
Leadership is about learning and improving. Forgetting bad experiences is tempting, but it could be more useful to learn from them.Â
Leadership researchers James Kouzes and Barry Posner, found out that leaders learn from their experiences.
In their classic book, “The Leadership Challenge”, they suggest to ask the following questions at the end of the project, or at regular intervals through it in order to learn from it.
- What did we do well? Or, what are we doing well at the moment?
- What did we do poorly? Or, what are we doing poorly?
- What did we learn from this? Or, what are we learning from this project?
- How can we do better the next time? Or, how can we be doing better than we are currently?
It’s a key for this process to work that all four questions are answered by all the team members. The goal here is to have a complete view of the problems and a set of lessons learned, before engaging in new projects. That’s why you must record all the ideas and answers and make them available to everyone.
Just think, how much you already know that can be valuable the next time you embark on a new project. Do you have it on paper? Have you shared that knowledge? Leadership is not about not failing, but about learning from the experiences and using them on the next project. It’s about Experience Learning.
Go on, and answer the four questions for your current project, ask your teammates to do the same. Make the answers available to everyone, and start a “Lessons Learned” Folder where everyone can check out the information.
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