Learning from Your Wins
Most of us intuitively know there is much to learn from the past. As Winston Churchill famously said, “The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward.”
But in practice?
We tend to oversimplify. We equate “learning from the past” to “learning from our mistakes.”
Those two are NOT the same!
Believe me, there’s far more to our pasts than mistakes.
A few months ago, I suggested three simple questions you can use to reflect on almost any situation. Today, I want to help you use these three questions to objectively review the past, harvest that learning in an effective way, and apply it moving forward.
They are:
- What went well?
- What could have gone better?
- What will you do next time?
What You Did Well: The Power of Celebration
I’m always stunned by how many leaders seem to abhor celebration.
Somewhere along the line, we were taught that the best learning comes from mistakes. Maybe we think that focusing on what went well will lower our standards…or that by celebrating a win, we might lose our edge.
But wins can teach just as much as your mistakes, if not more.
Imagine you’re driving from one city to another, but you only have information on which roads to avoid. You fire up your GPS and hit start. But instead of a blue line and directions, you see 17 ways not to get to your destination.
Frustrating, right?
That’s what life is like if you only learn from your mistakes. It’s disheartening, tiring, and there’s a good chance you’ll get lost again.
Now, imagine you record both your mistakes and your wins. You open your GPS and see 17 ways not to get there, plus 1 way you successfully got there in the past.
That changes everything, doesn’t it?
That’s the power of recognizing what we did well-celebrating our successes, not just our mistakes.
As a leader, recognizing wins on a team level is just as important. Celebrating success helps the team feel like they’re in the car with you, instead of stuck trying to figure out their own routes. It gives them a positive outcome and purpose worth working for.
What You Can Do Better: Always Room for Improvement
The second question, “What could have gone better?” might feel like an invitation to judge ourselves harshly. If we’re not careful, we start listening to the inner critic and beating ourselves up over the ‘should haves’ and ‘shouldn’t haves.’
But judgment isn’t the best way to learn from this question.
The key to gathering better insights from this question is to turn down judgment and turn up your curiosity. Ask objectively, without putting yourself on trial.
Let’s say you’re back on the road again, traveling on the way back home from the city. This time, you’ve already driven the route once. So you can start applying that knowledge…
- I made a wrong turn on the way, so I need to watch for that on the way back.
- This area is really dark, so I should be careful in case there is wildlife.
- I need to get over into the right lane early because this area gets congested.
These reflections don’t mean you’re a bad driver! They are just objective observations that you’re applying to make your experience better.
We can apply this mindset to almost any area of life, because there’s always room for improvement.
Putting It Into Practice
The culmination of the first two questions is the third one, “What will you do next time?”
That’s the question I challenge you to consider this week. It’s a powerful question, especially when built on the foundation of the first two questions.Look back to look forward, and most importantly…look beyond your mistakes. Because the past may be fixed, but the future contains infinite possibilities.