President Paul Kagame and First Lady Jeannette Kagame each made speeches last week in which they were quoted as promoting accountability, unity, peace and sustainable development and criticizing fearfulness, rigidity, mediocrity and selfishness. No one would argue that each item on this list is either an essential skill or goal for current and future leaders to aim for or a human shortcoming for them to avoid. However, there was one particular comment from President Kagame that could be open to interpretation: “In other [developed] countries, there is limited room for mistakes and you are held accountable for the things you are meant to do.” It is definitely true that one of the key tenets of Accountable Leadership in many countries is “transparency”, meaning that every action is scrutinized, there is little margin for error and leaders need to own up to and correct mistakes. At the same time, errors and even failure have had a huge impact on economic and industrial development in many countries as well. For example, Thomas Edison, who invented the precursors of the modern-day light bulb, movie camera and record players, once said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Indian yogi Paramahansa Yogananda goes one step further: “The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success”. This is particular important for two facets of economic and industrial development that are crucial for an ambitious, growing country like Rwanda and its leaders: entrepreneurialism and innovation. In Latona’s 2019 list of the world’s most entrepreneurial nations - Chile took the top spot with a total score of 76/100, largely due to achieving the maximum 40/40 for innovation. Rwanda is not included in the 48 countries that comprised the research but Angola was and came out as the top African nation, ranking joint sixth with the USA at 62/100. One of the keys to Angola’s success was the fact that it has the lowest “fear of failure” of any country. What this means for individual leaders is that they have to be ready to make mistakes and fail sometimes and even welcome the natural fear of fallibility as part of a necessary and productive process: “Every time your fear is invited up, every time you recognize it and smile at it, your fear will lose some of its strength,” according to the Vietnamese Buddhist priest Thich Nhat Hanh. In some cases, the fear of mistakes or failure is not even valid, says one HR manager, adding that FEAR can just be an acronym for “Fantasised Experience Appearing Real” or “False Evidence Appearing Real”. And even if the fear is justified, then leaders can first consider the consequences of allowing it to dominate them and not do something that could have been beneficial for themselves or others. “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will,” says Egyptian-American writer, Suzy Kassem. Instead Leaders can turn to the modern Japanese martial art of Aikido for inspiration and use the fear’s own momentum to create something more positive in the form of energy, focus and creativity. For example, a leader may have made a disastrous public presentation early in his career and has now been asked to make a keynote speech to 500 people at a conference. Instead of fearing another failure, he can embrace the challenge, research the content, practice the delivery, harness the adrenalin coursing through his body before speaking and then enjoy the experience, knowing that he has done the best he can and that there was probably no one in the audience who would have wanted to speak in front of that many people. So leaders need to remember two crucial points about failure and fear. It is inevitable that leaders will make mistakes or fail once in a while. What is important is what they learn from it and how they respond to it and act in future: “Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something” says Morihei Ueshiba, who invented Aikido. Likewise, there is nothing wrong with the natural fear that all humans feel once in a while: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear,” said South African leader Nelson Mandela. And on a more personal level, there is another reason why we should all be tolerant of mistakes and failure. According to a well-known Rwandan proverb: “If we remember the quarrels and mistakes of yesterday, we will never have someone to party together with us.” The views expressed in this article are entirely those of the writer who can be reached directly at: jeremy@jeremysolomons.com
