Many people stay fixed in their ways and stubbornly resist change. After a certain age, many people become so stubborn, that learning is virtually impossible. This is one reason that many people (including employers) seek younger applicants. The solution is not to be fearful of age or experience. Experience and age are extremely valuable attributes. It is unfortunate that in America people tend to avoid revealing age for fear that others will think them “over the hill.” Experience allows individuals to avoid problems, difficulties, costs, and other undesirable consequences precisely because of the “over the hill” status. The negative obsession with age distracts many people from seeing the value in experience and age particularly when there are considerable costs at stake. Age and experience provide the highly desirable ability to avoid certain costs based on previous experience with similar situations. This indicates another important lesson that is frequently overlooked in West. In the West, we tend to see a mistake as something undesirable and “bad.”
The “Oh my Goodness” of Mistakes
“Mistakes,” do bring an added value in that they give the benefit of having concrete results to evaluate past performance. Of course, it is preferable that an error not be too costly. Otherwise, it may be prohibitive. However, if the proper groundwork is laid and enough research is done before making a decision, any “mistake” will provide indispensable information about what works and what does not. Experience and age provide this kind of benefit. Unfortunately, Westerners tend to see “mistake” more as a result than a process. A great deal of focus is placed on trying to avoid a mistake. This can often limit the possible returns that would normally accrue to anyone who focused instead on the positive goal of completing a task and on the achievement rather than the negative goal of mistake avoidance. This mindset of seeing mistakes as something to avoid makes individuals extremely risk-averse. An aversion to risk is not necessarily undesirable. But, to be unduly afraid of reasonable risks that generate desirable reward also greatly impedes progress. I have a good deal of experience in this area as I was indoctrinated as child to be terrified of making mistakes by both parents in different ways. This had a lasting impact me and had a big influence on the development of the Shinsei Method™. For, in order to develop a more positive approach to life and work, I had to first review the way I thought about things. Through this level of self-analysis I realized the importance of terms like mistake. I learned that mistake usually has a very arbitrary meaning. Individuals and businesses set their own goals. They determine what they want to achieve and what they do not. Since there is no universal rule book that says one goal must be achieved over another, the whole process of goal setting is rather arbitrary. This means that great many people–myself included–become overly stressed about wishes by treating them rather mandates instead of nice-to-haves. Food, water, and shelter are life-mandates (assuming that the individual wants to live, but this is not always a given). Business goals are wishes. Since a company is often responsible to many people: customers, employees, vendors, regulators, etc., some of those “wishes” are important. However, it is critical to give objectivity to goals. Otherwise goals quickly become self-imposed burdens rather than tools of inspiration. This difference in mentality means a lot to a state of mental well-being. The same is true of the word mistake. If a mistake is taken as feedback–as it is in the East where human growth is taken to be a process rather than a result–it looses its burdensome qualities and becomes extremely valuable information.
A mistake is a verification that something did not work as expected. A mistake provides information that was not available before. It is much like a scientist’s experiment. If an experiment does not turn out as a scientist expected, the scientist does not curse the experiment and the experimenter or call himself a failure. He or she takes the concrete information that the experiment provides and uses it to build on what is already known. This is how knowledge and science are advanced. it is progress. Unfortunately, this valuable lesson from science is never taught in school. In all of my years of grade school and college, I never heard this observation made. I only read about it in the works of people like Albert Einstein who did not care much for school either as it happens. It was really during the course of recovering from mental depression and during physical rehabilitation that this lesson became real for me. This highlights not that education is fruitless. Learning is crucial. However, mass education does more damage than good particularly in the way it discourages independent thought. On the contrary, independent thought is the essential element of leadership.
The True Elements of Mistake
To view a mistake as a feedback mechanism requires not only independent thought–since it goes outside of the conventional box of learning that advocates a mistake to be something to avoid–but it also requires a fair amount of self-trust precisely because this way of thinking is outside conventional practice. Many people when presented with the idea of a mistake as a valuable offering of feedback would probably agree in principle, but when tasked to apply this understanding of mistake in every day life, they would find it extremely difficult to do.
All of the social pressure and training falls on the side of avoiding mistakes rather than developing competence. Mistakes help to develop competence if lessons are learned from the errors. This means that ongoing analysis, reflection, evaluation, and verification are also extremely important elements in developing competence in any area: leadership, communication, parenting, learning, and life. However, in order to benefit from these valuable lessons, the individual must be open to learning from them. There is just not a lot of social support to learn in a thoroughgoing manner, even though learning is critical to leadership and the productive mentality.
The “Youthfulness” of Mistakes
A “youthful” attitude and approach are also highly desirable. The willingness and the eagerness to learn new things, to absorb advice, and to make reasonable adjustments are important aspects of development, progress, and leadership. Youthfulness also makes an individual much more pleasant to work with, but it has many forms. Youthfulness is not just determined in age, but in attitude, demeanor, approach, appearance, etc. Of course, these are all integrated with one another. The ability and willingness to listen is an important aspect of a more “youthful” attitude. Listening is an important component of developing leadership and communication competence that is minimized in school training. The youthful attitude combined with the wisdom of experience, the skill of listening, and a balanced view toward mistakes are all examples of the productivity mentality. Notice that the productive mentality is just that: a mentality. It is a way of looking at things. The same can be said about success, leadership, and management. They are mentalities. They constitute a perspective. Therefore, they are well within an individual’s power to change, to adapt, or to adjust.
The Challenge of Change
An important point about change should be mentioned since it has become a superficial buzz word in many business settings. Not all change is good. Change for change’s sake is wasteful. However, change that produces more desirable results is certainly a change worth considering. Change that reduces costs and risks is noteworthy. Change that improves efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity is advantageous to pursue. However, people are often resistant and recalcitrant toward this kind of change even if it can be shown to be in their own best interests. This resistance to positive change is what the confident leader and the rational individual often face. To accept that many people are either very disturbed (or hostile or unhelpful) seems much more reasonable (if exceedingly difficult) to do. This is made even more difficult in a regulatory, political, or cultural environment that masks this indecency in big smiles, soft words, or trite gestures. Many people have become pros at disarming others with kindness, but a quick look behind that “first impression” reveals an untrustworthy form. However, taking a realistic and more philosophical view toward this everyday challenge greatly facilitates a more healthy and less stressful view of the world. In addition, it is often nearly impossible to change other people even if a positive change would be in their best interest. It is only necessary to think of the unfortunate cases of gambling, drug addiction, and smoking to see the truth in this statement. Addicts often carry on their addition despite the severe harm it causes to themselves or others. It is not the most positive of examples, but it is a memorable one. Learning to accept what you can’t change is much more constructive than lamenting it. It also frees up more time to focus on the things that can be changed. However, one of the most difficult challenges is knowing how to tell the difference between the two.
The Elements of Leadership
Communication (as well as leadership, character, value, virtue or any other unpopular characteristic) requires a certain level of inner strength, inner balance, and self-trust. Of these, self-trust is the most important. Once self-trust is established, inner strength and inner balance are natural byproducts, or as the Shinsei Philosophy™ highlights, “beneficial byproducts” of the principle of self-trust. Getting to self-trust however, is one of the great challenges of leadership, individuality, and life. Many cultural factors discourage self-trust. Schools represent one of the most prominent examples of this. People also have various ways of injecting doubt into the most optimistic of plans with snide remarks, derision, and other unhelpful practices. Unless an individual takes care, these pings of negativity can slowly eat away at self-trust until the very characteristics that confident leaders (and confident individuals) need, are eroded out of existence. These include, clarity of conviction, commitment to an ideal or a plan, belief in a goal, and faith in the self (i.e. self-trust). It is only possible to develop a level of self-faith or self-trust through taking action and then observing the results. Action that produces desirable results tends to encourage more optimism about the choices made and the inner values held. However, it is very difficult to get to that stage of self-belief if people in the culture constantly or actively seek to shut that down through callous remarks, dismissive body language, or just plain ignorance. The modern culture makes it very difficult to build the kind of inner belief system that is required for effective communication and confident leadership. Either an individual is lucky enough to have parents or teachers (or both) to start a young mind off in a constructive direction, or he or she will have to embark on this often lonely but worthwhile road through self-initiative. This is not all bad. Self-initiative is another of the very valuable traits that self-development, self-improvement, leadership all require. This is also arduous. However, it is far better to recognize the difficulty, and then set about the business of creating plans to address that difficulty than to be swamped by the sheer bluntness of the challenge. The most constructive path is often the unpopular one, but unpopularity is irrelevant for leadership and communication success. Popularity or cultural convention are not prerequisites for achievement. If that were true, many of the greatest of the world’s achievers and creators would never have accomplished a thing.
These are but a few examples of the practices and attitudes that form the basis of the productive mentality. They highlight the approach that today’s leader has to take in order to develop as a leader, a communicator, and an individual.