Success Through Our Failures

I have been engaged in some form of leadership development for most of my adult life. But one of the most important things I have learned is that leadership is not developed through success alone. Some of our greatest growth comes from the times we get it wrong.

Throughout my aviation career, I had the opportunity to lead teams of air traffic controllers and other professionals responsible for testing, implementing, and deploying new systems into some of the most complex operational environments in the world. Those experiences taught me about preparation, communication, accountability, and the responsibility that comes with leading people through change.

At the same time, my career in the fire service provided an entirely different leadership laboratory. Over more than three decades, I held every rank from firefighter to fire chief. I led crews, stations, departments, and eventually an entire organization.

Some days we succeeded.

Other days we didn’t.

And looking back, I probably learned more about leadership from the difficult days than I ever did from the easy ones.

But throughout both careers, one part of leadership was particularly important to me: helping other people grow.

When someone joined my team or worked for me, I wanted to know more than what they could do for the organization. I wanted to know where they wanted to go.

I routinely asked the people I led two simple questions:

What are your short-term goals?

What are your long-term goals?

Then we would talk about how to get there.

Sometimes that meant additional training or education. Sometimes it meant taking on a difficult assignment, pursuing a promotion, accepting greater responsibility, or preparing for an opportunity outside our organization.

I never believed my responsibility as a leader was simply to make someone better at the job they were doing for me. My responsibility was also to help prepare them for the job, position, or opportunity they wanted next—even if that opportunity eventually took them somewhere else.

That philosophy became especially important during my years in the fire service. I encouraged people to use the department, its training, and the opportunities available to them as stepping stones toward their larger goals. If someone wanted to become a career firefighter, paramedic, officer, chief, or pursue an entirely different profession, I wanted their time with us to move them closer to that goal.

Over time, I came to understand that developing people isn’t something separate from leadership. It is leadership.

For years, I studied leadership and read many of John Maxwell’s books. His principles reinforced much of what I was experiencing firsthand: leadership is about people, influence, growth, relationships, and the willingness to continually develop yourself before expecting others to follow you.

Two years before what would eventually become the end of my fire service career, I decided to take another step. I completed the Maxwell leadership training and became certified as a speaker, coach, and leadership trainer.

At the time, I thought I was simply adding another set of tools to my leadership toolbox.

I didn’t realize I was preparing for the next chapter.

Eight years later, I had the opportunity to return to the Maxwell leadership program—but this time the experience was different.

I wasn’t going alone.

I brought my wife with me.

This time, the goal was to help her take her own leadership and coaching abilities—and the next chapter of her career—to another level.

There was something meaningful about returning to a place that had contributed to my own development years earlier and now watching someone I love begin her own journey.

It also reminded me of something I wish I had understood much earlier in my career:

Leadership development never really ends.

We learn.

We lead.

We make mistakes.

We adjust.

We grow.

We help others grow.

And eventually, those people begin helping someone else grow.

That may be one of the greatest measures of leadership—not how many people followed you, but how many people became better because you took the time to invest in them.

Success isn’t the absence of failure.

Sometimes success is having enough humility to learn from our failures, enough courage to change because of them, and enough experience to help the next person avoid a few of the mistakes we made along the way.

After a lifetime of leadership, I am still learning.

And perhaps that is one of the most important leadership lessons of all.