Don’t be afraid to be wrong!

Even a mistake can be a necessary step towards an important achievement.

Henry Ford

Let’s go back to childhood for one memory — we go to the blackboard, write absolutely unmistakably «parallelepiped» and «vinaigrette», sit down in our place and calmly forget what was there, «on stage». At best, praise from the teacher and indifference from classmates. But if a person comes out and writes instead of the word “still”, first “yesho”, then “esho”, and then completely “istcho”, then the class bursts into laughter already on the second attempt, and the teacher menacingly displays a swan in a magazine. A tricky question: which case will stick in memory better? For me — the second, despite the fact that it did not happen to me, but to my class colleague. And of course, he certainly remembered how the word «more» is spelled. And what are the side effects? The ability to take a hit, with dignity to pass by laughing people to your place and, aerobatics, to joke and laugh at yourself! And what do you think, will it be useful in life? Yes! And even the luckiest of us.

• The price of success: how much we are willing to pay

It’s nice to remember school and childhood — by the way, most of our complexes and problems with ourselves originate from there, but let’s get back to Ford and mistakes, for example, in work. Who can be successful? The one who never makes a mistake? There are no such people, everyone makes mistakes, and only a few come to significant success. Those who have a rich set of personal qualities — sociability, strength of character, intelligence, talents. And also those who care about the followers. And it is precisely in the plane of attitude towards followers that the recognition of one’s mistakes and failures lies. If the leader does this by openly admitting that he was wrong, but took a series of steps to correct the mistake, then his followers will do the same. This will result in fewer hidden time bombs. An employee who is afraid to admit his mistake seeks to hide it or shift responsibility to others. When it comes to security, the price of such fear is very high. Breaking a person who is used to fighting fate is much more difficult than someone who always lives in a state of “lessons learned”, and life changes exam papers.

When a person makes a mistake and does not feel fear, he lets his thoughts go free and begins to creatively approach the possibility of correcting a mistake or finding a new way to solve a problem faster and better. Sometimes this leads to unexpected discoveries. And once again we dive into childhood — when a loser thinks how not to stay in the second year, and instead of a simple proof he proves the theorem in his own way, he will not give in to life circumstances in the future — whether it be a car stuck in the snow or the bankruptcy of a company during the crisis. He will go ahead and look for new solutions. The argument «against» here will, of course, be the effectiveness of the employee and his competence. And it is true. A person goes the same way and makes mistakes again and again. Maybe it’s not his way if he can’t learn? In this case, mistakes will help you more quickly understand that you are not minding your own business, but, as we remember from Einstein, if a fish is judged by how it climbs trees, it will live its whole life thinking that it is stupid. And if a mistake leads to an understanding of one’s own path, that is a great mistake. To sum up: mistakes often help to strengthen the leader’s authority, acknowledging the mistake helps to correct it faster and avoid consequences, the result of the mistake is remembered better — the lesson is more likely to be remembered for a long time. And most importantly, admit your mistakes to yourself, do not justify yourself and do not consider that you did 30 push-ups if there were only 20 of them and with straight arms. Once this fact is accepted, training will bring better results.