The Quest for Making High-Quality Mistakes
By Daniel Robin
A friend recently reminded me that it isn’t our mistakes that define our character, pilule it’s what we do in response to them that matters. A so-called “high-quality” mistake is one that leads to new awareness, ampoule an important discovery, or increased resolve to do better from this moment forward. Take no prisoners on island “oops, I messed up,” including and especially yourself. Some of us are easy to emotionally hijack. Better to call it a vacation — vacate for awhile — then come back stronger.
A major mistake may lead you to “pivot” — in Lean Startup vocabulary — or a more minor failure would likely result in deepened experience, perseverance of goals, but perhaps with a new hypothesis to test (iteration). The important thing is to not failure get under your skin. Pretend you were just experimenting and your research data has come in.
What could have called you down (feeling anger or defeat) instead calls up your will and creativity, seeing new possibilities, generating something helpful and hopeful. It could take awhile, depending on your resilience. What would help shake it off?
With a light touch, our failures can become more inspiring and motivating than “I’ll never do that again” … continuous personal improvement asks “What good can possibly come from this?”
Repeat Until Learned
If you’d be willing to take 100% responsibility for your speaking and listening, you’re guaranteed to learn a lot from all the results you get in communication with others. Every conversation will teach you something … giving you reasons to find the useful nuggets of truth within even the most disastrous circumstances.
Here are four practical strategies to mine the value from any “oops, stepped in it” situation:
Tips for Learning
- Talk to yourself compassionately: When was the last time you had a constructive tete-a-tete with yourself? You can always talk to outsiders later; inside your own head there are often answers to some of the toughest challenges life can throw at us. The key is to ask the right questions.
A simple way of capturing the “feed-forward” is a Likes / Dislikes Log. Here you can sort out and “debrief” unexpected results immediately. Draw a vertical line down the center of a piece of paper, label the left column “liked” and the right “disliked,” listing observations accordingly. Once you’ve recorded at least a few items in both columns, take a look at the stuff on the right and ask yourself:
- What led up to this?
- What do I want instead? What would that do for me?
- How might I get that result over to the left column some time in the future?
Remember to notice and appreciate yourself for the stuff on the left.
- Talk to someone who listens. Satisfy your “yearning for learning” by finding someone who can use a reflective coaching approach. You might even ask them “Would you be willing to take a moment to listen and reflect back a surprising result I got?” Reflective coaching involves listening and reflecting your present “what is” to help you find the success within what may feel like failure. The true mark of an effective coach is that they hold back on giving advice, frame powerful questions, and facilitate clarifying your goal.
- Bring to closure: Compare your intention to your actual results and commit to staying in the conversation until the feedback (learning) becomes known. Don’t give up or give in to being a “victim of circumstance.” Don’t hide out from “what is,” but instead find something you can use, and move on.
If you’re getting stuck, ask yourself a different question! For example, instead of “Why did I ignore my gut feel and follow my mind-talk?!” try “What can I do to make sure I use my intuition more fully from here on out?”
- Constructive complaining and strategic abandonment: Two parts: (1) Give yourself permission to get fully into complaint mode (also known as venting or ventilating) about the issue(s). Who can you blame (beside yourself, of course)? Whose fault is it, anyway? Enjoy a brief fantasy about taking it out on someone else, etc. Sometimes just going into what may have seemed taboo is all you need t to collect up your emotional truth. But before you change the subject: (2) Select and agree to handle one thing that needs to change or select one thing that you’ll abandon completely.
Resilient leaders find their way through any “unexpected results” – formerly known as mistakes – to learn and lead another day. Remember, an optimist is just a person who hasn’t found a good reason not to succeed.
We’d like to hear your thoughts about how mistakes have turned into important sources of learning in your work life. What myths — especially ones held about yourself — have you busted in the process?
