Learn from your mistakes to build on your experiences

One aspect of being an effective leader is the ability to learn from your mistakes. You can think of mistakes as opportunities to improve yourself. The first step to learning from a mistake is to admit that you made a mistake. I’ve made many mistakes throughout my career. For example, I interned at Disney Research while earning my PhD. After completing my PhD, I interviewed for a post doctorate position. Despite doing well on my internship and publishing a conference paper, I did not get the job. What happened? The research scientist I worked with left Disney Research to become a professor, and his replacement decided to take the research group in a different direction. I did not consider this. Lesson learned? When interviewing for a position, you must make sure that your skills and experiences align with the company’s strategy.

Once you admit your errors, you can reflect on what caused you to make it:

• Did you not listen when receiving a task? I’ve done this myself on many occasions. For example, I’ve allowed my mind to wander instead of listening to the person talking. Here, it’s important to not have any distractions. Take notes. I prefer an old fashioned pen and notebook.
• Did you misunderstand what was asked of you? It happens to all of us occasionally. Recently, I spoke to a program manager about setting up a peer review meeting. I noted that I should have the meeting in a couple weeks. When I received the meeting notice, he commented that we weren’t ready to have the meeting. Simple mistake made, so I cancelled the meeting.
• Did you overestimate your own abilities? You thought you had the skills necessary to complete your project, and you soon realized that you did not know what you’re doing. This happened to me when I took a stretch assignment in software engineering. A month into the assignment, I realized that I was over my head in writing a software application.bi spoke to my Agile team, and they gave me advice and assistance I needed to complete it.
• Did you not care about what you were doing? When you feel unchallenged, it becomes easy to not care for your quality of work. This is a dangerous place to be because you will develop a reputation for shoddy work. You get out of this mindset by proactively speaking to your manager. If you feel uncomfortable, speak to your mentor or someone you trust. I’ve had to complete administrative tasks multiple times. These can be boring, yet they need to be done. In fact, I’ve helped my manager in the past by volunteering to complete project plans.
• Did you not double-check your work? This is a common mistake whether one writes software, documentation, or designs hardware. In fact, it is different to find your own mistakes in your work because we all become blind to our own endeavors. There are multiple ways to prevent mistakes. Take a break if you get tired. I’ve found myself in situations when I’ve worked long days and returned the following morning to correct the errors I created because I was tired. Alternatively, hand your work over to a colleague to look at it. A fresh pair of eyes can find flaws you missed. In fact, this is the general idea of peer reviews: people unfamiliar with your work will mark your errors to help you improve.

I could list many more examples why people make mistakes. The important things for you to do after admitting errors are to reflect on them and learn. You should ask how you messed up and write ideas on how you can do better next time. Although it can be easy to dwell on your missteps, you should put them aside and not be hard on yourself. As long as you learn your lessons, you will do better next time.