“When you make a mistake there are only three things you should ever do about it. Admit it, learn from it and don’t repeat it.”
– Paul “Bear” Bryant (1913 – 1983), as quoted by Robert Glazer in his Friday Forward from November 15th
If coaching is your thing, Coach Bryant would be a pretty high standard to aspire to.
If leadership and ideation is your thing….wait, are your things — Glazer’s a pretty good place to start.
A funny thing about great coaches and leaders, they pretty much agree on this concept: Mistakes aren’t the problem. Repeating mistakes is the problem.
Admit it? “Hey, look, I screwed up. I forgot to input the services in the contract calculator and now the client is ticked because we’re billing an extra $500 per month.”
Learn from it? “I worked with the sales ops team, and we’ve changed the input fields to require a value or opt-out in every spot on the form.”
Don’t repeat it? “In this week’s huddle, I told everyone about what I did wrong, and we all agreed to watch each other’s pace to make sure we don’t rush through the details.”
Executing on a mistake-tolerant leadership style requires vulnerability and transparency. From top-to-bottom. All-day, every day.
It might not be easy on Day #1, but it will get easier every day thereafter, especially when you see the talent you’ll attract, the closeness of the team and the steady, predictable improvement you’ll achieve, together.
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