[November 8, 2016] Many times I’ve written here that it’s best to learn from the mistakes of others. This is a cheap, effective, and quick way to learn about leadership and it works. It works rather smoothly although it does require some talent to pick up on the real lessons. However, I’m one of those leaders who had to learn the hard way on occasion and I’m the idiot far too often because of it.
I would list those here at this blog www.theleadermaker.com but they are simply too many and boorish, yet I have listed a few for your entertainment. One of my biggest blunders was when I thought I knew almost everything about company-level leadership, but I didn’t and failed to provide adequate guidance to my unit for an upcoming military inspection. We failed the inspection. The troops were furious at not getting the opportunity to fully prepare the paperwork or correct obvious faults.
Of course I believed that a unit, its troops that is, should always be ready so why do something extra like they wanted. What I failed to realize was that the troops needed every chance possible to show what they could do for me and I had not allowed them that chance. They failed me because I had failed them.
On another occasion I didn’t put much thought to the location of a Prepared Battle Position. These are locations that combat units build to fend off an enemy and require considerable expenditure in material resources, hard physical work, and time. My mind was elsewhere when I selected the location and against the advice of my Executive Officer. Later we had to relocate. I heard very little grumbling about it but, again, I had failed my men. They had to split their work between two locations and because of time constraints neither prepared position was to standard.
There may seem like irrelevant examples but I can assure you that those who worked for me remembered. More importantly, I remembered and never repeated those mistakes. What is most problematic for me as their leader was that I didn’t learn from the previous commander and made those same mistakes again. Leaders learn best when they learn from others. In this case … I’m the idiot.
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