When Should You Let an Employee Make a Mistake? - Peter Bregman - HarvardBusiness.org

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When Should You Let an Employee Make a Mistake?

"Put my training wheels back on," Sophia said in a stern tone, "Or I'm not going to ride my bike!" She had just turned four that day and wanted to learn to ride a bike like her older sister. Now she wasn't so sure.

After a lot of encouraging and a little stubbornness of my own, she was willing to try. We agreed to practice 15 minutes a day until she got it.

A couple of days later we weren't getting anywhere. It's not that she wasn't trying, it's just that she didn't seem to be able to get her balance on her own.

Then it dawned on me: I was getting in the way. I didn't want my baby girl to get hurt. And I was afraid if she fell she would give up trying completely. So as soon as she tipped to one side — even a little — I caught her.

In other words, Sophia still had training wheels on her bike: me. If I wanted her to learn, I had to let go — figuratively and actually. It's not that I planned to let her fall to the ground, it's just that I had to let her fall closer to the ground. So she had the opportunity to catch herself.

Learning to ride a bike — learning anything actually — isn't about doing it right. It's about doing it wrong and then adjusting. It's not about being in balance, it's about recovering balance. And you can't recover balance if someone keeps you from losing balance in the first place.

So my job got a lot harder. I ...

Original URL

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bregman/2009/11/when-should-you-let-an-employe.html

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bregman/2009/11/when-should-you-let-an-employe.html