Understanding failure as a recipe for building lifelong leadership, impact and legacy

Failing is not failure. Have you ever failed at something and felt embarrassed, ashamed, or even unworthy of yourself? You’re not alone. Almost everyone has had such unpleasant experiences at one point or another in their journey.

I have too. Let me share one that left me very uncomfortable. So, over 15 years ago, in my first job as a Client Service Executive, I was responsible for managing a client based on Lagos Island, Nigeria, while our office was on the mainland. For a particular shareholders’ event, I was tasked with printing the media and backdrop banners.

On the event day, despite taking the risk of riding on a bike through the Third Mainland Bridge to beat traffic, I still arrived late, just as the event was ending. That alone was bad enough, but what followed was worse. When the client finally agreed to take a look at the banner, I opened it only to discover that the company’s name had been wrongly spelt!

It was a humbling experience, one that stayed with me for years.

I don’t know anyone who has risen, or is rising, to the top of their career without carrying scars from past failures. Perhaps the only exception exists on Instagram and other social media platforms, where it’s perfection or nothing. While it may be possible that a few people have walked a smooth, failure-free path, I sincerely congratulate them, and truthfully, I sometimes wish mine had been that way too.

But my journey has been different. Over the years, as I’ve built and strived to make an impact, I’ve come to understand that failure is one of the essential ingredients in the recipe for lifelong leadership, influence, and legacy.

So, if you are going through a season of failure right now, or encounter one along the way, here’s my assurance: it is part of your success story. Embrace it, and be grateful for the lessons it offers. When handled well, failure refines you, shapes you, and prepares you to become one of the finest talents your industry will ever know in your time.

Below, I’ve shared my thoughts on how the experiences of failure can become some of your best and most defining moments in your career.

Failure Builds Empathy: Empathy is one of the strongest assets of true leadership when well-nurtured and managed. Leadership is not just about technical competence, hitting numbers, or meeting targets. Yes, leaders without empathy can achieve business objectives and even deliver growth year after year. But that kind of leadership is often plastic, transactional, and devoid of genuine followership.

A leader who has experienced failure is more likely to be caring, understanding, and less judgmental in their approach. Such leaders are not weak; they are humane. They see their people first as humans, not as machines or tools to be used merely for achieving business goals.

Empathy in leadership does not mean losing sight of targets or compromising results. Instead, it creates a culture where people feel valued, inspired, and empowered to bring their best selves to work. When employees are led with empathy, they develop an ownership mindset, become more engaged, and are laser-focused on business success.

In essence, a workforce guided by empathetic leadership transforms into a powerful movement, driven, united, and committed to delivering excellence because they feel genuinely cared for and respected.

Failure Builds Discipline and Resilience: The fear of failing again often pushes you to go the extra mile, becoming more disciplined and resilient in the pursuit of operational efficiency and effectiveness. Failure is not a place to remain; it is a stopover where lessons are learned before moving swiftly toward improvement. No one decorates or celebrates failure, but its consequences instils a deep sense of discipline across processes to prevent a repeat.

Resilience, however, is not built overnight. It is forged through testing the waters, making mistakes, and rising after setbacks. Leaders who embody discipline and resilience are the ones who can withstand the test of time, thriving even amid complexity and uncertainty.

Failure Builds Guidance: Some leaders operate only at a high level, giving orders and expecting results. Others, however, lead by providing guidance. More often than not, these leaders have experienced failure themselves. From those experiences, they have developed empathy, discipline, and resilience, which drive them to go the extra mile in supporting their teams.

Guidance can take many forms: consistently creating time to provide clarity when giving instructions, ensuring well-defined workflows, detailing standards of operation, securing adequate resources even amid scarcity, and optimising costs to achieve the best results. Beyond these, such leaders inspire confidence and instil belief in their teams.

Teams that are properly guided are more likely to become high-performing, innovative, and capable of breaking through any glass ceiling.

Failure Builds Leading with Quality: When failure is properly managed, it teaches leaders that processes are just as important as outcomes. One should never be sacrificed for the other. This balance is what it means to lead with quality.

With quality embedded in leadership, both processes and results are strengthened, creating a repeatable model that can be refined and improved over time. Leaders who embrace this approach build organisations that last. And those who build-to-last create greater impact, deliver lasting value, and establish enduring legacies.

Failure Builds Depth: Leadership anchored on insight, hindsight, and pragmatism is often the outcome of past failures. Failure has the capacity to provide hands-on experience for navigating complexities, challenges, and uncertainties, shaping leaders into refined gold. Nothing compares to having the clarity and foresight that comes from knowing, through experience, what is possible and what is not.

Your depth of knowledge and wisdom, born out of previous failures, makes you better equipped for leadership. You become a natural at what you do, not because you know it all, but because your past failures have given you the resilience to withstand challenges and the ability to break them down to achieve desired objectives.

This is the core of the matter, I encourage professionals to embrace failure when it happens.
Normalise dealing with unpleasant conditions, uncertainties, ambiguities, and disappointments. They don’t define you. They make you stronger, help you build resilience, sharpen your empathy, and strengthen your vision for impact. Ultimately, they set you apart for excellence.

It is crucial to understand that growth, depth, resilience, and leadership rarely coexist with comfort. They are forged in difficult moments, moments you may wish had never happened. Yet, those very moments are what shape you. For those determined to build to last, remember this: when you experience failure, you are simply going through a process. There is nothing wrong with that. Hold on, stay strong, and work your way through.

You will emerge stronger, wiser, and more outstanding.

Failure builds. Failure instils discipline. Failure prepares you for the journey ahead. This is perhaps why I couldn’t agree more with Tai Solarin’s 1964 New Year message: “May your road be rough.”

Adejumoh is a Global Business Communications Strategist and Thought Leader. He can be reached via [email protected]; IG: godfrey.adejumoh and LinkedIn: Godfrey Adejumoh.