Coaching creates evolution. When I coach and consult with top leaders from various industries, I continually remind them that honing leadership competencies and styles takes time. There's a repeated practice and a discipline required to sustain gifted leadership and inspire people to keep following your capable footsteps. Being a leader with consciousness and consistency requires steadfast commitment. This by no means implies perfection. We live in an increasingly complex and demanding world, and none of us can be all things to all people. In fact, very few of us can maintain a substantive presence for each and every thing in which we're already involved. This brings us back to commitment. Most leaders—or at least the ones I have the privilege of knowing—live their lives from a place of integral commitment. You may read these words and think I'm saying that the leaders I know make conscious commitments to people and projects and never, ever fall short of coming through. Actually, it's quite the opposite. The more commitments people make—again from that place of wholeness, lacking nothing—the more likely it is that they will fall short from time to time. It is the commitment to learn from the fall that reflects a veritable leader, one to be emulated.

Failing to honor a commitment, making mistakes both large and small, and being less than stellar in one's performance are precisely the opportunities that great leaders celebrate. The learning and next steps are what ultimately define both the person and the ensuing situation. For example, I am working with a client, (we'll call him Len), who inherited a VP on his Senior Team (Mandy) that he describes as aggressive and vulgar. He recognizes that Mandy is well liked by her direct reports and has a brilliant mind when it comes to designing marketing strategy. In our work together, Len has been able to identify clear distinctions between Mandy's excellent performance and his personal feelings for her. With this established, Len made the commitment to support and develop Mandy with the same dedication he gives to other members of the Senior Management Team. Over the next 6 months, Len identified at least three behaviors that fell short of his commitment to support Mandy. Each time he noticed and admitted his negative behavior, he initially felt frustrated, self-critical, or disappointed. Subsequently, he would resolve again to improve his own response to Mandy, and recognize the unmistakable value she brought to the company.

Over time and with intentional practice, Len finally had a breakthrough. One day, he was in a Senior Management meeting, and Mandy was presenting the vision for marketing their newest product. In her delivery, Mandy used a phrase Len had heard her use countless times before, only this time, he remembered where he had heard that phrase for the very first time. He was catapulted back to a time 8 years ago when his career was unfolding extraordinarily well, and his own leader and beloved mentor suddenly died. Days later, at the ceremony honoring this great leader, Len overheard a conversation about this man that was diminutive and disrespectful and used the same phrase he heard so often from Mandy. Once Len made the connection, he was able to make the distinction between his old, unresolved feelings about the loss of his much-loved mentor, and those he had towards Mandy, a contributing member of his team. Len's maturity enabled him to experience Mandy in a new light. His support and development of her as a valued member of the team is now up to his high standards of leadership. His integral commitment was at the foundation of his success. And too, it was his falling short of that commitment that enabled him to follow the loose ends that challenged him, and not only achieve his goal with Mandy, but also complete a powerful chapter in his own development as a noble leader.

Commitment, quite naturally, ebbs and flows. We must embrace the times we fall every bit as much as we honor times of undeniable success. Only in our commitment to understand the times we fall can we expect to maintain the competence to lead well, and develop our staff with the attentive and careful dedication they deserve.