The Biggest Mistake Is to Make No Mistakes

 

Especially in the business world, we want to be impeccable — including as communicators. At the same time, we believe in continuous improvement. This creates a dilemma that many professionals face:

How can I improve my communication skills or social skills while at the same time avoiding mistakes during the improvement process?

In almost any other human endeavor, this idea would seem absurd. If we are trying to acquire new skills or change the way we do something in music, sports, art, or any hobby, it is obvious that experimentation will be part of the process. And whenever we experiment with new behaviors, techniques, or approaches, mistakes are inevitable.

Yet when it comes to communication and soft skills, many people expect improvement without experimentation.

On the one hand, many companies complain that soft-skills training yields little or no measurable results. But an important question is rarely asked:

What conditions does the company create for employees to continue working on their skills after the training?

Expecting a single training session to create lasting behavioral change is as unrealistic as expecting one weightlifting session to produce significant muscle growth.

Consider a concrete example. Many communication and leadership trainings include some form of role-playing. Participating in a single role-playing exercise will probably not change much. You may gain useful insights and ideas, which is valuable, but practical mastery requires repetition and practice.

The logical conclusion would be to ask:

Apart from external training programs, do we regularly incorporate role-playing into our teams?

In sales departments, this is relatively common. The more relevant question is how consistently it is practiced. But at least there is often a tradition of role-playing and rehearsal. What about other departments? In many organizations, such activities are far less common.

Creating conditions for ongoing skill development is not necessarily difficult. What is required, however, is an intellectual shift. Organizations must move beyond merely paying lip service to continuous improvement and start creating spaces where employees can actually improve.

And improvement inevitably involves experimentation.

Experimentation inevitably involves mistakes.

The biggest mistake, therefore, may be trying so hard to avoid mistakes that we never give ourselves the opportunity to improve.

 

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Communication Psychology and HR: in small and practical lessons once a week.

With a focus on international and multilingual business conversations.

Gerhard Ohrband is a psychologist from Hamburg/Germany, specialized in Communication Psychology and HR. He consults individuals and companies worldwide (in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Russian) on how to avoid costly misunderstandings and handle conflicts with employees and clients.

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