Informal Development: Learning From Mistakes
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Often people cite learning from trial and error as a key way in which they have acquired expertise and judgement. And while it is a common way to learn – it can be quite a painful way to learn! It’s therefore really important that you extract the maximum learning from each mistake – and do so in a way that builds your confidence, rather than undermines it.
Before we look at how to learn from your mistakes, let’s be clear on what a mistake is. At T&P we’d describe a mistake as “a decision that you’ve made that has an unexpected, negative result”. I think you’ll agree that pretty neatly sums it up?
So, how can we best learn from our mistakes?
- Be clear about the exact nature of the mistake. Take the time to analyse the mistake rather than rationalise it and move on fast. Be genuinely honest. If it helps, work on the basis you don’t have to share your analysis with anybody – so you can be completely honest with yourself. What was the root cause of the mistake? The decision itself – or what you did or didn’t do to prepare for the decision? What was the negative result? Why was it unexpected? Once you’re really clear about the mistake, you can start to learn from it.
- Remember that it could have been worse. Consider what would have happened if the mistake hadn’t been spotted. (This can be helpful if you are prone to beating yourself up about the things you do wrong.) Allow yourself to imagine the full extent of the mistake had it been allowed to continue – the “worst case scenario” if it had been allowed to run its course? Now think about what did actually happen, when the mistake was spotted (maybe you even spotted it yourself before anyone else did!). Contrast the two – invariably you’ve prevented a lot of problems. This can be a helpful technique to start to gain some perspective on the mistake.
- Would you have done anything differently? It’s unlikely that you go out of your way to make bad decisions – we all try to do our best in each situation, based on the information at hand. So think back to when you made the decision that resulted in the unexpected negative result – if you were in the exact same situation again, with the same information, would you make a different decision? Or did you make a good decision based on the information available at the time? You may well find that there was information you didn’t have, or something happened that you couldn’t predict or control that led to the negative consequences. Now maybe there is learning from this – for example about the questions you need to ask – but equally, maybe you can give yourself a break and acknowledge that you did a decent job based on what you knew at the time.
- What are some of the positives that you can take away? Now you’ve started to get some perspective on the mistake, here’s a hard one. List 5 good things about the situation you now find yourself in. Perhaps you have acquired more judgement – you’re safe from ever making that mistake again. Perhaps you’ve learned new skills – questions to ask, for example. Perhaps you will now have to work hard to fix the mistake and repair relationships – but once you’ve done that well, you’ll have a stronger relationship with your internal department or external client – because they know they can trust you to be honest and genuine about mistakes, and to pull out all the stops to fix the situation and resolve the problem. Don’t move on until you have identified 5 positives you can take from the mistake.
- What will you do differently next time? This is a far more classic question but should be the thing you consider last. Codify your learning – exactly how will you change your approach the next time you need to deal with this kind of situation?
Success is a very pleasant way of learning, but the grittiest, most useful way of learning is via the things that don’t go well. The best lessons in life come from the mistakes we make. Here’s a brilliant example of that in action:
“A man working for IBM made a serious mistake which cost the company half a million pounds. Summoned to the office of the CEO he burst out “I know what you’re calling me here for – you’re going to fire me aren’t you?” The CEO replied, “Fire you? I’ve just spent half a million dollars training you!”
Think differently about your mistakes.
Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn!
There is no downside.