THE GUT CHECK SERIES · Failure · No. 8
One leadership question, examined. A new one every Tuesday.

Are you there to catch them when they fall?

He carried my water bottle. A general, the first one I had ever worked for directly, and he carried it as I ran.

I had been in Riyadh for nearly 17 months of a one-year tour, and it was a blistering hot summer. We had our semi-annual physical fitness test and I was ready. But when I crossed that finish line, I was terrified. I was off pace by over a minute and a half. I failed. I didn’t stop and stretch. I just walked wide-eyed back to my hooch and cried. I was less than a week away from departing the Kingdom for home. A landslide of catastrophic thinking buried every other thought. I was cooked!

I got into my duty uniform and went into the headquarters. Two minutes after I walked in, the Commanding General’s secretary came to my door and said, “He wants to see you.”

My heart fell into my gut and my brain lit on fire. I stepped into his office and he told me to sit down. “What happened?” he asked. I explained that I didn’t know, but I had already talked to the Sergeant Major and I was going to retest the following day. To which he replied, “No you’re not. You’re going to take the weekend. You’re going to take the weekend and retest on Saturday.”

Saturday morning came (the “Monday” of the Saudi work week) and I walked out to the PT field. Sergeant Major was there with a clip board and another officer was there from my team to run the stopwatch. First event, smoked it. Second event, smoked it. Then we walked to the starting line for the two mile run. And he was standing there, the general. He looked me in the eye and asked me how I was feeling. Then he said, “Hey, let me carry that water bottle for you.”

Sergeant Major said, “Go!” and we took off, the general and I. He didn’t say a word and neither did I, but when we crossed the finish line together, Sergeant Major called out my time. I was no longer a minute and a half over, but a minute and a half under. My run time had dropped three minutes in three days. The CG came up to me and said, “I guess today is a better day.” And he was right, for more reasons than he knew.

You see, few people enjoy real uncertainty, and fewer take on risk they know they face alone. That is what most talk about “empowerment” misses. You can tell your team to take initiative, to make calls, to act without waiting for you, and they will smile and nod, because experience taught them that when initiative goes wrong the person charging ahead is on their own. But catch someone when they fall, carry their water bottle for them, and you have changed what a mistake costs.

Underwriting honest failure after honest effort is responsibility working as a form of context. When you make it clear, in advance, that you will catch them, you give your people the context they need to act boldly: the cost of being wrong here is survivable. That single piece of information changes what they are willing to attempt and what is in the realm of the possible for your entire organization. A team that trusts the catch will take the smart risks that win. A team that knows a mistake can cost them everything will play not to lose, which over time is the most expensive way to operate there is.

Leaders don’t need to accept negligence. Catching someone is not the same as doing the running for them. You still hold them to the standard, still make sure they learn what the fall had to teach, still let the lesson land. The difference is that you do it while standing between them and the worst of the fallout instead of standing there watching it hit. You protect the person and prosecute the problem. Those are different things, and good leaders never confuse caring for someone with going soft on the standard.

In practice it shows up in small, public moments. When the failure gets discussed up the chain, you say “we” and you say “my call,” and you do not let a name drop out of your mouth that turns a junior person into the lightning rod. You fix the problem hard and the person gently. And you make the catch visible, because the rest of the team is watching to learn what happens to people who try and miss. What they see is what they’ll dare next time.

The leaders I would follow anywhere had this in common: they were standing underneath. They knew a person should not have to choose between taking a worthy risk and protecting themselves, and that a leader who won’t take responsibility hasn’t earned the authority that’s supposed to come with it.

Gut check: the last time someone on your team failed, did the consequence land on them, or did you put yourself between them and it? Your people already know the answer. Do you?

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The Gut Check series runs every Tuesday. See every question so far, or start at the beginning with Nobody Meets a Standard They Can’t See.