Gaining Confidence by Making Mistakes
Being a business leader requires us to have confidence in our abilities and our team. But too much confidence, or confidence that is not well founded in reality can turn in to hubris and produce disastrous results.
Recently Malcom Gladwell gave a talk on this topic pointing out that we often gain confidence by having more data, but if that data only reinforces our previously held notions it doesn’t produce better decisions. Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers had a nice write up of this idea in his blog.
That’s why mistakes are such important opportunities for us to learn. We don’t want to dwell on our mistakes, or beat ourselves up with them. But we do want to use them to build a proper foundation for our confidence.
I saw a fascinating example of this in Vern Harnish’s newsletter last week.
“Black Book of Torres — …Miguel Torres, 5th generation of Torres Wines (60 million cases, 140 countries, 300 year old vineyards), spoke at the EO University in Barcelona. During his presentation he described their “Black Book of Torres” which formally documents the mistakes they’ve made going back 50 years! Whenever a mistake is made, the person responsible writes it up in the black book — then whenever anyone is hired, they are required to read the black book — obviously, the importance of studying failures. BTW, the last entry had to do with the CFO not listening to the rest of the executive team which strongly advised against a certain currency hedge resulting in a $200k loss.”
I could see this practice resulting in a great deal of humility throughout the organization. Sooner or later your name’s going to be in the book. You start your career in the organization by reading about everyone else’s mistakes. It would be hard to have too much hubris in that environment.
But it could also build terrific confidence, here is a whole book full of mistakes we aren’t likely to make again. We have learned these lessons, what a head start we have!
How do you insure that you learn from your mistakes? Does that help you build your confidence as a leader?
Brad Farris is a small business advisor with Anchor Advisors, Ltd. in Chicago, Il. Since 2001 Anchor Advisors has been helping creative professional firms to grow, by helping them clarify their purpose, get the most from their people, keep their eye on key performance measures, and implement consistent processes
Brad Farris is a small business advisor with Anchor Advisors, Ltd. in Chicago, Il. Since 2001 Anchor Advisors has been helping creative professional firms to grow, by helping them clarify their purpose, get the most from their people, keep their eye on key performance measures, and implement consistent processes. Brad is also the author of The Business Owner’s Champion: 6 Practices to Build your Nerve and your Business.
