The Role of Mistakes in Becoming an Effective Leader

Introduction

As leaders, we tend to punish errors versus rewarding risk-taking. Our standard of learning is focused on content versus skill. Therefore, mistakes require investing additional time and defining success as limiting the time of a person’s failure. Understanding one’s values contributes to overcoming mistakes. I learned at an early age that beliefs and values are an essential part in how we process and overcome challenges. Our ethics help us manage our relationships, clarify what our values are and guide our decision-making.

A successful leader takes each mistake as a learning experience. Marsh (2013) believes that our values are essential in shaping a successful leader. Through my experiences, I have learned that accepting mistakes builds integrity, character and significant influence on behavior. Transitioning from an individual contributor role into a leadership role taught me the importance mistakes have on the development of competencies and skills needed to lead and empower people.

Situation

When I transitioned from an individual contributor role to a management role, I learned very fast the importance of knowing your people’s strengths to achieve organizational goals. Have been recognized as a top performer and working toward a career progression for three years, I was promoted to a manager role. The role offered me the opportunity to manage six business developers in selling educational services to current and prospective clients. I was responsible to meet hefty sales quota where each representative needed to meet his or her goal for me to meet mine. Being a goal-oriented individual, I started focusing on meeting goals by taking on the lead. I used a micromanaging leadership style by doing things myself versus delegating accordingly to motivate and allow learning to occur.

The result of the Mistake

The decision to use a micromanaging approach and still operate as an individual contributor by taking control of the situation led me to lose sight of the importance of developing my team. As a result, my top performers quit and my non-performers di not improve causing me to be on a performance improvement plan. This was so hard to digest because being always recognized as top performers I never had to deal with a failure result. I felt embarrassed, disappointed and scared that after many years I was going to lose my job.

Reflection and Impact

The setbacks and the performance plan made me feel shame, incompetent and a failure. This experience was the turning point that allowed me to process and learn from failures by recognizing and admitting mistakes. It was the first time that I started investing in reading leadership books and reaching out to colleagues and supervisor for guidance. I started using reflection as a guide to, facilitate and navigate through my decision-making process.

It was there that I started using questionnaires as tools to get information. (Zohrabi, 2013) Stated that questionnaire offer open/closed questions or a mixture of both help gather valuable information. While reading Maxwell (2016) five steps reflective approach on addressing mistakes hat I used this approach many years ago as I was finding myself by reviewing what just happened, reflected on my actions and the impact it had on my employee’s, and the bottom line of the organization. I started investing in professional development for myself to recover, rearrange and recharge to ensure I would continue in my career.

Final Outcome

Leadership is about role modeling what success looks like. Positive leaders or mentors execute positive behaviors when they demonstrate that trust can be attained by dependability, building a connection with people and show confidence (Blanchard, 2013). During that probation period, I work very closely with my supervisor to set smart personal goals and spend time with each of my employees to recognize their strength and challenges to better assess and support. I invested in personal development related to learning strategies to become effective as a leader.

After the three months probation my team was back on track, and after that year 50 % of my employees were promoted or given recognition. Placed in situations where you can make mistakes and seek guidance can be a benefit for a person development. Finding the courage to admit when you need help or a change is essential in understanding self-identity and future growth.

Who Helped

This experience helped me recognized that failure can be positive if the lesson is learned. I was fortunate that my supervisor was a good coach because she shared her wisdom, knowledge, and experiences with me. She taught me the importance of delegation and finding the value in each of my employees. She was the first person that changed my perceptions on how to give and receive constructive feedback. Through that process, she shared the importance of discovery in understanding each side before making a decision.

As a result, she trained me that a leader is a mentor or a coach, not a manager and should not take power for granted, but continue working on the qualities required to always strive for better. She was the first person that encouraged me to reflect every day. Personal and professional reflective practices lead to continuous growth. Paul Ramsden states, “ The ultimate guardians of excellence are not external forces but internal professional responsibilities (Ramsdun, 1992, p. 221)

Lesson Learned

This experience taught me that owning a positive frame of mind helps achieve better results when confronted with difficult situations. I have learned how to stayed calmed in difficult situations, be reflective and march on forward despite the challenges. This event was full of examples of what reflective leadership is all about. As a leader, it is important to show empathy and compassion. Leaders need to attain skills and competencies to build confidence and motivation. Becoming a great leader is about improving and modeling behavior on a consistent basis to develop strategies to recognize and value differences. Leadership is a framework through forces that bring forth positive change such as moral purpose, relationship building, coherence making and understanding change (Fullan, 2003).

Conclusion

Leadership is about reflecting, accepting change and adapting to new situations. I try to embrace a new challenge every day because a prosperous educational experience involves continuity and interaction between the learner and what is learned. Accepting and adapting teaches us to become reflective leaders. Reflective leadership encourages development and is “... known to be of benefit in experiential learning, and for the development of critical thinking skills, which facilitate the integration between theory and practice” (Wain, 2017, p.662).