Do We Learn From Our Mistakes?
- Mar 10, 2023
- 4 min read
Written by: Mila Trezza, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
How often have you met someone in your workplace who could contentedly say: “I’ve made a huge mistake, but I’m so glad because I learned so much from it?”
Although we hear the phrase “learn from your mistakes” plenty of times throughout our lives, it is not easy to cultivate a positive and healthy culture around making mistakes. Let’s look at the size of the task.
We (may) learn from our mistakes after we have repeated them multiple times. Sometimes, we hardly learn a thing. Sometimes, “multiple times” means years of doing something wrong in the exact same way. We wrestle with our self-esteem when we finally recognize our own perseverance in the face of not getting something right, which could range from being a bit wrong to massively wrong. Admitting our mistakes requires us to be vulnerable, to ourselves and, at times, to what we perceive as a looming “everybody else.”
With that said, owning our mistakes has brilliant upsides. Recognising the times when we got things wrong is not just about healthy accountability and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. Our mistakes are an extraordinary way to engage people at a very different level. Openly owning our mistakes builds credibility because no one always gets it right all the time. In the long run, mistakes boost (not diminish) our authority.
So, how do we cultivate this mindset?
1. How do we pave the road to success using our own mistakes?
A positive view of mistakes starts by successfully and openly disconnecting “mistakes” from “failure”. When these two concepts stay in their respective buckets, people are allowed to become effective mistake-makers without becoming failures.
A healthy mistake culture indeed needs to cultivate some of the following:
A shift of focus from tools and processes to mindsets and attitudes. The full attention is on the behaviour, not the outcome.
Having worked out the major constraining factors to a positive mistake culture: the tendency to conceal or window dress, as well as the tendency to fall into the blame game. This means being good problem-solvers.
Role-modelling from the top. We look at our leaders for acceptable behaviours: these include inviting challenges, not only confirmations, admitting mistakes and handling them with grace.
Building safety by making consequences to mistakes clear, transparent and fair.
Recognising that different mistakes call for different treatments: if it was largely foreseeable, it should be treated less favourably. Sorry folks.
Reinforcing a shared belief that innovation is built on errors. No one is (or stays) creative if they are not allowed to try and fail multiple times.
Giving voice to incidental learning alongside more structured learning avenues.
Create a positive environment for talking about it: lesson-learned workshops, ‘what I learned this week’ talks in team meetings, a dedicated section in internal newsletters or noticeboards.
2. Why do we fear making mistakes and how to overcome it
I think it helps to recognise that the whole process is not picnic time. It is indeed, a pretty substantial rewiring of the brain, which, in addition to the workplace culture, may have roots as deep as in our family background (how often were we tolerated or told off as children for our mistakes? How often did we witness blaming as opposed to resolving?) and our schooling.
Many schools and learning environments try to champion a healthy error culture but not all deliver it. For example, when the reward system glorifies perfection and is geared to celebrate error-free outputs. We hear ‘mistakes are good’, but how often do we hear anyone admitting to their mistakes? We inevitably develop a partly conscious, partly unconscious aversion to making mistakes when open conversations about them are rare.
Behaviour changes are a massive task. But (self-)knowledge is power and every shift helps. Recognising our triggers helps. Noticing what clouds our thinking when we see our experiments are getting difficult help. Moving on graciously from our ‘should-haves’ (‘I should have double-checked that!’) helps. Teaming up with someone fun to handle our mistakes helps – a lot.
If you wish to find out more about how I can help with your professional journey, please visit here. I offer an initial 20-minute meeting or discovery call. Confidential, free and no commitment.
Mila Trezza, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Mila Trezza is a former General Counsel of a Fortune Global 500 energy company and an award-winning executive and leadership coach. Her company was named one of the Top 5 Executive Coaching Companies in the UK for 2023.
After more than 20 years of international experience, having served as Director of over 30 companies, and lived in six countries, Mila developed her approach to coaching with the sensibilities of a lawyer in mind.
Her mission is to cultivate a coaching culture for the legal industry that is bespoke to, and has an inside-out understanding of, the challenges that lawyers and legal teams face on a daily basis.
Legal professionals play a central role for the organisations they serve. Yet, little of their training prepares them for building the confidence, relational skills, and emotional agility needed to persevere and succeed. Through her coaching, Mila helps lawyers go from lacking confidence and feeling overwhelmed to having a clear path forward, feeling resourceful, and enjoying their roles.
In addition to running her own business “Coaching Lawyers by Mila Trezza”, Mila acts as expert advisor and consultant for leading global companies.
