Fear of failing is a powerful deterrent and an unrelenting roadblock to achieving remarkable results. Leaders who operate in a manner to avoid the possibility of failing, will fail to reach and realize the best outcomes for their organizations and their teams. Napolean Hill wrote, “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”
Having led teams as small as just a few to thousands of people over the past 30 years, I have experienced the heartache and headaches of many failures. Those seeded and later bloomed into outstanding outcomes when I properly listened, learned, and applied the lessons they taught.
From 2017 to 2019 I had the pure privilege to serve as the 10th Air Base Wing and Installation Commander at the United States Air Force Academy. There, I led a team of 3,000 military and civilian personnel delivering campus-wide installation support, communications, engineering, facility maintenance, construction projects, human resources, medical and dental programs, environmental programs, foodservices, safety, security, logistics, and recreation for 4,000 college students and 25,000 other personnel. The Academy is ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the #3 public university in the United States. We often referred to it as a fishbowl. Anything and everything that happens there has the potential to be front page, national news. In short, the pressure to “not fail” is enormous.
I have often been asked, “what were the best and worst experiences leading at the Academy?” Easy to answer because the greatest and worst experience was two sides of the same coin; the same situation. Ten years ago, the United States Air Force completely revamped how it executes inspections. Federal Law requires every Federal Agency to have an inspection regime to ensure their operations, regardless of type, are meeting specific standards. For most of my military career, we had what we referred to as “white glove” or “black hat” inspections. We were aiming for “picture perfect” performance, which led to a lot of wasted energy and effort. Often, we were more concerned with how things looked over how truly effective we were at our operations. We feared failure rather than embracing what is learned from making mistakes.
Under this updated inspection system, four specific areas are evaluated: Executing the Mission, Leading People, Managing Resources, and Improving the Unit. The evaluation isn’t one static point, rather an ongoing 36-month cycle that ends with a capstone evaluation. That capstone typically takes three to five days for the Inspector General team, usually comprised of dozens of individuals, to complete. Wing Commanders are responsible for ensuring the four aforementioned areas are operating well. I took the helm of the Wing 26 months into the 36-month cycle. The inspection arrived ten months into my two-year command, and I knew by mid-week during the in-person evaluation we were going to fail.
We were satisfactorily Executing the Mission, Leading People, and Managing Resources, but we were unsatisfactorily Improving the Unit. The way the evaluation criteria is applied, if a unit fails Improving the Unit, the overall score is a failure, no matter how well things are operating in the other evaluated areas. Friday, the team lead gave me the final evaluation results. I will never forget the physical pain I felt, and the mental anguish I experienced that afternoon, and for many weeks following. The Academy’s President, or Superintendent as they are known at the military academies, was my direct supervisor. He was a three-star general, and at the time, I was still a full-bird Colonel. Our offices were 7.5 miles apart on the Academy’s 30-square mile campus. Driving to his office follows a route that rises about 1,200 feet traveling south to north on the campus. As I was turning one bend, and climbing, the sky went dark and freezing rain fell. That storm was the perfect metaphor for what was going on inside me.
Arriving at the Superintendent’s office, I went to his Deputy’s office, another Colonel and told him about the failure, then we called my boss, who was traveling that week and not at the Academy. The general answered his cell phone, and I gave him the news. He said, “This isn’t good news, and you have until Monday ….” He paused; my racing mind finished the other half of that sentence; “…to clear out your office.” I reasoned that was what he was going to say because much, if not most of the time, commanders who lead failing units are removed from command. The military usually calls this “a loss of confidence.” Meaning, no confidence in one’s leadership ability.
The other half of his sentence actually was, “to grieve and get over it, because I need you to lead that team like never before. You need to lead them through this.” The reason for his pause, and my panic finishing his sentence, was, I’d caught him in the middle of an exercise run and he needed to catch his breath. He hadn’t lost faith or favor in me. I know now, that was in part because the three things that were identified as our biggest problems during the capstone evaluation, were the same things I had told him needed improving seven months earlier. What I did not know those months earlier, was just how deeply flawed and fractured those areas were.
Leaving his office, and knowing I wasn’t being fired, didn’t help calm the storm inside me. That storm was fear overcoming me. I was afraid that the career I had so carefully curated and crafted, leading to one success after another to this point, was ending.
I did grieve and get over it. Not by that Monday following the “Failure Friday.” It was some weeks later, but I did understand by Sunday as I sat down to write out what we needed to do to fix the failure, that I did not need to fear failure. That long heard sentiment, “fail falling forward” flooded into my mind. I picked myself up, with amazing support from my wife and my leadership team, and four months later, we were reevaluated, and we absolutely crushed it! The inspection team lead, who had failed us, told me he’d never seen so dynamic a turnaround in so short a time span. Several programs and procedures we setup became Air Force best practices. For years following, other commanders have told me they adopted things “Team Ten” as I called the Wing, had done to overcome our failure.
The primary reason we failed was that downline leaders were pencil-whipping their inspection items. Why? Because they were afraid of failing and hadn’t adopted and applied my direction to showcase what wasn’t working well. Rather than embrace the risks, and addressing our shortcomings, many had decided to ignore, or in other cases, deliberately took the wrong actions because they adopted a risk-adverse culture. We fixed the broken parts of our operation through revitalizing our teams and getting back to basics. Specifically, teaching people how to be good teammates, about the beauty and benefits of accountability, trust, and true transparency; supercharging communications; empowering those who felt previously powerless; actively listening to one another; setting high standards, and embracing “the red.”
Embracing the red meant assuring leaders at all levels that the risks and failures were mine, not their burdens to bear alone. That didn’t mean there were no consequences for failing foolishly. Rather, provided we were moving in the right direction, failing forward, it would be a growth and learning opportunity. By following this format, those mistakes, missteps, or miscues were not fatal, they made us better.
The worst experience was that failure, the greatest was the outcome four months later. I benefitted mightily from that experience. I know for certain; I became a better leader for having endured that adversity, failure, and heartache. Victory Strategies’ elite leadership practitioners, through our Accelerating Leadership Academy, can help anyone become a better leader, and teach how to fail falling forward because we’ve been there ourselves.
Authored By: Shawn Campbell, Managing Director