Someone asked me the following question, “If you ever were to write a book on leadership, what would be the title?”
My response was immediate, “I would call it ‘1,001 Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them.’”
Here is what I meant by that answer…
In leadership, mistakes are inevitable. And yet the reality is that mistakes are very valuable. There are valuable because they can cost a lot; they can be painful (and usually are); they are memorable (pain is like that); and most importantly, because we can learn a lot from our mistakes.
So my point is this: most of what I have learned is the result of making mistakes and then learning valuable lessons from each one of them. As a result, most of what I “know” is the result of mistakes I have made!
In fact, as a consultant, I find that I am often able to assist clients by helping them to spot potential mistakes before they occur; I can usually recognize the signs based on my own experience (insert “my own mistake” here) and can help the client avoid discovering personally what I learned the hard way. As a result, we can accelerate the pace toward a productive solution through narrowing the scope of options by eliminating the ones that I know in advance are destined for the mistake pile.
Next week we will look at several other positive by-products of mistakes. Don’t get me wrong…mistakes are valuable, as long as we learn from them…
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