Message of the Day - Leadership Lessons from the School of Hard Knocks

Good Morning,

 

I couldn’t sleep Sunday night so I came to the computer and figured I’d surf around Facebook and some of my other online haunts. I ended up watching the last 2/3’rds of a movie: The Core. While I like the movie overall, I really enjoy some of the quotes. One of these quotes is about leadership.

 

Col. Robert Iverson: Being a leader isn't about ability. It's about responsibility.
Maj. Rebecca Childs: Got it, sir.
Col. Robert Iverson: No you don't, Beck. I mean, you're not just responsible for the good ones. You've got to be responsible for the bad ones. You've got to be ready to make the ‘really tough’ call.
Maj. Rebecca Childs: What makes you think I'm not?
Col. Robert Iverson: Because you're so damn good. You haven't hit anything you couldn't beat. I mean, hell, you were the one who figured out how to save the space shuttle. You made me, you made the rest of NASA just look like an ass. It's just you're used to winning... and you're not really a leader until you've lost.

 

It’s that last line that resonates with me:  and you're not really a leader until you've lost.

 

People who always succeed, and worse those who do it with minimal effort, who have never failed will find failure harder to take than those of us who keep falling flat on our faces or kicked in our teeth a few times.

 

If you don’t know what is at risk, that is, what failure tastes like, then when you make leadership decisions, you may not really don’t know the impact of failure. For example, when riding a bicycle, until you‘ve fallen off you don’t know the impact of falling off is. You know it will hurt and you can do an entire intellectual exercise, but until you have fallen, failed, etc., then you don’t know.

 

The greatest leaders have often had monumental failures in the their past. They have lost many times before they started to win.

 

And this brings out the main point. It is okay to fail, so long as get up again.

 

Remember, the difference from success and failure is often getting up off your duff, brushing yourself off and giving it one more try.

 

But if you have never failed, then you will not truly know what it means to lead.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net
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http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
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