Most of my siblings and I are great at wrapping Christmas gifts. It comes from having a huge family. Every Christmas eve, we exchanged gifts. And as the family grew, it took later and later into the evening to begin opening presents.
How we got good at wrapping is practice, and learning from mistakes. When you have to wrap 14 gifts in one hour, you are under a lot of pressure. In the earlier Christmases, those gifts look like they were kicked around in a post office. Later, the folds and lines got cleaner. Today, adding ribbons and bows is second nature to us. It took a lot of Christmases to get to here. Luckily, everyone forgave the earlier mistakes; after all, a gift is still a gift.
In 2005, Day 8 of this Blog, I talked about a P&G maintenance manager who made a huge costly mistake. However, he didn't get fired. He was told, "We just spent a lot of money on your education. Why would we fire you?"
Today, my daughter submitted a project paper. I knew it would not get the best grade because I am also an instructor who grades papers. Instead of fixing it for her (which was against my wife's wishes), I let her finish her own paper.
Two things come about from this situation. First, we are letting our daughter make a mistake. Hopefully she will learn from it. We cannot be there always to bail our kids out. I believe people learn from failure, not from success. So what if it means a lower grade? Life is not about the scorecards.
The second thing is that she will own the mistake, the lesson, and eventually her successes. This does great things for one's self-esteem.
If you think successful people never make mistakes, you're in for a surprise. The most successful leaders not only learn from mistakes, they take responsibility. They are accountable. They even take the blame for the mistakes of their subordinates. And then, they rise above it.
The title of one inspiring book tells it all: "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful: Mistakes, Adversity, Failure and other Steppingstones to Success" (Tallfellow Press). This video provides an overview and lessons we can learn from successful people's failures.
My wish is not necessarily to make mistakes. Those will happen without encouragement.
My wish is that we are surrounded by people who do not think less of us for our mistakes, and that we can learn from failure.
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