Your Biggest Mistake Is Not Asking What Mistake You're Making

John Maxwell

• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781400275458
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Smart leaders learn from their own mistakes. Smarter ones learn from others' mistakes—and successes.  John C. Maxwell wants to help you become the smartest leader you can be by sharing Chapter 12, Your Biggest Mistake Is Not Asking What Mistake You're Making, of Leadership Gold with you. After nearly forty years of leading, Maxwell has mined the gold so you don't have to. Each chapter contains detailed application exercises and a "Mentoring Moment" for leaders who desire to mentor others using the book. 

YOUR BIGGEST MISTAKE IS
NOT ASKING WHAT MISTAKE
YOU’RE MAKING

Recently after I taught a session on conflict, a young man came up to me during the break and said,“I’m going to start my own organization.”

“Good for you,” I replied.

“Yeah,” he continued, “I want to build a business ‘the right way.’ That way I won’t have to deal with any problems.”

“You know,” I said as he was turning to leave, “you’re making the mistake of thinking you won’t make any mistakes.”

IGNORANCE ISN’T BLISS

When you’re young and idealistic, you think you can lead better than many of the people who have led others before you. I know that was true for me. When I got started in my career, I was positive, aggressive, optimistic—and totally naive. I often led by assumption. By that I mean that in my youthful zeal, I usually took for granted that everything was fine. I didn’t look for problems because I didn’t expect to have any. The result? I got blindsided. Whenever that occurred, I was bewildered. How could such a thing happen? I would wonder.

After getting blindsided for the fourth or fifth time, in desperation I started asking experienced leaders for help. One of those leaders told me something that changed my leadership. He said, “John, the biggest mistake you can make is to not ask what mistakes you are making.”

That piece of advice set my leadership journey on a new course. It was my introduction to realistic thinking—something I was not accustomed to embracing. As I examined myself, I learned some things:

I gave little thought to what might go wrong.

I assumed that the “right way” would be mistake-free.

I did not acknowledge mistakes I made to myself or others.

I was not learning from my mistakes.

I was not helping others by teaching lessons learned from my mistakes.

If I wanted to become a better leader, I wou...