As a teacher, I wanted students to feel safe when it came to learning something new. The danger of learning something new is that you can look bad because it’s easy to make mistakes when you are learning how to do something that you may not be good at yet. I didn’t want my students to be afraid of looking bad when they made mistakes, instead I wanted them to be challenged to try again until they succeeded. On the other hand, there were times when I warned my students against making mistakes. I let them know that there were mistakes that were not necessary, and urged them to be careful not to make them.
I’m sure there are multitudes of leaders that recognize that there are times when it is necessary to make mistakes in the process of developing and advancing, but there are other times when mistakes are intolerable. Are these leaders confused over how they think about mistakes? They get frustrated with the stifling effect of perfectionism when people become so afraid of failure that they won’t include themselves in challenging situations that must be addressed in order for progress to be made. At the same time, these leaders also get frustrated with careless mistakes that are easily avoidable. In other words, they understand that there are good mistakes, and bad mistakes, depending on the situation.
Good Mistakes
In most people’s minds, mistakes are not considered good. However, if someone wants to learn and develop in a given pursuit, mistakes are often unavoidable. Even though mistakes are not desirable, the redemptive value of mistakes can be found when three conditions are present. The first condition is that a person is giving their best effort to succeed when presented with a worthy challenge where mistakes are made. The second condition is that they do their best to understand the reason for their mistake so that they can make adjustments and come closer to success. The third condition is that they don’t lose courage to keep trying to improve provided that it’s a worthy cause. If these conditions surround a mistake, then it’s usually a good mistake because good things result from it in the process of learning, personal growth, advancement, and improvement.
Bad Mistakes
While it’s true that mistakes can play a part in helping a person to learn and improve, there are also mistakes that can keep a person from learning or improving, and there are mistakes that can even cause a person to regress. These are bad mistakes because bad things result from the mistake without anything good coming from it.
Bad mistakes are unnecessary mistakes. They are the type of mistakes that never had to be made in the first place. Bad mistakes occur when a person can already do something the right way, but they are careless or they don’t want to put forth the effort to do it right. It’s the basketball player who already knows to catch an easy pass with two hands, but he carelessly tries to catch it with one hand and ends up fumbling around with the ball. It’s the waitress who could greet people with a smile and say, “Hello” to make people feel welcome, but she just doesn’t feel like it. It’s the man who could set his alarm fifteen minutes earlier in order to be on time for work, but he doesn’t bother. None of these things are a matter of needing more advanced learning or more practice, they are a matter of choosing to do something right instead of wrong.
The Biggest Mistake
Perhaps the biggest mistake of all is to completely avoid trying so that no mistakes are ever made. It seems like the best way to avoid mistakes, but it is actually the biggest mistake for anyone who is concerned about their personal growth and development. Even though mistakes may appear as failures to others, they can actually lead to success if you learn from them.
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