Sometimes it is in making the mistakes that makes us a stronger person and leader. Learning make take different forms and making mistakes is definitely one form you can’t miss when it happens. The question lies on what have you learned and what are you willing to do to correct it?
Sharing with you something I read that might help you when everything seems to be not working according to plan.
http://learnthis.ca/2009/01/leadership-accepting-mistakes/
Learn From Your Mistakes
Mistakes are unavoidable in life and leaders certainly make their share of them. Any time you look to break new ground or technologies or whatever it is you are leading, you open up many new avenues for mistakes and they are inevitable with change. You can’t have one without the other and so learning to use mistakes well is an important leadership trait. The first point about mistakes is that a great leader learns from their own mistakes. They know when they make it and will quickly look at what can be salvaged or gained from the mistake as to avoid it in the future or to streamline some action or process to improve it next time. This makes no difference if the mistake is big or small, there is always something to be learned from it and mistakes offer an immediate piece of feedback to anyone who is wise enough to learn from it.
Mistakes are the usual bridge between inexperience and wisdom. (Phyllis Therous)
Another point of learning from mistakes is to also be a leader in this area and actually admit your own mistakes. Admit when you were wrong, and emphasize what you have learned from it and what your next steps are work around that mishap. If you encourage and set the example of owning up to mistakes quickly and working past them, you can quickly inspire your followers to do the same and look at the value of the mistakes instead of hiding from them.
Don’t Dwell on Mistakes, Look Beyond and Move Forward
Learning from mistakes clearly needs some analysis of the mistake itself to gain value from it. This is certainly true and there are a few steps to use to analyze a mistake quickly and efficiently:
Accept that it happened and can’t be changed.
Know there is always something to learn from it.
Look to understand it and the factors that caused it.
How could you have recognized the mistake earlier?
How can you avoid the mistake next time?
Are there similar things that might have a related mistake to avoid?
What has changed now to ensure that mistake doesn’t reoccur?
Who else should know about this and learn from it?
So, once you have done this initial analysis of the mistake, it’s time to move on. No matter how big the mistake was, just let it go and move on. Make the changes needed to avoid it next time and make sure that everything you spend time on now is in accepting the mistake with the future in mind, not the past. Put your focus on what you can do for next time, not what you should have done. Ask what individuals are doing now or in the future to ensure it won’t repeat itself and remind people to think of ways to avoid the similar event. All these actions will move you forward and enable you to quickly adapt and deal with similar situations in the future even better and hopefully you will never make the same mistake again!
I do not believe that in mistakes, HISTORY WILL or SHOULD REPEAT ITSELF. There will always be ways for us to avoid the mistake we have done in the past. Again, the question is our ability to accept the mistake, correct it and avoid getting into the same pit.
When you focus on the improvements and lessons learned from a mistake you reinforce the ability to make mistakes part of the process and something that is accepted as long as it improves things. There is no value in worrying about the mistake or dwelling on it after it is done. So, move on!
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
