15 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 292 — 2017 mentor me that became the key to turning my failure around. It turns out that having difficult conversations is something I could learn and could get better at with practice. I have worked on this aspect of my performance so consistently that I finally wrote a book about it with co-author Ann Darling—Effective Difficult Conversations: A Step-by- Step Guide. Without complete failure at the beginning of my career as a leader, I would not have been so dedicated to improving and eventually sharing how I have effective difficult conversations. © 2017 Catherine Soehner. This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. To cite this article: Gerald Beasley, Marwin Britto, Holly Ann Burt, Samuel “Scott” Hall, Amanda Rinehart, Lorelei Rutledge, Lis Pankl, and Catherine Soehner. “Vignettes on the Value of Failure.” Research Library Issues, no. 292 (2017): 10–15, https://doi.org/10.29242/rli.292.3.