Your Mistake is not Asking What Mistake You're Making

By Dr John C. Maxwell

Recently after I taught a session on conflict, a young man came up to me during the break and said, “I’m going to start my own organization."

“Good for you,” I replied.

“Yeah,” he continued, “I want to build a business ‘the right way.’ That way I won’t have to deal with any problems.”

“You know,” I said as he was turning to leave. “You’re making the mis­take of thinking you won’t make any mistakes.”

Ignorance Isn’t Bliss

When you’re young and idealistic, you think you can lead better than many of the people who have led others before you. I know that was true for me. When I got started in my career, I was positive, aggressive, opti­mistic—and totally naive. I often led by assumption. By that I mean that in my youthful zeal, I usually took for granted that everything was fine. I didn’t look for problems because I didn’t expect to have any. The result? I got blindsided. Whenever that occurred, I was bewildered. How could such a thing happen? I would wonder.

After getting blindsided for the fourth or fifth time, in desperation I started asking experienced leaders for help. One of those leaders told me something that changed my leadership. He said, “John, the biggest mistake you can make is to not ask what mistakes you are making.”

That piece of advice set my leadership journey on a new course. It was my introduction to realistic thinking—something I was not accustomed to embracing. As I examined myself, I learned some things:

• I gave little thought to what might go wrong.

• I assumed that the “right way” would be mistake-free.

• I did not acknowledge mistakes I made to myself or others.

• I was not learning from my mistakes.

• I was not helping others by teaching lessons learned from my mistakes.

If I wanted to become a better leader, I would need to change. I would have to stop making the mistake of not asking what mistake I was making.

Recipe for Successful Failure

No one ever sized people up more accurately than the person who invented the pencil eraser. Everyone makes mistakes—large and small. To get maximum attention, make a big mistake. To cause maximum damage, fail to admit it! That will keep you from growing as a leader. When it comes to success, it’s not the number of mistakes you make; it’s the number of times you make the same mistake. If you want to learn to fail successfully and handle the mis­takes you do make with maximum profit, then you need to do the following five things:

1. Admit Your Own Mistakes and Weaknesses

Recently I was speaking to several CEOs at a conference, and I was encouraging them to be open about their mistakes and weaknesses with the people they lead. The room became very tense, and I could tell that they were resistant to my advice.

During the next break as I was signing books, the leader of a company asked to see me privately. When I could take a break, we moved away from the others and he said, “I disagree with your suggestion that we should be open to others about our failures.” Then he began to tell me how important it was to put up a strong front and be totally confident in front of your people.

I heard him out, but when he was fin­ished, I said, “You are leading others with a wrong assumption.”

“What is it?” he asked with anxiety.

“You assume that your people don’t know your weaknesses,” I responded. “Trust me, they do. When you admit your mistakes, it is not a surprise to them: it is a reassurance. They’ll be able to look at each other and say, ‘Whew! He knows. Now we don’t have to keep pretending!’”

The first step toward anticipating mistakes and learning from the ones you do make is to take a realistic look at yourself and admit your weak­nesses. You can’t improve as a leader if you’re too busy trying to pretend you’re perfect.

Former U.S. Navy captain Michael Abrashoff writes in his book It’s Your Ship, “Whenever I could not get the results I wanted, I swallowed my temper and turned inward to see if I was part of the problem. I asked myself three questions: Did I clearly articulate the goals? Did I give people enough time and resources to accomplish the task? Did I give them enough training? I discovered that 90 percent of the time, I was at least as much a part of the problem as my people were.” Admitting our failures and tak­ing responsibility for them will allow us to go to the next step.

2. Accept Mistakes as the Price of Progress

Psychologist Joyce Brothers asserts, “The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of get­ting to the top.” Nothing is perfect in this life—and that includes you! You’d better start getting used to it. If you want to move forward, you’re going to make mistakes.

Pro football Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana remarked, “As if screwing up on the field in front of millions of TV viewers wasn’t enough, the Monday after every game I got to relive my mistakes—over and over again, in slow motion and with commentary from the coaches! Even when we won, we always took time to review our mistakes. When you’re forced to confront your mistakes that often, you learn not to take your failures so personally. I learned to fast, learn from my mistakes and mow on. Why beat yourself up about it? Just do better next time!

Not everyone is willing to confront his mistakes and not take them personally. Because Montana did, he became one of the best players in the history of the NFL. His leadership and ability to handle adversity earned him the nickname “Joe Cool.” Those qualities also helped him to win four Super Bowls and be named Super Bowl MVP three times. If you want to reach your poten­tial as a leader, expect to fail and make mistakes.

3. Insist on Learning from Your Mistake

Author and leadership expert Tom Peters writes, “From the smallest branch to the corporate level, there is nothing more useless than the per­son who says at the end of the day, as their own report card, ‘Well, I made it through the end of the day without screwing up.’”

There are two common responses people have concerning failure. While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy mak­ing mistakes, learning from them, and becoming superior. People can either run from mistakes and hurt themselves, or they learn from them and help themselves. People who try to avoid failure at all costs never learn and end up repeating the same mistakes over and over again. But those who are willing to learn from their failures never have to repeat them again. As Author William Saroyan observed, “Good people are good because they have come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success.” People in leadership need to take their cue from scientists. In science, mistakes always precede the discovery of truth.

4. Ask Yourself and Others, “What Are We Missing?”

Some people expect nothing but trouble. They are pessimistic, so they don’t bother to look for anything good. Others, like me, have a natural tendency assume that everything is good. But either kind of thinking can hurt a leader. Elizabeth Elliot, author of All That Was Ever Ours, points out, “All generalizations are false including this one, yet we keep making them. We create images—graven ones that can’t be changed; we dismiss or accept people, products, programs and propaganda according to the labels they come under; we know a little about something, and we treat it like we know everything.” Leaders need to be more discern­ing than that.

It is easy to make decisions based on what we know. But there are always things we don’t know. It is easy to choose a direction based on what we see. But what don’t we see? Reading between the lines is essential for good leader­ship. We are most likely to do that when we ask the question, “What are we missing?”

Back in the l990s during the dot com boom, it seemed that everybody wanted to get in on what looked like a great thing. At that time, the leadership team at one of my companies entertained the idea of creating a dot com company for leaders. Every time someone brought it up, there would be tremendous energy in the room. Everyone got very excited about the potential of such a venture, However, every time this issue was discussed, my brother, Larry, would ask one simple question that brought everyone back down to earth: “How do these companies generate revenue beyond initial investments?” No one had a satisfactory answer.

Is Larry a killjoy, someone who delights in shooting down others’ ideas and squashing opportunities? No, he’s a realist. His question was just another version of “What are we missing?” And when reality hit the dot coms, we were glad he kept asking that question.

The value of asking, “What are we missing?” is that it causes everyone to stop and think. Many people can see what’s obvious. Few can see what there. Asking tough questions causes people to think differently. Not asking questions is to assume that a project is potentially perfect and that if it’s handled with care, there will be no problems. That simply isn’t reality.

5. Give the People Around You Permission to Push Back

Recently I saw a sign in a high-pressure sales office that said, “Do you like to travel? Do you want to meet new friends? Do you want to free up your future? All this can be yours if you make one more mistake.” Fear of making mistakes keeps many individuals from reaching their potential. Fear of being honest with leaders about the potential problems that a course of action might bring has hurt many teams. The best leaders invite the opinions of the people on their teams.

When leaders don’t get input from others on their team, it can lead to disaster. Michael Abrashoft touches on this problem in It’s Your Ship. He writes:

The moment I heard about it [the tragic sinking of a Japanese fishing boat off Honolulu by the submarine USS Greeneville], I was reminded that, as is often the case with accidents, someone senses possible danger but doesn’t necessarily speak up. As the Greeneville investigation unfolded, I read in a New York Times article that the submarine’s crew “respected the commanding officer too much to question his judgment.” If that’s respect, then I want none of it. You need to have people in your organization that can tap you on your shoulder and say, “Is this the best way?” or “Slow down,” or “Think about this,” or “Is what we are doing worth killing or injuring somebody?”

History records countless incidents in which ship captains or organization managers permitted a climate of intimidation to pervade the workplace, silencing subordinates whose warnings could have prevented disaster. Even when the reluctance to speak up stems from admiration for the commanding officer’s skill and experience, a climate to question decisions must be created in order to foster double-checking.

Many good minds working together are always better than one work­ing alone. Because I’ve learned that lesson, I’ve changed from someone who avoids potentially bad news to someone who invites it. For many years I’ve given permission to members of my inner circle to ask me hard ques­tions and give me their opinion when they disagree with me. I don’t ever want to make a mistake and then hear a team member say after the fact, “I thought that was going to be a bad decision.” I want people to tell me on the front end, not after it’s too late for their advice to help. Pushback before a decision is made is never disloyalty. However, question­ing a decision after it’s made is not what I consider to be good teamwork.

If you lead people, then you need to give them permission to ask hard questions and push back against your ideas. That permis­sion must be given to others by the leader. Too often leaders would rather have followers who turn a blind eye instead of ones who speak with a blunt tongue. But if all is quiet when decisions are being considered, it probably won’t be quiet after it plays out. English philosopher-statesman Sir Francis Bacon observed, “If a person will begin with certainties, he will end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties.” I’d say those are the words of a leader who was willing to ask, “What mistake am I making?”

Application Exercises

1. What is your attitude toward mistakes? Are you an optimist, a pessimist, or a realist? An optimist is afraid to look for possible problems. A pessimist is convinced there will be nothing but problems. Neither of these attitudes is beneficial. You must strive to be realistic. As you work this week, ask yourself, your colleagues, and your subordinates: (1) “What could go wrong?” and (2) “What are we missing?”

2. Are you owning up to your mistakes? Are your mistakes friends or ene­mies? The proof that leaders have embraced their mistakes and made them their friends can be determined by how often they make and admit them. Ask people who work with you to grade you on a scale of 1 (reluctant) to 10 (dedicated), regarding how willingly you own up to your mistakes, It your score is below an 8, you need to put more effort into admitting your weaknesses to other people, owning up to your mistakes, learning from them, and embracing failure as a part of success.

3. Are you getting the best ideas from your subordinates? How often do you ask the people you lead to give you their opinions on issues? How often do you include them in the information-gathering and decision-making processes? As the leader, you ultimately have the responsibility for mak­ing final decisions. The buck stops with you. However, if you are not making the most of the ideas and experiences of your people, you’re limiting your leadership effectiveness. Start asking for the opinions of others today.