Success breeds success.
There’s nothing like a culture of success to set you up for future high standards, goals, and achievements. A consistently successful ensemble is more likely to be excellent next year. A great show yesterday sets you up for an even better show today.
What does failure breed?
It doesn’t lead inevitably to more failures.
But it does lead to many other things:
- A more tenuous connection to past excellence.
- A tendency to be more nervous the next time.
- A reckoning with whatever led to the failure.
- An opportunity to grow and improve.
- A high likelihood of finger-pointing.
Success has a freeway leading away from it – one brightly lit path forward. Failure has a multitude of roads leading away from it. It’s up to leaders to choose what path to take.