Leadership Nugget - Lou Holtz - Mistakes

You can tell a lot about a person’s character, not by the mistakes he has made, but by how he has handled those mistakes. – Lou Holtz

It's human to make mistakes.  It is human to not want the world to know about your mistakes. 

But owning where you came up short, an error was identified, or a deadline was missed because of your action or inaction is critical to being a professional #DeskJockey. 

Unjustly placing blame or not owning your slice of "the blame pie" for the mistake results in no one getting better. Being defensive or not listening to feedback about how you could have tackled the situation differently is foolish. 

Blame placing, defensive behavior, and not listening prevents you from learning from the “school of hardknocks”. The price of admission to this school has already been paid via the consequences of your mistake.  Own the mistake, grab the silver lining and learn something from it. 

An HBR article describes this as having a “growth mindset”. With a growth mindset you seek challenges and learning opportunities with the thought process of no matter how good you are, you can always get better through effort and practice.

#DeskJockeyChallenge: When something doesn’t go your way or you make a mistake, don’t throw your hands up. Take the adversity and turn it into an opportunity to learn. #DigIN when you feel like you #LitterallyCantEven.