Leadership Development and Training – The Role of Failure

For some people, failure is one of the great non-subjects.

Common speech is littered with platitudes on the subject, including things such as describing failure as an opportunity or being something that one should never admit to.
Much more worrying is the occasional suggestion that somehow the peoples of the First Nations are fatalistic about failure and simply shrug it off with indifference. This, of course, is simply wrong and shows a marked lack of understanding of the cultures and individuals concerned.

In fact, members of the indigenous communities are just as determined to achieve success as anyone else and don’t welcome failure lightly.

Here at the Stars Institute of Learning and Leadership, we know a thing or two about leadership development and training.  We also, as you might expect, understand how to apply that in some of the very specific cultural circumstances of the Aboriginal and Torres Islander peoples.

However, we also understand that things in life don’t always go according to plan.  Sometimes in spite of the best endeavours of the individual or organisation concerned, things simply fail to materialise in line with our expectations and efforts.

One of the primary objectives of leadership development and training is to try and reduce the possibilities of such events occurring but it is also extremely important to understand the techniques for dealing with problems when they arise.

One of the first things to try and break is the association of things not going to plan with ‘failure’. Failure has extremely negative semantic connotations that often imply fault and the allocation of blame to an individual or group.  In fact, problems should be seen as no more than problems and strategies need to be adopted to deal with them without recrimination and blame – particularly when it’s self-inflicted.

Our leadership development and training programmes aim to instil confidence into individuals and teach them how problems need to be used as a platform for learning and improvement rather than destroyers of self-confidence.Out of that will grow the realization that failure isn’t inevitable and rarely is it ever total or irredeemable.