Being a business leader can sometimes be draining. You not only have to keep yourself motivated, but also ensure your team stays fully engaged. Further, overseeing all the work and striving never to miss—or make—a mistake is an intimidating mandate. With all the demands on a leader’s time and energy, it’s no wonder that everyone stumbles sometimes.
No matter the type or magnitude of a misstep, it’s important to forgive yourself and learn from the experience to grow. Below, 14 members of Forbes Coaches Council share their own strategies for learning from a mistake and turning it into motivation for future success.
1. Get As Much Feedback As Possible
Most of us recognize that failure provides the opportunity to learn. But leaders miss the opportunity if they don’t get feedback. When failures or mistakes happen, engage the people who interacted with the event and get feedback. Learn what went wrong from other people’s perspectives. Ask what they think you could have done differently. Not only will you learn, but they will feel valued too! - Ryan James Miller
2. Use After-Action Reviews
After-action reviews are a great way to capture lessons learned and help the organization successfully memorize practices so that they can be replicated in the future. It is important to create a trust-based environment that welcomes a critical yet constructive critique of the mistakes and missteps related to the initiative, as well as one that applauds and recognizes the successes and best practices. - Marvin Chambers, Built To Last Solutions, LLC (Marvin Chambers Coaching)
3. Cultivate A Growth Mindset
If something doesn’t go according to plan, it’s a chance to understand why. Every mistake is an opportunity to evolve, grow and get stronger, smarter, faster or better. People lose their way not because of challenge, but because of their thinking about challenge. They assign a “difficult” label to challenge. To avoid this, business leaders should cultivate a growth mindset within their teams. - Karen Kissane, Karen Kissane Coaching, The Smart Woman’s Business Hub
4. Don’t Be Afraid Of Perceptions
Be vulnerable and open to acknowledging that the failed project happened, and look for the learning. Business leaders always fear being judged or being looked down on if they fail at something. But teams and people are more accepting if the business leaders embrace the failure instead of diverting the failure away. So acknowledge, embrace and celebrate it. Then get back to work. - KarFei Cheah, Mindvalley
5. Fail Forward
Do not be afraid to fail. Failed projects or mistakes are a great segue into much-needed change. Debrief the project and mistake. Figure out the places where something went wrong. Ask questions. Where did you not have enough information? Did you have the right people involved? When you seek to learn from everything that went right and wrong, it will make the next time so much more successful. - Amy Modglin, Modglin Leadership Solutions
6. Expose The Failure To Show You Have Changed
Instead of hiding a flaw, why not trumpet it loudly? If you failed in an area and can show customer comments, complaints and raw reactions to it, why not use that as a springboard to success? The key is, are you willing to change and improve? If that is the case, you now have a built-in contrast you can emphasize in your advertisements; perhaps even enlist the naysayers and win them over with change. - John M. O’Connor, Career Pro Inc.
7. Model Ownership Of Mistakes
When the leader messes up, it’s important to share with the team the mistake the leader made, without euphemism and without judgment. This then empowers the team members to admit to their own mistakes when they happen—again without euphemism or judgment—and to create a culture of trust and camaraderie. And it leads to fewer actual mistakes over time. - Helio Fred Garcia, Logos Consulting Group
8. Debrief And Re-Strategize With Your Team
Failing can be an effective learning tool for organizations. A leader should gather the team to discuss what worked, what didn’t and what should be done differently next time. Carefully assess where the weaknesses are and strengthen those areas before proceeding. Then, it’s time to plan out the next steps to implement a new or improved project, building on the experiences of the previous one. - Tamiko Cuellar, Pursue Your Purpose LLC
9. Remove The Emotion
Everyone knows that it’s only a failure if you don’t learn from it, but that’s easier said than done. To truly learn, a leader needs to know how to separate the outcome from the meaning we often ascribe to it: “I’m a bad leader, my company is going to fail, my employees aren’t working hard enough …” Learn to remove the emotion and meaning we attach to problems and you’ll learn from what happened. - Scott Swedberg, The Job Sauce
10. Value Failure As Much As Success
Failing is inevitable in life and business. Leaders need to value failure as much as success. We learn from failures, and making mistakes actually enhances neuroplasticity in the brain. Being curious and honest about our failures invites opportunity for shared learning and for the team to participate in tweaking what needs to be tweaked. There is no shame in failing and much to be learned. - Catherine Hayes, Catherine Hayes Coaching & Consulting, LLC
11. Reframe Your Future
Oops! That was a mistake. It hurt. It was costly. It’s over! It’s time to analyze and come to understand. Don’t blame; just do an honest assessment and say, “Lesson learned.” Now, reframe the future with this valuable experience to guide you. Some of my best lessons have been “what not to do” again. There are no failures—only feedback. - Bill Koch, Bill Koch Leadership Coaching
12. ‘Stop, Start And Continue’
I encourage my clients to assess their projects using “Stop, Start and Continue,” which gives them an opportunity to examine what isn’t working and needs to cease, what could be effective that hasn’t been initiated yet, and what needs to continue. When a project fails, this tool is helpful to document these aspects, since it’s never black and white. There is so much gold to gain from lessons learned! - Carolina Caro
13. Live To Play Another Day
Within every mistake are the seeds of a future victory. The mistake didn’t kill you, so let’s learn from it so we can become stronger! Ask yourself these three questions: 1) What was great about that situation? 2) What don’t we want to repeat? 3) What can we make even better the next time? The answers to these questions will fuel innovation in your business and lessen the severity of a mistake. - Carl Gould, 7 Stage Advisors
14. Borrow From Sports
The world of sports teaches us about success, failure and mistakes. Those who are perennial champions, either individuals or teams, always comment that the failure or mistake is in the past. It doesn’t mean that they deny that it happened; simply that they learned the lesson they were being taught and moved on to win again. No successful athlete or team stays rooted in the past. - Evan Roth, Roth Consultancy International, LLC
