The fear of failure and reprisals from making mistakes can devastate morale, creativity, and innovation in any company. It is therefore important that leaders learn from their mistakes.
As a leader why not develop the leadership skills that help you benefit from mistakes and gain future success? Given that mistakes happen all the time, we need to ensure that the organizational culture, and you in your leadership role, encourages open discussion and all that can be learned from them.
Tap into your Skills and Knowledge
The CEO is the big boss up there, and you wouldn’t really hear a CEO acknowledging that he/she needs to be humble and rely on other people. A starting CEO thought that he himself had all the answers. Later he realized that humility is necessary for him to understand that that is not how the game goes.
He understood that he needed the perspective to reach out to as many brilliant minds as he can in his company because that’s where real strength comes from to advance his business. It’s common sense to leaders who know what they are doing. Leadership is obviously incompetent if it doesn’t tap into the skills and knowledge that are available.
Kyle Zimmer, CEO of First Book revealed her frank and unconventional observations on leadership. A lot of people would expect the usual “Twelve Steps to Success” that promotes myths of leadership and impeccable decision- making. However, Zimmer appreciated the reality of making mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable. In fact, her company’s leadership wants people who have tried, have failed yet have risen above their failures.
Find The Good Side of Failure
What is the good side of failure? You gain knowledge of what doesn’t work. More so, you become willing and receptive to work with and learn from others. A bright person and a builder who has prevailed over the winds wafting against his grit and creation emerges with new strength and a new self. A lot of other things will crumble, such as defensiveness. He becomes resolute in his character and his craft.
Being in executive leadership is not about being in charge. Effective executive leadership is about creating a culture that promotes and strengthens innovation. In a generation X workplace, senior employees might be dismissive and condescending. Leadership should learn to manage generation gaps because a very different group of people of a junior level is going to work in the company. Their attitude about work and leadership tends to be different.
Leaders Accept that Mistakes Are Inevitable
If you hope to accomplish anything new, creativity and innovation are crucial. Along the way, as you work for whatever it is you want to achieve, you’re going to fail more than you’re going to succeed. Failures are a certainty on your way to true success.
It’s a huge mistake to cultivate a culture where people fear failure. The most creative times in a company are those when there’s the pressure of failure or when failure is nearing. Technology has made the workplace a very convenient working environment, but there’s no substitute for people spending time together and minds are thinking collectively to work together. That’s the old-fashioned but timeless rule.
