Darth Vader on Leadership – Episode 2

Bob FranquizLeadership

Mistakes. Everyone makes them. The issue that will affect your ability to lead is, “How do you handle it when those around you make mistakes?” Let’s look at Darth Vader’s leadership on staff mistakes. In The Empire Strikes Back, Captain Needa has made a critical error in allowing the Millennium Falcon to escape. He apologizes to the dark lord of the Sith and Darth Vader chokes him to death and says, “Apology accepted, Captain Needa.” While we probably don’t choke people to death when they make mistakes, let’s be honest, we probably want to. No one likes mistakes, but they are going to happen. We are all going to screw things up at some point in time. That’s just a fact of life. But a truly great leader is one that can take a failure and make it an opportunity for teaching and training. If you decide to take that moment and turn it into a lesson, we’ll gain an ally for the long haul. But we will never build trust with our teams if we humiliate them publicly and ‘choke them’ through our words and reactions. The truth is if our team members are making mistakes, it means they’re doing something. And I’d rather have active team members making mistakes than perfect benchwarmers any day!