Here’s the bottom line: You can't be an effective leader if you're afraid of making mistakes.

And, by the same token: You can’t be an effective leader if, once you’ve made mistakes, you don’t learn from them.

There are plenty of bad leaders around who coast through life in their ivory tower comfort zones. On the one hand, you can't blame them. If it's not broken, why take the trouble to fix it and risk the whole thing blowing up in your face, potentially exposing what an incompetent leader you are? But, on the other hand, if you’re a leader with an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ attitude, your business won’t evolve. Before you realise it, you’ll be left choking in the exhaust fumes of the more effectively led companies roaring past you, sweeping up your customers and profits as they go.

In my previous article, I talked about how we all make mistakes in business, and if someone says they haven't, they're almost certainly lying. Either that (P.S. there's no 'either that', they're definitely lying), or they haven't tried hard enough to fail, which says even worse things about their qualifications to be a leader. In fact, it says very bad things about their qualifications to be a human being. All human beings fail, all leaders fail; it's how we learn, grow resilience, and become better at what we do.