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4 Ways Experiencing Failure Makes You a Better Leader

Life would be amazing if everything always went as planned. Life isn’t a movie in which everything magically works out in the end. In business, things frequently go wrong.

It can be something small like money wasted on a bad strategy or it can be a major incident that requires legal help. There are failures every organization and leader have to face as they grow.

In the moment when things that go as planned—a moment of failure—you have a choice to make. You can let the failure define you or you can use it as a life lesson that helps you become a well-rounded leader. What we fail to realize is there are clues that can help us avoid the same mistakes and grow our organization.

Here are four ways failure can make you a better leader:

It teaches you to not get comfortable or complacent.

When things are going well, it’s easy to put growth strategies on autopilot. You’re less likely to take risks because what you’re doing is working. Failure can be a wake-up call to the fact that complacency is the quickest killer of progress.

When you experience what feels like a “failure,” you realize you can’t rest on what used to work. You have to continue to grow.

It teaches you determination and perseverance.

In your mind, you know that it takes guts and perseverance to build an organization. If you never experience setbacks, you’ll never truly know what that means in the real world management.

When you can overcome your emotions and can formulate a plan for recovery, you understand what determination is. That’s a lesson that failure often teaches you.

It teaches you gratitude.

When you work hard and overcome obstacles while building your team and organization, you learn to appreciate what you have even more. Gratitude is an important component of life and business.

With an attitude of gratitude, you notice and appreciate the small things. That helps you become a better person, which helps you be a better leader.

It gives you the life that experience that makes you stronger.

The rate businesses fail these days is scary. It takes strength to build an organization today and failure makes you stronger. It helps you realize that while you aren’t perfect, you have a strength that’s greater than what you’ve experienced.

Don’t let the fear of failure keep you from taking chances as a leader. Don’t let fear keep you from setting bigger goals. Failure is a normal part of life. It happens to even the best leaders. The difference between them and those that fade into oblivion are the choices that were made.

Learn from failure and use the lessons to help you avoid the same mistakes. Determine to come back even stronger. If there are critics who relish your moment of failure, ignore them and do the work.

At the end of the day, doing the work daily is what it takes to reach success as a leader.