Do you really learn from your mistakes?

April 30th, 2010

Tips for learning from mistakes
• Mistakes do not define your potential, so don’t take things personally when things go wrong.
• Be courageous and face up to a problem with a view to learn about it, no matter how painful.
• Blaming is quick and easy, but short lived and leads to long term problems.
• Understand that learning is a growth process and growing can be painful. But in the end it is necessary if you want to reach your full potential.
• Mistakes are only repeated by people who deny the opportunity to learn.

Me? I made a mistake?
Not many of us like to admit that we make mistakes, especially if they are made in a work situation. We’ve all done it. The problem is we’re growing up in this ever increasing culture of perfection. We find that organizations incentivize perfection and punish errors. It might sound right on the surface, but deep down it causes a lot of pain and long term paranoia. And for you the employee, instead of your focus being on how to improve and learn, it tends to get shifted towards the fear of screwing up!

Scared
There are so many people out there who are truly scared of making mistakes at work that they fall into an almost paralysis of potential. Instead of really growing in skill and ability, they reach a state where they don’t mess up, and are grateful just to be there, they stick with what they know and they stagnate. And managers can’t understand why people are not performing at a higher level. So, we’ve established that fear of screwing up can force people into a low risk taking pattern. But let’s face it, we’re still bound to make a mistake, even when we’re not taking risks. Learning from mistakes can be painful because it is an emotional experience.

The blame
It’s time for more honesty. How many of you have blamed something or someone else for a mistake you know was your fault? Don’t feel bad, we’ve all done it. We should do less of that and be brave enough to start seeing our mistakes as a place of learning instead. The worst kind of blame though is when we blame ourselves. That’s also a big learning killer.

The lucky break
Another area where learning tends to be shelved is when lucky breaks occur. You may find yourself in a tough situation and suddenly you’re rescued by someone or something, and your reaction is to cast the problems aside and forget them, literally cashing in on the good times. I know a guy who has recently seen some success after months of struggling with his business. His first response to his new found success was not to change anything about the way he did business, but rather to go out spend more cash. I hope he can sustain his success, but I fear there may be more troubles ahead.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 30th, 2010 at 5:18 am and is filed under Personal / Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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