Throughout our lives, we’re taught to fear failure and avoid it at all costs. This becomes especially true as we grow older and our failures have more real-world stakes than simply falling off your bike while learning to ride or losing a match with your school sports team.

As adults, failures can have life-altering consequences, especially if you launch a business endeavor that ends up falling short of the goals you’ve set. Though these consequences can seem overwhelming, it’s important to understand that setbacks are inevitable in life, and what makes the biggest difference is how you respond to them.

How Failing Forward Can Lead to Success in Entrepreneurial Leadership

The concept of “failing forward” is the idea that even a circumstance that could be considered to be a failure could end up moving your life and career in a positive direction.

If one endeavor doesn’t work out or a piece of your plan doesn’t pan out the way you expected, you’re now armed with knowledge and experience that you didn’t have before. This knowledge and experience could be the very thing that sets you on the ultimate path to success.

Many of the most successful CEOs and professionals in the entrepreneurial leadership space are embracing the concept of failing forward. This mindset encourages people at all stages of their business journey and career to shift their perspective on failure and use each setback as a lesson, rather than a completely negative circumstance.

Find a Mentor and Shift Your Mindset

For many people, a business leadership mentor can be the catalyst for greater success with their company. However, the efforts of great mentors can only be used to their full capacity when this crucial mindset shift takes place.

This shift to the belief in failing forward can free business professionals from the fear of failure and turn it into an opportunity to level up in their industry.

As a boy I can remember my mother saying “it isn’t failure if you learn a lesson.” That re-wired how my brain looked at both risk and failure. It taught me that life is a learning process. It is about learning a lesson and continuously improving. Today, it’s how I lead and model the way for those around me.