By JC Abusaid, CEO/President as Featured in Forbes
From relatively innocuous blunders to cataclysmic disasters, mistakes are part of life. We all make them, we’ve all suffered from them—and we’ve all hopefully grown from them.
As business leaders and decision makers, we’re given copious opportunities to trip up, and that goes for the people we manage, too. Thankfully, we can bounce back from mistakes much of the time and make use of them to sharpen our responses and business processes.
From my own experience and from observing others, here are some fundamental lessons I’ve learned about making mistakes and rebounding from them.
What I Wish I’d Learned Sooner: Believe In Yourself
I won’t belabor this point, but it’s an important one, especially for those starting out in their careers: Don’t sell yourself short. This has likely been my biggest life mistake.
The seed was planted early. As the second son in a Middle Eastern family, I struggled with self-doubt, which was evident in the early days of my career. My turning point was quitting a job and seeing the response—realizing how much others valued my work and impact. Learning to believe in myself and my abilities has been integral to carrying me to where I am today.
If you’re struggling with this, find a mentor you respect to help guide you.
This can give you an unbiased perspective on the positive things you’re doing that you struggle to see. Be sensitive to the interactional styles of others. Some colleagues and managers are just terrible communicators. Hints of approval might be quite subtle. Don’t assume that no feedback means you’re doing a lousy job. If you lack that confidence in yourself, inspiring it in others won’t happen.
The Biggest Opportunity For Learning: Hiring
I hired several wrong people early on, and the obstacles you go through to remedy a challenging employee situation can be epic. As a result, we’ve reinvented our approaches to new hires, giving employees far more supportive feedback and coaching from the start and all along the way.
Equally important, our interview protocols are more collaborative and diligent. People are involved from different departments, including the team that will be working alongside future hires, and we take in a wider range of inputs.
The result? An incredible team of hard-working people who support one another.
