Comments on: Learning From Your Mistakes – 4 Steps To Turn Failure Into Success

By: Subhabb

Subhabb — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 04:15:13 +0000

The story about your daughter's experience was a great hook for this post. I agree with what you shared and would add that creating an environment where people are encouraged to share successes and mistakes is important. To foster this, I try to be consistent about the way I respond to my team. If they know that regardless of the situation they can be assured of being treated respectfully, they will be more likely to make me aware of problems that should get on my radar. Leaders can also model the value they place in learning from mistakes by sharing their own experiences honestly. Thanks for your post! My recent post “And when we think we lead, we are most led.” —Lord Byron

By: Tanveer Naseer

Tanveer Naseer — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 15:32:55 +0000

Agreed. The key is learning to reframe how we perceive mistakes so that it becomes easier to dust ourselves off, assess where things went wrong and keep at it until we achieve our goal. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Matthew.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 08:50:41 +0000

Mistakes becomes our way to continue to reach our goals.. there is a saying
“Experience is our best teacher”.

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By: Tanveer Naseer

Tanveer Naseer — Tue, 24 May 2011 17:41:53 +0000

Thanks Melanie; I'm glad you enjoyed it and I agree, often times we create unnecessary stress for ourselves by worrying over issues that are outside our abilities to control/manage.

By: Melanie

Melanie — Mon, 23 May 2011 15:28:22 +0000

Nice post Tanveer. I love the tip "Don’t worry about variables you can’t control", sometimes we get a lot of stress by unnecessary things. My recent post Tips for guys How to attract cute women

By: Tanveer Naseer

Tanveer Naseer — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:35:54 +0000

Exactly, Jim. It makes so much more sense to not focus so much on how we didn’t reach our target this try, but instead look at what insights that failure helps to expose about our process. A real-world, practical example of this would be any sports team. When they play a game and lose, they don’t just sit there sulking, they look at why they lost; why certain game strategies didn’t work and how the opposing team was able to beat them. Take time to make such assessments will certainly help a team to understand not only where they are going wrong, but also how making certain changes can address these problems so the next time they go out onto the playing field, they have a better chance at winning the game.

Thanks again Jim for your comment.

By: Jim Matorin

Jim Matorin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:26:53 +0000

Good stuff Tanveer. Why are we so quick to categorize or place in buckets wins and loses (failures)? Why not one big bucket titled learning experiences, then we focus on the end goal and enjoy the journey to achievement.

By: Tanveer Naseer

Tanveer Naseer — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:20:03 +0000

Thanks Kelly.

It’s interesting that you mention how we should spend more time celebrating failures as I was reading an article recently that pointed out how in the education system in several Asian countries, students are not only expected to fail, but they’re actually encouraged to fail often. The rationale is that by allowing children to experience failure, they will learn how to deal with failure and how to take the lessons from the experience as they move forward.

The problem I find in North America is that while we’re now starting to accept failure as being a part of the process, I’m reading a lot about how we need to just deal with it and get on with it. In other words, all we’re doing is basically addressing our fear of failure, but not how to learn from failure. Also, there’s not enough being said about what kinds of failure would be beneficial and which ones should be avoided at all costs. That’s why I find the whole “failing fast” notion a bit over-simplistic because we shouldn’t be focusing on time as the quality of knowledge or insights we might gain from the experience.

Thanks again, Kelly, for sharing your thoughts on this. I appreciate the contributions you add to the discussion.

By: Kelly Ketelboeter

Kelly Ketelboeter — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:44:27 +0000

Hi Tanveer,

Some of the greatest lessons I have learned in my life have come from my failures. That is of course once I got over the initial disappointment and emotion.

Reflecting on the situation, project, problem or whatever occurred is critical and leads to growth. One has to be willing and open to the lessons within the failures though. It's key to provide an environment free of blame or accusations. And to focus on the actual lesson within the failure. I have found there's almost always a lesson to be learned.

I often think that if we spent more time celebrating failures as a natural part of life that the steps above would be a lot easier to put into action. Then we can begin to address and shift the stigma of failing.

Great piece!

Kelly

By: Tanveer Naseer

Tanveer Naseer — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:29:30 +0000

Thanks Sally, I appreciate that. I agree with you that these steps can carry over into life situations as well.

As I’ve written in various posts here on my blog, it’s unrealistic to think that the person you are at work should be different from the person you are outside of work, especially if we want people to bring the best of their abilities and potential to their role. That’s why I think many of the ideas I share here can be transposed to either side of the work/life equation as we’re ultimately the same individual in these different settings.

It’s also why I enjoy adding these personal stories to my posts as it helps to illustrate this very notion, if not also for the fact that when my girls are older they’ll be able to read these pieces and see how they helped to inspire their dad.

Thanks again for the kind words, Sally.