The Leaders Who Let You Fail

True leaders encourage failure.

That may sound strange at first. Leaders are supposed to produce results. Organizations have goals to meet, customers to serve, deadlines to hit, and standards to maintain. Why would any leader encourage someone to fail?

Because the odds have always been against us.

In almost every pursuit worth accomplishing, success is the exception not the norm.

The best athletes strike out, miss shots, lose games, and have terrible performances. Successful actors endure auditions that go nowhere. Entrepreneurs build ideas that never become businesses. Writers produce drafts nobody will ever read.

The people we eventually describe as successful usually have one thing in common:

They had enough opportunities to fail.

Some of the best coaches I ever had understood this.

They never intentionally put me in a position to fail. They prepared me. They coached me. They expected excellence.

But they also understood that protecting me from struggle would eventually limit my growth.

If I was going to become a better hitter, I needed at-bats.

Not just comfortable at-bats.

At-bats against pitchers who could expose weaknesses in my swing.

Sometimes that meant success.

Sometimes it meant walking back to the dugout after three strikes.

But either way, I learned something.

That is what good development looks like.

Guided Struggle

Leadership development works the same way.

Too many leaders say they want people to grow while simultaneously protecting them from every uncomfortable assignment.

They step in too quickly.

Correct every mistake.

Take over difficult conversations.

Reserve the important presentations for themselves.

And then wonder why their people never become confident enough to operate without them.

Development requires struggle.

Not reckless struggle.

Guided struggle.

There is an important difference.

You give someone an assignment slightly beyond their current comfort zone. You prepare them. You establish expectations. You remain available.

And then you allow them to perform.

Maybe they stumble.

Maybe the presentation isn’t perfect.

Maybe they handle a conversation differently than you would have.

Maybe the first attempt doesn’t work.

Your response in that moment says a tremendous amount about your commitment to developing people.

Do you immediately take control?

Do you embarrass them?

Do you make the mistake part of their permanent identity?

Or do you ask:

What did you learn?

And then give them another opportunity.

Repetition Changes the Odds

People often look at highly successful individuals and underestimate how many unsuccessful repetitions came before the outcome everyone remembers.

We see the championship.

We rarely see every loss.

We see the successful business.

We don’t see every failed idea.

We see the polished speaker.

We don’t see the awkward presentations that came first.

Success can make the journey look cleaner than it actually was.

It almost never is.

The mathematics of improvement are fairly simple.

If the odds of success are low, one way to improve your chances is to increase the number of meaningful attempts.

More attempts create more feedback.

More feedback creates more learning.

More learning eventually creates better performance.

But that process only works when people believe they are allowed to try.

Be the Person Who Gives Them Another Rep

Some people possess extraordinary resilience. They can fail repeatedly, motivate themselves, make adjustments, and keep going without much encouragement.

Those people exist.

They are also rare.

Most people need someone in their corner.

A coach.

A supervisor.

A colleague.

A leader who can see beyond the mistake and recognize the person who is still becoming.

The best leaders I have experienced did exactly that.

They did not lower the standard.

They simply understood that reaching the standard would require some uncomfortable repetitions along the way.

Perhaps that is one of the most important responsibilities of leadership.

Not eliminating failure.

Creating an environment where people can learn from it without becoming afraid of it.

Because sometimes the person who needs one more opportunity to get it right is the same person who will eventually become the one everyone else depends on.