The most successful people have something striking in common – they’re really good at making mistakes. They look at every mistake as a learning opportnity to improve. Instead of looking back at them with regret they look forward to see how it can help them improve. In other words – they fail forward.
You can also put your mistakes to work and master the art of failing forward (and stimulate it within your team team as a manager). These are the steps:
1 Flip-think mistakes
The famous Dutch football player Johan Cruijff always said: “to every downside, is an upside”. So think about it – what could be positive about the mistake you made? By looking at the useful aspect of your mistake you give it a positive spin and might even come up with an unexpected solution.
2 Share you mistakes with others
By sharing mistakes with others, you strip them of negative tention. But you also give others the opportunity to learn from your mistake. So don’t keep learning opportunities to yourself but share them with colleagues to show them that you persevere and grow. But foremost: be open to the fresh perspective and advise from others. Looking at a mistake from multiple perspectives can help you gain new insights and solutions to enhance the ‘fail forward’ effect.
3 Have a review preview
You learn from your mistakes by analyzing them and tracking down exactly what has gone wrong. If you then look forward and create an ‘if-then’ plan for the future, you can really put your lessons to work. By structurally reviewing your learning process you not only gain insight in your own development, but you also accelerate it. And you can also help others by sharing the lessons from your worst practices.
Do you want to know more? Give us a call at 0204230603 or send an email.
