tionally charged and did not clarify my true thoughts.” He
explained he had been deeply moved by the victim’s situation—
doctors were saying she’d been so traumatized that she would be
a psychological invalid for the rest of her life. He also pointed out
that he realized any penalty “should be administered fairly, objec-
tively, equally and swiftly to all, without regard to race or wealth.”
But again, Billy didn’t break a confidence that could have shed
even more light on the statement. Only thirty years after the
event did one of Billy’s staff reveal where the unguarded thought
originated.
“You know how that happened?” said one staffer who had
traveled to South Africa with Billy. “He had ridden from the hotel
to the press conference in a car with a black Anglican minister,
and the conversation turned to how they could handle the prob-
lems of crime and punishment, and the minister said, ‘Well, I
believe in castration.’ So that vivid conversation was on Billy’s
mind, and when the question in the press conference led to the
mention of rape, he just blurted out what they’d talked about in
the car. Now Billy could have blamed someone else for suggest-
ing the idea, but he didn’t. He took the heat for it.”
In the sweaty arena of leadership, failures and gaffes are
inevitable. A slip of the tongue, the wrong person hired for a key
position, a regrettable decision—Billy experienced all of these and
more. He knew how to take the heat and admit mistakes.
He was a fast learner, and he learned especially quickly from
failures.
LEADERSHIP
LESSONS | Failure
Applying the Principles
How can we learn from failures and apply the lessons to new chal-
lenges? Failures can lead eventually to great accomplishment, but
of course they can also stop a leader cold and destroy his or her
effectiveness. Much of it depends on whether or not we have, at
Learning from Failure