Learn From The Mistakes Others Make

Eleanor Roosevelt gives us all some great advice with her quote “learn from the mistakes of others, you can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”  In nearly every job in the world someone has come before us and they have a variety of experiences that we can most certainly learn from.  Leading ourselves and others is hard enough on its own, so why wouldn’t I take advantage of the work of others and learn from their miscues?  We live in a world where we have access to an unprecedented amount of resources through the internet, podcasts, social media, and in person.  We can connect with people all over the world and solicit advice and examples of things that they have learned through their failed attempts.  

As a young leader I struggled with reaching out to other leaders to ask for advice or help.  I was self conscious and didn’t want people to know when I was over my head. I was also afraid that if word got out that I was asking for advice or direction that people wouldn’t take me seriously.  But more than that I didn’t want to become a headline like the leaders I heard people make fun of for making a poor decision or committing an egregious mistake.  How was I going to be different from those poor souls?   

I was going to pay attention to the leaders around me and ask them questions about how they would do things differently if they had a chance to do it all over again.  When I saw people take missteps I made note of it and I even categorized it in a notebook where I wrote about it so I had a living resource I could reference when I needed to do so.  Life is too short and being a leader is too important not to learn from the mistakes of others.