LEADERS DON’T RUN FROM MISTAKES
When I was a young leader, I dreaded making mistakes. If I made one about which I was embarrassed, I might try to hide it from my teammates. Sometimes I might even try to hide it from myself by submerging it within my brain. Other times, I hate to admit, I would try to shift responsibility for the mistake to someone else.
I was young, inexperienced and naive. I thought mistakes were something to hide. I thought they were something to run away from. I thought they showed signs of weakness in my management and leadership.
Boy, was I wrong!
Now that I am doing leadership coaching and serving on multiple non-profit boards, I observe similar behaviors in many well-intentioned young leaders. They have been trained – or brainwashed – to believe that mistakes are a reflection of their own:
-Ineffective management
-Incompetence
-Erroneous thinking
Sometimes this may be true. However, if leaders stop there and focus on bemoaning their or team member mistakes, they lose sight of the truly big picture.
As we develop our leadership skills, hopefully we learn that mistakes are often the most valuable learning tools we have at our disposal – but only if we recognize them as that.
I was reminded of this valuable lesson during recently several times:
-I read a quote from the Navy football coach Brian Newberry after his previously undefeated team had been dismantled by Notre Dame, 51-14, fumbling the football five times and throwing one interception after having no turnovers in their previous five games.. He said: “If we do not learn from our mistakes, then they will have been for naught.”
-Then I listened to the “Wisdom From The Top” podcast with Guy Raz. Raz’s guest on his most recent episode was General Stanley McChrystal. The title of the episode was “Better Leadership via Failure.” I highly recommend making time to listen to it.
-Finally, I am reminded of this message every day when I walk into my home office. I love leadership sayings that resonate with me and I have little signs or reminders around my home. Several weeks ago, when my wife and I were vacationing in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, I purchased a new one that is starting at me as I write this: “Remember there are no mistakes, only lessons.”
When you or a teammate make a mistake, whether a large or small one, you have a choice about how you wish to react: Do you cast blame, on yourself or your teammate, or do you express regret for the mistake and then attempt to learn – and teach – lessons based on what has transpired.
One effective strategy for learning from mistakes is building into your culture the understanding that everyone does make mistakes and mistakes are part of evolving and growing in our careers – as team members, as managers and as leaders.
If our teammates are not fearful of making mistakes, they will make less of them. We can role model that attitude and behavior. And after we build that attitude into our office or organization culture, we can teach our colleagues to always ask four critical questions:
-What happened?
-Why did it happen?
-What can we do to prevent it from happening again?
-What did we – as a team or as manager and direct report – learn from this?
Remember that mistakes happen. They are inevitable. As leaders we must train our teammates to expect them and to be honest about them.
Simultaneously, it is incumbent upon us to teach our team members that how we respond to mistakes is critical to our effectiveness at work. Many years ago Stephen Covey opined that “It is not what happens to us that hurts us the most. Rather, it is how we respond to what happens to us.”
The same message applies to the mistakes we or our colleagues make. How do we respond? What can we learn? What lesson sits behind the mistake? Take advantage of mistakes They can be wonderful learning tools.
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