Exposing yourself to risk and failure can help push you up the career ladder. Just make sure someone's watching.
Learning to use mistakes well is an important leadership trait. In fact, looking at how an executive responds to failure can be more telling that assessing their success when weighing up a person's ability to take on the leadership mantle. Great leaders learn from their errors. They are quick to recognize when a mistake has been made and are able to efficiently assess what can be salvaged or gained from the fallout. In many cases, feedback is immediate for anyone astute enough to learn from it.
