OCR Text |
Show page 8 , Fall/Winter 2002 corner Leadership, Risk-Taking and Making Mistakes A: s much as this might hurt our collective .feelings, academics are not commonly identified as big risk-takers. Popular role models for taking risks are more likely to come from the entertainment industry, business, and sports. A segment of our population actually celebrates poor outcomes: they videotape their humiliations and send them in for broadcast on national television to win cash. In contrast, faculty are not exemplars when it comes to publicly analyzing our own failures. We do not embrace errors and mistakes and losses as learning experiences, and I can state positively that our retention, promotion, and tenure criteria do not contain any linguistic references, direct or oblique, to "fails well" or "uses failure consistently as growth opportunities." Yet, many of us teach and practice risk-taking as a key aspect of leadership, and I see this as a paradox of moral positioning that cries to be addressed We can all probably agree that poor leaders take few risks and achieve less. Similarly, poor leaders may injudiciously risk too much, experiencing failures of magnificent proportions. Good leaders take risks and achieve more than they fail. Good leaders also use failure as an opportunity, without wasting much time on processing. How do they do that? At its best, when results are good, risk-taking is thrilling. You reach a shining goal, you achieve something outside your usual, you accomplish something others thought unlikely. You are crowned publicly and privately with a halo, generating a positive glow around you that leads others to see subsequent efforts in a positive light. Early faculty success results in what Fox (1995) has named a "cumulative advantage." One good thing leads to more good things in an exponential fashion. The rich get more money whether they deserve it or not, the successful get sometimes unrelated awards; we are surrounded with a perfume that daily increases in intensity and goodness. At its most human, however, risk-taking results in failure, and generates negative perceptions from self and others that I would colloquially call a "bad smell." One who has risked and had a bad outcome, a mistake, a rejection, is perceived as less capable than before, perhaps for long after the unfortunate event. Eye contact is avoided, only small talk is made, suggestions are |