I was recently interviewed by a school for a leadership position and was caught off-guard by this question: When have you failed as a leader and what did you do about it?
I am certainly not a perfect leader and have made my fair share of mistakes, but I really struggle with the term, or any derivation of “fail”. What does it mean to fail? What does it mean to fail if you haven’t defined what success looks like? If you are making marked improvements towards but not yet achieving the definition of “success”, are you failing?
As leaders, we have those days when we feel less effective than others; when we aren’t seeing the gains in student achievement, improved instruction, or a positive shift in the culture of our schools. There are those days when we feel we have failed our students, our teams, and ourselves. Yes, I have had many of those days.
Are we failures or have we failed in any of these situations? I would venture to say that we haven’t. We only “fail” when we don’t demonstrate and act with courage in response to adversity. We only “fail” when we allow intended or unintended immoral, inequitable, or unjust acts to occur without trying whole-heartedly to prevent them. We only “fail” when we refuse to courageously fight for what is right in spite of obstacles, big and small.
In response to the question from the interview, I asked what the interviewer meant by the term “fail.” Not intending to turn the question back on him, that’s what happened. He struggled to define what it means to fail and rephrased the question. Tell me about a mistake you have made as a leader and how you responded. This question I could much more confidently respond to -with many examples. Instead of focusing on the mistake, I was able to elaborate on the successes experienced due to my own courage and the courageous professionals around me. Failure is not an act, it’s a refusal to act.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston Churchill
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