Tip 716: Seeing Mistakes as Learning

From the Leadership Workshops: Seeing Mistakes as Learning

On April 23rd, 1910, Teddy Roosevelt gave the most famous speech of his life. It begins (and you’ve probably seen it before)—

It is not the critic who counts; the man who points how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. . . . 

Forgive the sexism of the pronouns. The speech is from a different time. 

An often overlooked (and often deleted) portion of the speech is a simple eight-word passage: 

. . . there is no effort without error and shortcoming . . . .

Repeated: There is no effort without error and shortcoming. 

Mistakes. Slips. Gaffes. Blunders. 

Ponder your experience as a one-year-old. (You can remember that, right?)

You let go of the coffee table and take your first steps.

One. Two. Thr . . . . 

Kerr-PLUNK. 

Down you go on your diaper-padded bottom.

And your parents are delighted: “You DID it! GOOD FOR YOU!” They clap. They hug you. They hug each other.

They didn’t expect you to dance across the room like Jennifer Lopez.

So what does this have to do with business and leadership? 

Tolerance. Learning. Daring.

We’ve mentioned this before: IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson Sr. once refused the resignation of a young executive—after a horribly expensive mistake—with “I just spent $600,000 training you.”

Watson later added, “Why would I want somebody else to hire his experience?” 

We learn from our mistakes. 

We love this stuff.