Let Them Fail: The Leadership Power of Controlled Crashes

Every so often, a phrase takes over social media and spills into workplaces. Lately, it’s “The Let Them Theory”, popularised by Mel Robbins and her daughter Sawyer in their recent book.

The core idea is simple: stop trying to control what others do and focus on what you can control. It’s a mindset tool for reducing stress and building healthier relationships.

It’s gone viral. But as leaders, managers, and even parents, there’s a deeper, more practical interpretation we can take — one that goes beyond personal peace of mind and into the realm of capability building.

This is Let Them, reimagined for leadership.

Helicopter Parents and Over-Managed Teams

In parenting, we’ve all seen the “helicopter” approach — parents who hover, fix problems instantly, and smooth over every bump in their child’s path. The result? Often, these kids grow into anxious young adults who struggle to make decisions, recover from setbacks, or operate without constant reassurance.

“Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.” – Folk proverb

The same pattern shows up in management. Leaders who step in at the first sign of trouble might feel like they’re helping, but over time they create teams that:

• Struggle to take initiative

• Panic when things don’t go to plan

• Rely on management to solve every problem

Let Them Fail — On Purpose

Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone’s growth is to let them run into a controlled failure — even when you can see the impending crash.

Not out of malice. Not out of neglect. But because learning through small, survivable failures builds skills that can’t be taught any other way:

• Resilience – bouncing back from setbacks without losing confidence

• Ownership – knowing that the result was theirs, not yours

• Adaptability – learning to adjust course without waiting for permission

Fail Fast, Learn Faster

In agile and product management, we talk about “failing fast” to find the right solution sooner. The same applies to people.

If you shield someone — whether it’s your child or your team — from mistakes for too long, the first real setback they face will be far bigger and more damaging. But when you allow smaller, earlier failures in a safe environment, they learn to course-correct quickly — often before a small problem becomes a big one.

Over time, they become more confident, more decisive, and less reliant on you for every answer.

“A leader’s job is not to protect people from every mistake, but to ensure they are strong enough to recover from them.” – Simon Sinek

The Manager’s Role in Controlled Failure

Letting someone fail isn’t the same as letting them fall apart. It’s an active process:

1. Set the guardrails – Define the boundaries where risk is acceptable. Let them know where the “edges” are.

2. Choose the right moment – Let failures happen where the cost is recoverable, not where it puts the project, the team, or their career at serious risk.

3. Debrief, don’t rescue – After the fact, help them unpack what happened and what could be done differently next time.

4. Create psychological safety – Make sure the lesson is the focus, not the blame.

From Intervention to Independence

When you let people fail in controlled conditions, you’re really building a team (or raising a child) that:

• Needs less handholding

• Is more capable of self-correction

• Moves faster without constant management approval

And here’s the bonus — it gives you more bandwidth as a leader or parent, because you’re no longer the airbag for every potential collision.

The Long Game of Leadership

Whether you’re leading a product squad, managing a corporate team, or guiding your kids into adulthood, the principle is the same:

Your job isn’t to remove every obstacle. It’s to make sure your people have the strength and skill to climb over them themselves.

So next time you see someone heading toward a minor crash, ask yourself — is this a moment to intervene… or a moment to let them?

Final thought: The TikTok version of Let Them might be about personal serenity. The leadership version is about capability building. And in both parenting and management, letting go at the right moment can turn a potential failure into the foundation of future success.