Good Failures?

Notes by Howard Gardner

Tom Hoerr, the Head of the New City School in St. Louis, MO, has coined the term "Good Failures" to describe failures from which we learn and grow. In an article from September 2013, Hoerr describes his foundational framework for this term.

I am in support of this idea, though I am not sure that I would use the phrase "Good Failures." In my studies of leadership, I came across and fell in love with this remark by Jean Monnet, the creator of the European Common Market and the grandfather of the European Union: “I regard every defeat as an opportunity.”