I had a discussion recently with my fellow advisory board members at Colorado Thought Leaders’ Forum where we were asked to share some our biggest failures. I found myself a bit embarrassed to share that I haven’t had a lot of failures in my life. In my head I kept hearing the mantra - “If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough” and wondered if that has been true for me. As the discussion went on and others shared their failures, I realized that there were two major factors that played into what they shared. The context of the situation and how one decides to define failure.

In school below 60% constitutes a failing grade. Yet in baseball a batter who hits over .300 (connecting on pitches only 30% of the time) is considered a success. For amateur golfers landing their drive in the fairway 50% of the time is considered a success. But there aren’t many people who would tolerate their significant other only remembering their birthday every other year. Deciding what is a failure depends on context of the situation and also the timeframe. A decision made for today that initially is considered a success, might be looked at as a failure six months from today as circumstances change.

How we define failure is also very personal. If you set out to run a marathon and only make it 25 miles, is that considered a failure? Maybe you didn’t meet your goal, but to diminish the training, effort and accomplishment of running 25 miles in a binary way of success or failure doesn’t seem right to me. Too many times we fall into the trap of right or wrong, good or bad, success or failure. My friend Peter Melby, told me once something that resonated deeply; “Sometimes you make good decisions and sometimes you make your decisions good.” Many times in life, I’ve found myself not accepting failure as an acceptable outcome. Sometimes that means changing course to make the outcome different, sometimes that means choosing to keep the “failure” in perspective and not label it as such.

J.K. Rowling said; “Ultimately we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it go.” Some of us are perfectionists and any mistake or shortcoming is a failure. Others see life as a journey that has no successes or failures, only experiences that we learn from. Both mindsets have their benefits and they can equally come with high expectations and lead to achievement of great things. Wherever you are on that spectrum, I hope you own your definition of failure and give yourself grace on your leadership journey.