If anything instills fear in the heart of a leader or manager, generally speaking, it must be this one thing: failure. 

“To err is human,” Alexander Pope opined. We often recognize and praise the accounts of inventors and entrepreneurs, who epitomize another old saying: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”  Yet, leaders and managers (and Type A persons in general) so often fight and deny the possibility of failure, which also so often becomes an actuality of failure. 

While American society rewards its “winners” and often enough punishes those perceived as “losers,” enough apocryphal stories and personal accounts suggest that many Americans are still reasonably forgiving of failures. The legal profession? Maybe less so than other walks of American life. Nevertheless, failure—or, at least, not always succeeding at what one sets out to do originally—is equally a part of the legal profession. Our profession is often a zero-sum game: one side wins, the other side must therefore lose.  Ask any litigator who was counseled that she had an “airtight case,” only to find that a judge or jury vehemently disagreed. Ask any contracts lawyer, convinced that he had finally crafted the “perfect” agreement, only to have a colleague or, worse, opposing counsel prove him wrong by finding the one exact loophole that can un-do a carefully crafted and painstakingly negotiated transaction. 

It happens. Leaders have to acknowledge this. Leaders also need to take this recognition one step further—to be willing to admit to a failure and take their own share of responsibility for that failure, even if the failure is perhaps attributable wholly or partly to members of the leader’s team. One of the greatest examples of this concept in American history in practice goes back almost eighty years.

On the eve of D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies’ commanding general, Dwight Eisenhower, wrestled with a colossal demon: what if D-Day failed, and the Allies’ best opportunity to liberate Europe from Hitler’s odious grip died on the beaches of France?  Confronting this nightmare, “Ike” paid a personal visit to shake hands with and talk to many of the paratroops about to jump into Normandy, so he could see for himself and be with the men whom he was about to send into battle. He knew that many of them would be dead within hours. As their transport planes took off into the darkness, Eisenhower cried. He then went back to his office to write a late-night message that he hoped that he would never have to send.

We know, of course, that D-Day succeeded. History students also remember Eisenhower’s stirring message to his troops and to the citizens of occupied Europe and the Allies, announcing that the “Operation Overlord” invasion was successful.  But, what few know about is the “in case of failure” message that Eisenhower wrote late on June 5. It is a powerful document that tells us as much about leadership in an extremely fraught situation as it does about Eisenhower, the man and leader. It reads as follows:

Wow! The simplicity, the power, the lack of hubris—and the personal, sole acceptance of responsibility— in this message transcends the decades. Nowhere does Eisenhower point the finger at anyone but himself. Like his later “boss,” President Harry S. Truman, Eisenhower’s message in this message is: the buck stops here.   

Imagine whether many corporate or other leaders in modern business culture would say anything remotely as candid as this, and squarely accept responsibility, when something less dire than human lives and the fate of the world are at stake—e.g., when corporate earnings are not met, or when a product rollout fails to capture market share.  It is hard for many of us to summon up such a vision. More is the shame.

Something else goes hand-in-hand with the radical power of finding courage such as Eisenhower was prepared to deliver. That is the power of ensuring that credit attaches appropropriately where credit is due—and its flip side, not taking credit for results or successes that are not one’s own. The first is a hallmark of excellent leadership, of a leader who knows she has nothing to fear from successful subordinates and teammates. The other is often singled out as the number-one sign of poor leadership, of a leader who may indeed be afraid of or who lacks trust in his teammates and subordinates, or who inappropriately seeks to take credit for work that is actually due to others’ sweat and ingenuity. Few things can kill morale and trust on any team more quickly than such actions taken by a leader.  

One other thought also can go hand-in-glove with a leader’s acknowledgment that, yes, none of us (and none of our best-laid plans) are wholly perfect. That is the power of an apology from a leader. 

For instance, I can think of an apology of my own that I owe across the miles and decades. Going back to law school, I can think too often of times when I should have apologized clearly and openly.  

When serving as the editor in chief of the Tennessee Law Review, I painfully remember feeling the pressure to keep the Law Review on schedule. When that happened, I let my “inner taskmaster” get the better of me in too many interactions among my peers on the T.L.R. Sometimes, it was all too easy to give rein to that inner taskmaster when I felt stressed.  While I learned from it, I’ve regretted not only allowing the drum beats of keeping the oars of the T.L.R. rowing, blotting out the voices of my friends, but also how that took away from the pure fun of working with extremely smart, often funny, and gifted classmates. 

It may be late in the day to apologize for the error of one’s ways, but each of us must grow with the recognition of our own shortcomings. Hopefully, it is never too late to own up to our mistakes.  And, while Pope said that “to err is human,” we who make mistakes and fail can only hope that those who receive our apologies remember the second half of Pope’s human equation of failure: “to forgive is divine.” That, however, is never a given, and leaders must accept that too. It is just another price of leadership.