In Seth Godin’s altMBA I was exposed to a lot of ideas. I learned so much that I think I will be taking the next few years to even begin to unpack the depth of material covered in that course. It didn’t help that I was doing it during the pandemic at a time when people were under tremendous stress from all angles- myself included. But, I reasoned, if I didn’t do it then when was I going to do it? I applied and got in there was even a scholarship for folks like me who work in the nonprofit realm.
As I was cleaning my desk today I came across Seth’s manifesto for small teams doing important work. Among the items listed is this:
Make mistakes, Own Them, Fix The, Share Them
So here I go.
Having a growth mindset means to me that you can always fail forward. That being in a creative zone means that you try things that fail, but that there is always something to be learned. I think one huge lesson that I can share is about listening. Yes, you need to ask the question that gets to the heart of the matter, but you also need to listen carefully to what is being said and what is being unsaid.
I’ve made this mistake. I didn’t ask and I certainly didn’t listen at the start of my time in a previous role. If I had, I might have heard that what I needed to gauge the lack of psychological safety in an organization dealing with trauma and under stress from previous leadership which had carried forward. Sure there was an opportunity to try new things and bring new ideas to the table. That is always something that attracts the creative in me, but because there were so many challenges there had not been the time to truly establish trust in the organization and therefore even new ideas could be seen as attacks or worse yet, undermining authority.
In this time when we are all still dealing with the effects of living through a global impact of the scale of this pandemic, it is even more important that we find ways to extend kindness, grace, and care for others and ourselves. If someone was prone to making mistakes (i.e. if they are humans) then now is the time that could cause those to occur more often and have many unexpected consequences. In our homes, our workplaces, and our social interactions, we are relearning how to be with each other. How to really think about how this interaction physically or digitally affects another person’s quality of life, anxiety, and sense of self isn’t an easy thing to do.
My mistake wasn’t about needing to hear that I was valued and capable of my work. It had more to do with understanding how fractured and alone I felt as a result of all that happened to me, my family, and the world in 2020. It was about not asking about and listening for the way relationships were formed, trust was built, and scary issues were discussed and resolved. Had I been more investigative, I would have seen that mistakes were things that weren’t talked about, conflict was brushed under the rug and ultimately it was a place where as a creative I was bound to be a round peg in a square hole because failing forward was not an option.
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