Failure Doesn’t Teach. Coaching Does.

Doug Knuth
Athletic Director | Doctoral Student in Strategic Leadership | Executive Coach

We’ve all heard the mantra: failure is a great teacher. In business, we often hear, “fail fast, fail often.” In sports, the great Michal Jordan was famous for saying, "I failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” My favorite is Thomas Edison's, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

But a recent article from the Kellogg School of Management challenges that idea—arguing that we’ve begun to romanticize failure without fully understanding what actually drives growth (Kellogg Insight, Why We Shouldn’t Romanticize Failure).

Early in my career as an athletic director, I made a hiring decision that didn’t work.

On paper, the candidate checked every box. In reality, the fit wasn’t there. Relationships broke down quickly, collaboration suffered, and the individual ultimately flamed out—not because of competence, but because of cultural misalignment. People simply didn’t want to work with him.

At first, I took the wrong lesson. I questioned my instincts and judgment. Left there, that failure would have made me more cautious—and possibly less effective—as a leader.

But through reflection and candid coaching conversations, the real issue became clear: it wasn’t instinct, it was process. I hadn’t gone deep enough on cultural alignment, trust-building, and how the individual operated within a team. That insight changed how I hire to this day.

That experience reinforced something important:

Failure doesn’t teach. It only presents the opportunity to learn.

And most people don’t capitalize on that opportunity.

Failure is emotional, ambiguous, and easy to misinterpret. Without structure, it often leads to the wrong conclusions—or no meaningful change at all.

Coaching is what changes that.

Coaching turns experience into insight and insight into action. It helps leaders accurately diagnose what happened, manage the emotional response, and translate lessons into specific behavioral adjustments. This aligns with established coaching frameworks that emphasize intentional development and measurable change (see Coaching That Counts; Professional Coaching).

In high-performance environments, that distinction is everything.

Leaders don’t need more failure. They need better ways to process it.

Rather than saying, “It’s okay to fail—just learn from it,” we should be asking:

Do we have the coaching and structure in place to ensure learning actually happens?

Because without that, failure is just failure.

With it, failure becomes fuel for growth.

As I continue my doctoral research and expand my executive coaching work, this idea sits at the center of my philosophy:

Failure doesn’t teach. Coaching does.

Even the world's best athletes and leaders understand this - we all need coaches to help us succeed.

References:

Anderson, D. & Anderson, L. Coaching That Counts

English, L., Sabatine, J., & Brownell, P. Professional Coaching: Principles and Practice

Kellogg Insight. Why We Shouldn’t Romanticize Failure. Kellogg School of Management