How the Best Leaders Use Their Mistakes

Mistakes. Everyone makes them, from entry-level employees to C-suite executives. What separates good employees from great employees is how they handle their mistakes. Mistakes are not just occasions to be shrugged off. You should not beat yourself up over them, but they do create a perfect learning opportunity because they shed light to the areas you need to improve on most. Unfortunately, far too many people see mistakes as inevitable actions that are best swept under the rug and forgotten.

Great leaders differentiate themselves by using their mistakes to mitigate their weaknesses. This is an important part of the self-management process that great leaders excel in. Leaders see a learning opportunity in everything, but especially in their failures.

Here are three ways leaders can use missteps as a personal development tool:

1) Put mistakes in perspective.

Sometimes, our mistakes can seem either incredibly large or incredibly insignificant because we are not framing them in the right context. Write down the facts to help you become more objective about the implications of your mistake. Did it cause your company to lose money? How much? Did it make you look uninformed? In front of whom? Answering questions like these can help you get an objective view of what really happened so you can determine the right approach to addressing the mistake.

2) Create a roadmap of the process that led to the mistake.

It is common after doing something wrong to only think about the implications. It is also common to lump all of the work you do into the “bad” category after making a mistake in an act of defeatism. But these thoughts will not fix the problem. The process that got you there is far more important when it comes to learning from your mistakes. Think back and create a roadmap of the events leading up to the mistake so you can pinpoint exactly where you went wrong. By identifying the exact moment of lapsed judgment, you can make sure you are focusing your improvement efforts on the right task.

3) Work on small ways to improve every day.

Now that you have identified the specific weakness that likely caused you to make a mistake, work on sharpening that skill. Talk to people who are experts in your area of weakness. Find books to read. Then, develop an actionable way to work on improving in your area of weakness every day. If you are a poor public speaker, dedicate 30 minutes each night to practice speaking in front of a mirror. If you have a poor eye for detail, find resources where you can practice picking out mistakes in large volumes of information. The key to this step is continued, dedicated practice.

If this seems like a lot of work to handle one mistake, it is! But great leaders set themselves apart by being obsessive about their own personal development and improvement.

Do not assume these tips will make you perfect in your area of weakness. We all have weaknesses. Working on these areas of weakness do not make them vanish. It simply allows you to make fewer mistakes, so your strengths can shine even more. Don’t be afraid of mistakes. Know that you will make them and that you can always learn from them. As famed college basketball coach John Wooden once said, “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything.”

How do you learn from your mistakes at work? Let us know in the comments section below or on Facebook and Twitter.

Joseph “Bud” Haney is cofounder of Profiles International, and serves as its president and Chief Executive Officer. After his baseball career, he worked for an international human resources development company in several executive roles before becoming its president. In addition, he is a coauthor of the best-selling business guide 40 Strategies for Winning in Business and the book, Leadership Charisma, written to help people harness their personal and professional charisma to improve their business and careers.