As a leader, your job, your responsibility, your priority is not to manage nor accept the status quo. Your job, your responsibility, your priority is to personally exemplify continuous improvement and to create and maintain a culture that encourages and supports continuous improvement. That means a culture that encourages, accepts, supports and learns from mistakes.
In the chapter titled “Tip #5: Be Willing To Be Stupid” in The Little Book of Talent, author Daniel Coyle describes the great hockey player Wayne Gretzky occasionally “toppling over like a grade-schooler” during high intensity, very difficult practice sessions.
“Gretzky was determined to improve, to push the boundaries of the possible. The only way that happens is to build new connections in the brain—which means reaching, failing, and, yes, looking stupid.
Being willing to risk the emotional pain of making mistakes is absolutely essential, because reaching, failing, and reaching again is the only way your brain grows and forms new connections.”
How do the people inside and outside your organization describe the culture you have created? The culture you as the leader, accept, encourage, and endorse?
Coyle correctly writes, “Whatever the strategy, the goal is always the same: to encourage reaching, and to reinterpret mistakes so that they’re not verdicts, but information you use to navigate to the correct move.”
How do you and your leaders handle and interpret mistakes? Is it crystal clear within your organization that mistakes are not verdicts, but information to be used to learn and navigate to the correct decision or action?
Not so fast—ask those people within your organization who will tell you the truth. Most leaders and most organizations can improve dramatically in this area. And by doing so, everyone wins!
