Lessons in Leadership: Keep Taking the Shot

Lessons in Leadership: Keep Taking the Shot

Pam Forrester
SVP Division Operations
First American Mortgage Solutions and the Docutech brand

As I watched Spain and Argentina in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final, I saw a powerful lesson about the difference between remaining in contention and actively pursuing a result.

Argentina reached the end of 90 minutes without attempting a single shot. Spain, meanwhile, continued pressing, testing the defense and looking for an opening. Yet when regulation ended, the score was still 0-0.

Spain did not stop.

In the 106th minute, substitute Ferran Torres finally broke through and finished the match with 20 attempts, scoring the only goal in a 1–0 victory. After shot after shot had been stopped, redirected or sent wide, one finally found the back of the net, and Spain lifted the World Cup.

To me, that match offers a fitting leadership metaphor: You cannot score if you do not try.

Defensive play may keep a team in the match. Planning, caution and preparation may protect an organization from unnecessary risk. But I do not believe a soccer team or a business can achieve meaningful results by remaining on the defensive indefinitely. At some point, someone must take the shot.

Leadership in a Fast-Changing World

I believe we are operating in one of the fastest-changing work environments many of us have ever experienced. Technology is advancing. Customer expectations are evolving. Organizations are reassessing how work gets done, which investments matter most, and what skills they will need next.

For those of us in mortgage lending and servicing, that sense of constant change is especially familiar. As leaders, we’re being asked to improve efficiency, manage risk, respond to changing conditions, and guide our people through transformation -- often at the same time.

I’ve learned that people do not respond to that environment all in the same way. Some are energized by change and easily embrace a new direction. Others find change unsettling, particularly when it affects a familiar role, process or expectation.

My job as a leader is not to insist that everyone feel the same way about change. It is to provide enough clarity, support and momentum for people to move through it.

That requires flexibility. It also requires curiosity. As leaders, we must be willing to question our assumptions, seek perspectives we may not have considered and adjust their approach when circumstances change.

I don’t believe leadership is about having every answer before the match begins. It is about helping people read the field, understand what is changing and decide what to do next.

I have experienced that process personally. During my career, I have reinvented myself several times and found success in each new chapter. I realized that reinvention did not invalidate what came before it. Instead, each transition gave me an opportunity to apply my experience in a different way.

That is an important distinction for me. Changing direction is not necessarily an admission that the previous direction was wrong. Sometimes it means the environment has changed, and I am willing to change with it.

Take the Shot—and Be Ready to Adjust

Spain did not win the World Cup final by waiting for a perfect, risk-free opportunity. The team kept creating chances, studying Argentina’s defense and changing the point of attack until an opening appeared.

That is how I think about leadership. Taking a shot might mean piloting a new process rather than debating it for another six months. It might mean making a recommendation, proposing an unconventional solution, asking for additional resources or raising a concern others have been reluctant to acknowledge.

I have also learned that taking a shot can mean ending an initiative that is consuming resources without producing enough value.

A team that repeatedly sends the ball forward without changing its approach is not necessarily being persistent. It may simply be repeating an ineffective tactic. The best teams change the angle, involve different players and create a new path toward the goal.

I see the same principle in leadership. Staying busy is not the same as making progress. Staying in the game is not enough. As leaders, we must continue creating meaningful opportunities to score.

Change Requires Difficult Conversations

In my experience, change tends to bring unresolved issues to the surface.

A new process may reveal a performance problem. A strategic shift may expose competing priorities. A tighter market may force choices about staffing, spending or responsibilities. A previously successful employee may struggle when the role changes around them.

I’ve learned that these moments require difficult conversations, and avoiding them rarely makes the underlying problem disappear.

In fact, avoidance often allows a manageable issue to grow into a larger one. Expectations remain unclear. Frustration increases. Other team members notice that the issue is not being addressed. By the time the conversation finally happens, the stakes may be much higher.

I try to combine honesty with empathy. Honesty without empathy can become unnecessarily harsh. Empathy without honesty can become avoidance. In my view, a productive conversation needs both: a clear description of what is happening, recognition of the people affected and agreement about what must happen next.

Fail Fast, Learn and Move On

I know I will not get every decision right. That is not a failure of leadership; it is part of leadership.

The phrase “fail fast” is sometimes mistaken for permission to be careless. My interpretation is more disciplined: Test an idea. Pay attention to what the evidence is telling you. Recognize when the approach is not working. Capture the lesson and apply it quickly.

To me, failing fast is really about shortening the distance between learning and adaptation.

James Dyson provides a familiar example. It took five years and 5,127 prototypes to develop his first successful bagless vacuum cleaner. The lesson is not simply that he was willing to fail thousands of times. It is that the design process was iterative: each prototype helped inform and improve the next one.

That is persistence with a purpose.

I see an important difference between continuing to pursue a goal and continuing to use the same ineffective method. Repeating an approach after the evidence says it is not working is not resilience. It is resistance to learning.

In many organizations, complacency can ultimately be more damaging than a well-managed failure. Failure provides information. Complacency prevents an organization from seeking new information at all.

A missed shot can teach me something about the goalkeeper, the defense or the angle I chose. A shot I never take teaches me very little.

Know What You Cannot Fix

I have also learned a more difficult leadership lesson: Some things cannot be fixed -- or cannot be fixed by me alone.

Like many leaders, I naturally want to solve problems. That instinct is one of the qualities that helped me become a leader. But it can also create the false belief that determination alone should be enough to resolve every situation.

As leaders, we have limited time, authority, attention and resources. Some challenges require expertise we do not possess. Some decisions belong to someone else. Some circumstances are outside our organization’s control. And some initiatives have simply reached the point where additional effort is unlikely to change the outcome.

I do not see recognizing those limits as giving up. I see it as making a responsible decision about where leadership energy can have the greatest effect.

For me, that may mean asking for help sooner. It may mean escalating an issue, changing the scope, transferring responsibility or stopping an initiative. It may mean accepting an external constraint and redirecting the team toward a goal we can influence.

A player cannot move the goalposts or rewrite the rules in the middle of the match. The player can only read the field that exists and make the best possible decision within it. That’s what I try to do as a leader.

Persistence Creates Possibility

Abraham Lincoln is often presented as someone who simply failed repeatedly until he became president. The real story is more nuanced, and more useful.

Lincoln lost his first campaign for the Illinois General Assembly in 1832 but won a seat two years later. He subsequently served in the state legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives. He also made two unsuccessful bids for the U.S. Senate, in 1855 and 1858, before winning the presidency in 1860. His career included meaningful victories as well as painful defeats.

To me, the lesson is not that Lincoln failed at everything until one effort suddenly succeeded. It is that individual setbacks did not become permanent judgments about what he could accomplish.

That is also why my experience with reinvention is relevant. Persistence does not always mean continuing along the same career path, pursuing the same role or working in the same way. Sometimes persistence means remaining committed to growth while changing the form that growth takes.

Dyson changed the prototype. Lincoln continued developing his public voice and political position. I moved into new chapters and found new ways to apply what I had learned.

In each case, the setback became useful because it produced learning.

Keep Taking the Next Shot

The leadership lesson I return to is straightforward, but it is not always easy to practice.

I try to adapt when the environment changes, help others move through uncertainty, and address difficult issues before they become larger ones. I test ideas and learn quickly. I do not confuse persistence with repeating a method that no longer works. I accept what I cannot control, and direct my energy toward what I can influence.

Above all, I keep taking thoughtful action.

To me, the World Cup final showed that defense can preserve an opportunity, but only action can convert that opportunity into a result. Spain took shot after shot before one finally changed the score.

I know the next shot will not always go in. It may be saved, go wide, or reveal that the team needs a different angle. I don’t believe great leaders simply take the same shot again. They read the field, learn from each attempt, adjust, and have the courage to take the next one.

What important shot have you (or your organization) been hesitating to take?