Originally printed on April 10, 2002 in the Amarillo Globe-News.
Earlier this year, I wrote a More Than Brick & Mortar column on leadership by referencing cowboy words of wisdom. After the article appeared, I went on a roundup to find more of these words of wisdom. “Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.” “Always drink upstream from the herd.” “Timin’ has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.” In addition to these more amusing quotes, I also found some that really made me think about my role in developing leadership skills in students at West Texas A&M University. I’d like to share these with you.
“No one is listenin’ ‘til you make a mistake.”
How true this rings. Each of us can do wonderful things, but no one notices us until we make a mistake. This is especially true with college students. Students need to be complimented in the good times. And yes, mistakes need to be noticed and corrected, but they shouldn’t always overshadow the good! When a student makes a mistake, that is the perfect teaching opportunity.
“Experience is somthin’ you don’t get until just after you need it.”
As a staff member and instructor, I need to teach students how to use mistakes to improve themselves, how to take risks, how to take responsibility for their mistakes and how to learn from bad experiences.
Bad experiences and mistakes don’t necessarily mean failure. A person becomes a failure when he or she chooses to continue to make the same mistakes and not learn from them.
It is my responsibility to make sure students are asking themselves the following questions: Am I making the same mistakes over and over again? Do I take risks? Do I hold myself responsible for my actions? How can I use mistakes to make myself or this project better?
“A cowboy never asks another cowboy about his past.”
Don’t dwell on mistakes or the mistakes of others. What many students don’t realize is that making a mistake is just a momentary event. It doesn’t have to last a lifetime, and most people forget about others’ mistakes. Time heals and forgets. I hope to teach students that when they make a mistake, then need to learn from it and then get over it. I also need to practice what I preach! When a student makes a mistake, I need to address it with then, help them move beyond their mistakes and encourage them to get over it.
“Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”
Recently I read a book, “Failing Forward” by John C. Maxwell. He suggested several steps on how we can use failure to better ourselves. According to Maxwell, achieving people accept responsibility; they know that making mistakes is a part of the process.
They also maintain a positive attitude, while taking appropriate risks and continuing to persevere. Many of us are afraid to take risks because of the fear of failure. It paralyzes us. We can’t move forward. We know how failure feels, and we don’t like it.
Failing forward includes finding the good in every bad situation, and sometimes that is really hard to do.
I hope to make it my mission to allow students to fail, to teach them to use their mistakes as stepping stones to improvement and to help prepare them for bigger and better things in life. It’s not fair to our students to be protected from failure. They are being robbed of extraordinary experience to improve themselves. When our students hit the professional work world, they need to know how to bounce back from mistakes. I have the unique opportunity to help them.
Once again, in the words of Dale Evans:
Some trails are happy ones,
Others are blue.
It’s the way you ride the trail that counts,
Here’s a happy one for you.