While I was researching the concept of failure, I came across a fascinating article by John J Sviokla who pens the blog Daily Innovation. John shared his insights about failure, accountability, and how it impacts the workplace.

Dave Pottruck former co-CEO at Charles Schwab was fired in 2004 because he did not turn the company around fast enough after the dot com downturn.   Needless to say, Dave understands risk and its consequences.  Dave is a very wise man and has illustrated the different kinds of failure relevant to a work environment.  Here Dave defines a Noble Failure for a team or individual in the workplace:

• Performed a careful and thorough analysis of the opportunity;
• Prepared a thoughtful and comprehensive plan (including contingencies) to attack the opportunity;
• Was completely committed to the success of the venture and worked endless hours to make it succeed;
• Gathered the resources needed to do the job right;
• Effectively executed the plan and adjustments to the plan;
• Took personal accountability and went back and did a post mortem to maximize the learning from the failed effort.

According to Dave, if you did all 6 then and still did not achieve success or the desired outcome, then you have a Noble Failure.

This kind of failure doesn’t get you rewarded or promoted. But it doesn’t get you fired either. You aren’t penalized for taking the chance to do something bold. Arguably you are ahead of the game in that you are more valuable to the organization since you are now experienced at why innovation and change are hard to pull off.

What most bosses are unwilling to tolerate is Ignoble Failure.  Dave said the two problems with accepting just any failure is that you don’t know if the idea or the execution was wrong and you send a de-motivating message to the organization that sloppiness might be tolerated on something as important as change or innovation.

The lesson learned is to try your best, take a risk, and work hard with a plan, resources and personal accountability in all you do. If you fail then it is an honest and Noble Failure that nobody will fault you for and there will be valuables lessons to learn from. The Ignoble Failure is a tougher pill to swallow since the post mortem will show that the weakness comes from your lack of motivation, accountability, and work ethic. Both versions have valuable lessons but I prefer to fail nobly.

From academia and the non-profit arena to the corporate world-of-work, I have many clients who complain about bosses who are ineffective leaders. Are their leaders intelligent and talented people? Yes. But, are they able to lead a team, motivate others, and empower success in their colleagues? No!

I have come to believe that while some leaders are born, most are developed and our current professional marketplace does not place enough emphasis on training effective leaders. This leads to discontent amongst the troops and ultimately low morale and low productivity. There are some enlightened organizations that train from within but I wish it was part of every organization’s professional development curriculum.

Liz Wiseman, worked at Oracle for 17+ years and considers herself a genius watcher. She was the VP responsible for the company’s global talent development strategy and ran the Oracle Corporate University. Her book: Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter teaches valuable lessons for current and aspiring leaders.

During Wiseman’s 17+ year leadership watching and developing experience at Oracle, she discovered that some leaders drain intelligence and the capabilities of the people around them. Their focus on their own intelligence and their narcissistic need to be the smartest person in the room had a diminishing effect on everyone else around them. For them to look smart other people had to look dumb or incompetent and in turn, the Diminishers created a vacuum suck of all the creative energy in a room. Meeting times were doubled and other people’s ideas suffocated and died in their presence. From these so called leaders, intelligence only flowed one way – from them to others.

The Multipliers, on the other hand used their leadership intelligence in a much different way. They used their intelligence to amplify the capabilities of others on their team. People got smarter and better in their presence and ideas flowed freely and challenges were overcome. When these leaders walked into a room the energy level went up on the team and difficult problems were solved because every team member had a say and was involved.

So why do some leaders boost the mental IQ in a room and others suck the mental life out of their employees? The Multipliers bring out the intelligence in others by building collective and viral genius in an organization.

Wiseman identified 5 disciplines of Multipliers:

1. The Talent Magnet: Attract and optimize talent
2. The Liberator: Require people’s best thinking
3. The Challenger: Extend challenges
4. The Debate Maker: Debate decisions
5. The Investor: Instill accountability

By extracting people’s full capability, Multipliers get twice the resources from people than do the Diminishers. Wiseman shared a success story about Bill Campbell, former CEO of Intuit who fully admits that he is a recovered Diminisher. A courageous team member called him on his micro managing, intelligence draining leadership style and pleaded for him to give the team space to create ideas and solve problems. It was a hard lesson for Campbell to learn but in the long run it gave him the insight he needed to become a more effective leader.

He now subscribes to the philosophy of creating brilliance in others on his team by empowering them to succeed. This is a difficult lesson for many of today’s unsuccessful leaders who don’t have the professional development resources to learn to become Multipliers. Others don’t have courageous team members to call them out on being ineffective leaders so they continue to diminish and dysfunctional teams plod along.

If confronting your diminishing leader is not within your comfort zone, or you fear job security, perhaps a mysterious copy of Liz Wiseman’s great book in an office mailbox will plant the seed anonymously. Are you a Multiplier or a Diminisher?

Always an athlete, Debbie Waitkus played on the soccer team at the University of Arizona and after graduate school she went on to establish a thriving corporate career as president of a 37 year old, $130 million private mortgage banking firm.  She always attributed golf as one of her keys to success since she would take her clients on golf outings to establish and steward professional relationships and business deals. When the CEO of her firm implemented a new strategy that didn’t follow suit with her professional values, Debbie knew it was time for a change and what better way to plan her reinvention than to leverage the game of golf in a new business. Read Full Story