3 Tips for Leaders to Learn from their Mistakes … and Successes

The best leadership insights are gained from past experience, according to Bill Donahue, Senior Consultant at NuBrick Partners. As he explains in a recent article for SmartBrief, the choices made, habits formed, and principals adopted throughout the course of a leader’s career all add up to the leader you are today.

While the best leaders seek wisdom from mentors, authors, and peers, another resource Donahue suggests, is the leader’s own personal story, and offers three tips for leaders to explore their history to mine for insights that can help them grow.

Digging through past decisions

Keep a list of important decision-making moments in a leadership journal throughout your career. Review your list to identify themes and insights and glean wisdom for future decisions.

Revitalize your relationships

As you mine your leadership story, assess the quality of your closest relationships to understand what impact you have on the people around you. Accept any transgressions and make them right if need be.

Take note of transforming moments

Pay attention to the personal and professional events that you have experienced throughout your career, including who was involved, how you responded, emotions you processed, support you enlisted, pain you struggled through, healing you experienced and success you achieved. Learn from your mistakes, and your successes.

As Donahue says, “experience is not the best teacher. Evaluated experience is the best teacher.” Read the full article here.