Why You Should Allow Team Failure as a Leader

Failure isn't inevitable... but it is essential for your team's growth and success. As a leader, if your team hasn't failed recently, you're not giving them opportunities to learn and innovate. Embracing failure fosters a culture of optimization. When things go wrong, your employees won't panic. They'll see it as a chance to develop new solutions. Knowing what doesn't work makes it easier to find what does. Planning for failure also protects your bottom line. No matter how skilled your team is, something will eventually go awry. Building in extra cushion to address problems along the way ensures you won't find yourself with a half-finished project and no budget to complete it. Most importantly, accepting failure leads to the best results. Teams afraid to fail play it safe. Anyone can do that. If you want to be cutting edge and innovative, you have to take risks. And you have to understand that those risks won't always pay off. My team has helped some of the biggest brands on the market gain millions in revenue because we weren't afraid to get it wrong. We took calculated risks, learned from our failures, and used that knowledge to drive exceptional results. Are you creating an environment where your team feels safe to fail and learn? Or are you inadvertently stifling innovation by demanding perfection? Consider how you can encourage more risk-taking and learning from failure in your organization. It might just be the key to unlocking your team's full potential.

“But what if they fail?” A CEO once asked me this while discussing a new leader on his team. He delegated a critical responsibility but didn't trust the work would be done right. This CEO is a high IQ, conscientious leader. He cares deeply about his people. But he has a problem: He’s unwilling to let them fail. So he over-compensates. He rescues. He jumps in and fixes things before they go sideways. And while it feels like support… it’s actually getting in the way. Because when you shield your team from failure, you also shield them from: 👉 Growth 👉 Ownership 👉 Resilience One of the hardest things for a leader to do is step back and let the learning happen—especially when it’s messy. But if we want to develop capable, confident teams, we have to be willing to let people stumble. Support them? Yes. Coach them? Absolutely. But rescue them every time? That’s not leadership. That’s control dressed up as compassion.

You gotta let people fail. Hard. Big, embarrassing, public failures. When I'm working a big deal / project / whatever with someone who is earlier in their learning curve, I'm tempted to take over when I see things going sideways. Gotta get the 'win.' Every time I do that, though, my teammate learns nothing, and we're in the same spot the next time. It's a disservice. Instead, I force myself to let people fail. Big, fantastic failures that leave a mark on their psyche for a long time. I let them experience the kind of failures that I experienced (and still experience) that left me with an undeniable urge to get better and never let them happen again. The folks that fail hard and get better are the ones you want on your team. If you don't let people fail, you don't really know how they'll respond to consistently tough problems. (Important caveat, though: you gotta let them fail safely. Meaning you don't place blame, but you do highlight areas of improvement and bring an objective lens to the conversation. Help them unpack and suggest the fixes. That's what leaders have done for me, and I'm much better for it.) Failure is good - as long as it doesn't keep happening. #failure #coaching #leadership

After half a dozen exits and 25+ years building teams, here’s one thing I tell every leader: Let failure breathe. Earlier in my career, whenever things didn’t go as planned, I’d gather the team and start lecturing on “learning from mistakes” and “problem solving.” But my urgency, intensity, and body language sent a different message: This failure is on you. I thought my intensity was something that was necessary as a leader, but there’s definitely a time and a place for that… and it’s not when someone fails. Real leadership isn’t about pushing harder in those moments. Sometimes you need to create space for people to process, reflect, and regroup. Once I slowed down and gave space to listen, the energy on the team shifted. The conversations became more open. The ideas more creative. The comebacks stronger. When people know failure won’t be met with hostility or blame, they bring their best ideas forward. Let failure breathe and watch your team flourish.