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I have always enjoyed the lesson from one individual who failed so much in his life, but in the end was and is regarded as one of the greatest leaders that ever lived.

The Personal Side

He was not well educated, nor did he come from a prominent family. Instead his formal education lasted merely 18 months, was self-taught, even passing the bar exam to become a lawyer, and an avid reading.

He lost his mother when he was merely 9 years old and had to overcome the death of his first sweetheart when he was 26.

Career Failures

This person failed in business when he was 21 years old. When he was 23, he was defeated in his first legislative election race. At 24, he again failed in business and suffered through a nervous breakdown by 27.

He lost two Congressional races when he was 34 and 36 and lost a US Senate race when he was 45. He failed in an effort to become the Vice President when he was 47 and lost another Senate bid the same year.

Success and Greatness

In spite of all of his failures, this person remained determined to succeed and never failed as a leader. You know him and every young person in the United States learns about his leadership at a very young age. Even around the entire world, he is known as a great leader and a shining example for national leadership.

I am writing about the sixteenth President of the United States – Abraham Lincoln.

Quote from Abraham Lincoln about failure:
“The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.”

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Formula for Successful Leadership

I want to share an idea that I have been dwelling on. It’s a simple formula or model for effective and successful leadership.

Successful Leadership = (Effective Communication + Articulate Vision + Influence + Action) (Ethics)

Effective Communication

3 Dynamics of Leadership

Articulate Vision

The Leaders Vision

Influence

Dr. Myles Monroe on Leadership and Influence

Action

Leadership and Action
Influence and Action

Ethics

Ethics is the multiplier for a very critical reason – anything multiplied by zero equals zero. Without ethics, nothing else amounts to much of anything.

The Relationship of Ethics and Leadership

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Today’s is a quick post, but I’ve found another great quote that nearly sums up everything that I have written about success and failure. You can credit a great man and notable leader with hitting the nail square on the head with a single swing.

Quote about Success and Failure from Sir Winston Churchill:
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

Keep failures in perspective: failures happen and then there’s success - fail, persevere, learn, and then succeed.

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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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Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were great and were spent with those who matter most – family. A lot of people are going to set goals (resolutions) for the next year and I do believe the beginning of a new year is an excellent time for self-evaluation. You don’t necessarily have to highly critical, but everyone has weaknesses and strengths; the better you understand and deal with those, the better you will be able to achieve your desired success.

Dustin Wax wrote an excellent post at LifeHack.org for 8 Ways to Achieve Success in 2008. Specifically, there were two parts in the post that I really enjoyed:

1. The SMART acronym which is credited to George Doran is an excellent breakdown for developing goals. In short, you should set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevent, and Time-bound.
2. The step to “accept failure graciously” is, as readers of my blog know, a pertinent point.

 Failure and Success

I wrote an article on October 9th titled 3 Steps for How to Respond to Failure. The article has been widely read for the topic (and the 2nd most popular page on this blog). Failure is a significant topic for a lot of people. I would dare to say that very few people achieve anything of great significance without some set-backs and, most likely, were able to succeed in the end for how the person responded to the failures.

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