U.S. Air National Guard photo by Senior Airman John Linzmeier

You fear failure, it makes you uncomfortable, and it often prevents you from reaching your full leadership potential. When you ask someone if people like to fail, the answer is always a confident, “no.” I argue differently. You should fail and take risks as a leader, though not deliberately. If you do not fail, you are staying inside your comfort zone, something a leader should never do – always strive to improve. Failure helps you become a better leader in a number of ways:  it helps you overcome adversity, requires humility, enables mentorship, and builds resiliency. Being able to accept risk with the possibility of failure is a pinnacle aspect of a good leader.

Attitude is everything in both life and leadership. People are attracted to positivity – you’ve all seen this in the work environment real world. Think of a personal or professional experience shaped by failure and how your attitude helped overcome it. For me, it was failing at Officer Training School (OTS) in my first attempt. The three-month course focuses on leader and follower skills and includes a myriad of academic tests and quizzes. I quickly learned military tests are a lot different than my previous test-taking experiences. I failed the first test, which followed me like a nagging mosquito for the rest of my time there. I had also failed the Leader Reaction Course (LRC), a test everyone had to pass to progress to the next phase of training. In our mid-term feedback about a month and a half in, the snowball had begun to roll. I was behind the curve, and it was apparent: I had failed.

I had to swallow my pride, say goodbye to my peers who would graduate ahead of me, and even accept the fact I would have to march in the same graduation parade in a few short weeks, biding my peers adieu. I remember being in a dark place because I had failed. I was forced to spend another six weeks completing tasks I had previously failed.

Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm – Winston S. Churchill

I had two options as I saw it: quit, or leave the pity party I had created in my head, learn from the experience, and overcome the second time around. Once I integrated with my new flight, I realized I fit in perfectly. My past experiences had enabled me to become a mentor and a teacher. My earlier failures made me a de-facto leader in the flight. I had been there longer, seen more, knew the game, and ultimately had learned to overcome and embrace the suck. I wanted to share the experience with my peers.

I used the lessons learned at the LRC to overcome my failure at OTS. I briefed our flight on the course, how to overcome it, shared a mental model, and encouraged our team’s success. Unlike my last class, each candidate excelled on the course. Was this a coincidence, or was this a testament to me failing before and being able to teach others how to learn from my failures? I think my failure enabled learning. This course tested both leadership and followership skills in each. My flight commander showed he believed in me by allowing me to even give the brief to the flight, which was not part of the curriculum. He saw leadership skills in me that were not as apparent before, but only surfaced because I had failed previously. I learned to be a better, more effective leader only by first knowing failure. Defeating the LRC was the first test. In the end, I did pass OTS, but with a different point of view than most – one I still appreciate because I had to overcome adversity, change my attitude, and ultimately win when I wasn’t sure I would. These characteristics have helped throughout my career thus far.

Only those who dare fail greatly can ever achieve greatly – Robert F. Kennedy

You don’t go into OTS, or any other life event, thinking of failure. When you begin an operation, task, mission, or problem, you shouldn’t either. Know that it will happen at some point, whether you like it or not. There is no reward without risk. Your attitude after failure is what sets you apart from other leaders and peers. Will you quit, or will you learn from the experience and move on to the next obstacle? Further, will you go a step beyond and teach others what your failure taught you? Leaders must ensure subordinates know failures will occur and demonstrate what overcoming failure looks like.  Everyone has known defeat in life, but people handle it in different ways. Be the leader who sets the example that failure is inevitable and plan to learn from it. There is a difference between accepting failure and setting the example in your organization to overcome failure and pave a way forward. Be the latter. It works for me.

Captain Christopher Little is a RQ-4 Global Hawk Pilot at Beale AFB, CA. He has attended Squadron Officer School at Maxwell AFB, AL. He has seven years of service and has been a Flight Commander at the Captain level in the Commander’s Actions Group (CAG). He commissioned from Officer Training School in 2012.