We are in a series discussing and learning from the recently published book titled Great Leaders Grow: Becoming a Leader for Life. The book, authored by Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller is available wherever best selling books are sold. The book is directly applicable to any person who desires to become a more effective healthcare leader.
As a part of the mentoring process, Blake and his mentor, Debbie, discussed Blake’s strengths and passions. Following a fascinating discussion, they listed and agreed on many of Blake’s most dominant strengths and passions.
Blake then asked, “what does it all mean?”
Debbie responds saying, “I’m not a career counselor, but to me, it looks like you can do a lot of different things.” Blake’s immediate response was, “that’s what I was afraid of. What if I make a bad choice?”
Debbie’s response was perfect, honest, accurate and penetrating. Debbie simply said, “you will.”
“Excuse me?” If Blake had not been fully alert and fully engaged, he was now.
Debbie continued, “we all make mistakes and we do our best to learn from them. That’s one of the things leaders do extremely well.”
This discussion is a great teaching moment and principal for every leader, every team member, every employee, and every organization.
Here is one very effective way to not only make the point, but also to reinforce the expectations and culture within your organization.
The CEO asks every team leader throughout the entire organization (no exceptions), to bring their team together for a minimum one-hour discussion regarding individual and collective mistakes they have made, and most important, what they learned and are doing about each of those mistakes. The meeting is to be positive, uplifting, even inspirational, with complete focus on the following:
We all make mistakes! The question is, are we maximizing the learning opportunities from our individual and collective mistakes? Are we most effectively applying that learning to improve personally, professionally and organizationally?
There are a million ways the results and the stories from these discussions could be positively and proactively used throughout the entire organization in order to reinforce culture and expectations.
Every CEO, every leader, every team member, every employee, and every organization should be frequently asking and answering this critical question:
We all make mistakes! The question is, are we maximizing the learning opportunities from our individual and collective mistakes? Are we most effectively applying that learning to improve personally, professionally and organizationally?
