of continuous learning.

Continuous Learning

Today, I want to focus on leadership development by focusing on a lifetime of continuous learning.

John C. Maxwell on leadership development:
“Leadership develops daily, not in a day.”

Write, Learn, and Practice

Last Wednesday, I wrote Developing as a Leader Takes Time So Start Today.  In short, you will not be a great leader at the age of 27 and I know that I personally have many years ahead of me of learning and developing as a leader.  One major focus of my learning and developing is this blog where I can think about and write about leadership.  That powerful act of writing about leadership is a powerful act of developing my personal leadership potential; that is why I write this blog.

3. Take time to write out your thoughts on leadership.

You don’t need to start a blog or write a book, but take the time codify your thoughts.  You are invited to comment on my blog and I will engage you in a dialog to work together on developing leadership.

4. Learn Daily and start learning today

This is no more powerful force of change and development than a positive, daily habit.  Take learning, changing, and developing on an incremental, daily process to produce the greatest impact on your life.  You can read my blog, read other blogs, read some good books, or review leadership quotes.  What ever you do, do it daily.

5. Practice Leadership

I should add “daily.”  Each day, you will be presented opportunities to lead.  Tomorrow I am going to write about the most difficult place to lead (so come back tomorrow), but that place is somewhere that you are nearly every day.  For practicing leadership, there are four basic steps: To Be, To Develop, To Think, To Lead.

See also: How to Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential Part 1, How to Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential Part 3.

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“Leadership is influence.”