Failure

Failure

Oh, God, I really messed up this time. How will you get me out of this one?

[He] redeems your life from the pit. Psalm 103:4, NIV

The leader serves the God of redemption, who buys back our blunders and sins and weaves them into the fabric of a beautiful future.

YOU ARE the God of redemption. That is a good thing because I feel like I am the servant of disasters. I feel like I make more mistakes in an average week than most people do in a year, and you watch me do it. Of course you watch me take more risks, too. I don’t know any other way to lead.

Still, I hate it when it is my own fault that things go bad. You know how I bring you the disasters that other people create. I gladly let you own them. But this is my own failure. I am so sorry about it that I wish I could hide it and try to take care of it myself. I can’t, and I know it would be stupid to try.

So here I am again. I did this one myself, it is big, and anything I do will probably just make things worse. I need your redemption of this whole event.

If I had listened better—with both heart and head—maybe this would not have happened. Use this to help me trust you more completely, follow you more closely, bring my stuff to you automatically. I need to learn from this fiasco. Show me how I can be part of your solution instead of part of my problem.

Thank you for trusting me with the lessons I must learn from this, but please spare the people I lead. I have really let everyone down by my failure. It is not their fault, God; it’s mine. I never want to embarrass the followers who have trusted me.

The truth is I am a fallen leader right now with weakened credibility. Whether I can get up from this and still lead, or even serve in any other way, is up to you. I am glad this mess is yours because you always know how to make things work out for my good. What a miracle is your redemption!

I commit myself to be the best steward I can be of whatever new challenges your solution will create for me or the organization. And I commit myself to admit my failure to the organization and accept responsibility for it. You know how expert I am at rationalizing and blaming. Don’t let me do that. Whatever forgiveness you put in their hearts is your business. My business is to honestly own my personal failure and look for your redemption.

Oh, God, I really messed up this time. How will you get me out of this one?

Reflections

Within six weeks I knew in my gut I had made a dreadful error. I had enthusiastically endorsed the hiring of a grossly incompetent staff member. He had one great attribute, however: unwavering determination. He fought us every grudging step. We lost a small fortune, wasted three years, and damaged our reputation before I could finally get him out.

Learning from failure is the hard work of leadership. Learning from success is much more fun. But if I am leaning forward, if I am taking the risks of visionary leadership, sometimes I will fail. Worst of all, sometimes those failures will not be just technical or planning failures; they may be failures of the spirit, failures of moral or ethical character, or even failures of sheer folly—like not waiting to check one more reference.

It was not easy to admit that I was guilty of such a highly visible and costly failure, and it was no consolation that everyone else had been fooled too. I admitted my failure to the staff, explained what I had learned from it, and requested forgiveness and support to keep leading. My action set an important example. I made it plain that leaders must take reasonable risks and, in the process of leading, will sometimes fail. When they do, they must own it openly but not let it crush them.

If I fail too often or make a fatal mistake, I shouldn’t be leading. But if I never fail, I am not really leading.