Failure

I read books about leadership, most of them geared toward leadership of large organizations.  The topic of failure comes up a lot in these books.  Some employers want to know if the candidate has failed to see how he/she dealt with it.  Failure is framed as a good thing. Failure happens because a person takes risks.  Failure teaches.

Sure. There's a lot of truth there.  Failure is inevitable, so we might as well have a positive frame for it.  But I'd just as soon not fail in the first place.  I wonder if some failure is due to imprudence, not just the inevitability of failure. In reframing failure, let's not treat it like a high value. 

So I think, what are my big failures?  I've never lost a million dollars in a big business deal.  My failures are all little in comparison.  The succumbing to temptations, the hasty words, the shortcuts that pay back in spades.  No, these are not little, and they are failures.   They affect people.