Maturing as a leader, heck, as a person is a result of learning from our mistakes. Countless times I would interview an executive with dialog around past mistakes they made that can be used to add value moving forward. Often times the honesty of pour decisions benefited the candidate more than hiding the facts. It would come out in due diligence anyway. Sometimes I would tell a short story of mistakes I made or are in the process of making to break the ice. Makes for effective and REAL dialog!
Inc. magazine had a recent article about organizations finding ways to reward people for logging or posting mistakes on a company blog. Read more..."Mistakes Were Made"
As mentioned in the article, such internal blogs are rate still. The challenges come in the obvious point that we as humans may shy away from such activity or the grey area in rewarding vs. punishing.
Organizations that adopt such a strategy might find interesting trends through time. What is the attitude towards the person who post a mistake vs. post a mistake with a lesson you and I can learn from vs. not posting a mistake that you and I know took place? Do you incourage someone to put themself out there for judgement or let it go? Would people make up little mistakes with huge lessons to "contribute" in an environment that rewards such activity? What are the pro and cons?
I see it like this: we all make mistakes, let's get real. The value of training increases greatly within any organization when mistakes are documented with the lesson learned story to follow. Others may be making the same mistake and don't even realize it yet...this open culture could save valuable relationships with clients and vendors not to mention valuable time.
