Support Your People, Even When They Make Mistakes
It’s a simple fact of life: Everyone makes mistakes. The key to growth is learning from the mistakes that we make, so the same mistakes are not made twice. Help your people to grow by providing a supportive work environment that encourages them to learn from mistakes and move forward with newfound insight and perspective as a result.
Accountability is a major element of this kind of leadership philosophy. Be sure that people know what your expectations are and what they’re accountable for delivering to you and their team.
With that kind of foundation in place, turning mistakes into learning opportunities is as simple as identifying what happened and determining what can be done to perform flawlessly the next time.
How to Put It into Action
Regardless of where you might sit in the organisation chart, here are a few ideas to put this practice to use for the benefit of those you lead:
For a C Level Leader: Be sure that your team understands their individual and group responsibilities. When people make mistakes, hold them accountable by ensuring that they acknowledge the mistake (excuses don’t make people better or improve their performance). Once mistakes are properly acknowledged, focus attention on discovering what they must do differently to avoid making the same mistake in the future.
For a Mid-Level Leader: Work with your team to discover the root cause of the mistakes they make. Determine whether mistakes arise due to a knowledge gap, lack of skill or experience, poor attitude, lack of judgment, or something else. Work with them to devise a way to take corrective action and learn from the experience.
For a Supervisory Level Leader: When a mistake is made by a team member, take the opportunity to acknowledge it and work with that person to determine ways it can be avoided in the future. In this way, you will be reinforcing the idea that “our aim is to continuously learn so we can become better at what we do.”
Adopt These Principles to Change the Culture
Here are three principles to adopt to help other leaders embrace the idea of having their people’s backs:
Be a Role Model: Demonstrate what compassionate, respectful, patient, and fair leadership looks like. Indeed, by being the standard bearer for how to create a supportive work environment that encourages growth and learning, you raise the bar for other leaders in the organisation.
Hold Yourself and Others Accountable: Provide timely, constructive feedback when expectations are not met. In this way, you can reinforce expectations and establish a standard of excellence that will enhance your organisation’s reputation in the marketplace.
Seek to Initiate and Drive Needed Change: Enable and encourage your people to take calculated risks. This not only drives innovation, but can be a catalyst for inspiration for others with an idea for change
Right now, look back at the previous work week and review those moments when you had to provide leadership. Determine whether you provided the level of support your team needed in order to excel and what you might do differently the next time that they need you to lead them.
The more that you reflect in this way, the more likely you will be to take the steps required to enhance and improve the way you set direction and inspire change.