Kouzes and Posner ask the question, “What can you learn when things don’t go as expected?” as their 4th behaviour in the practice of Challenging the Process. I want to shift that a little and ask, what can you learn when things go as expected? More of a positive right? We are really good at debriefing and deconstructing things when they go wrong, and rightly so, so that we can hopefully not do whatever that was again. But we often skirt over wins, – yea!! we did it! and move on. But what have we learned when we win or are successful… what worked?
One of the questions I ask in my coaching when a leader is hitting a roadblock is “have you ever run into this before and what happened?” If it was successful, how was it solved? Many times, the leader has run into this situation, issue before and successfully traversed the challenge. So lets not forget about the wins, sometimes the small wins and what we can learn from them.
John K Whitehead & Associates coaches individuals and organizations in becoming more effective by helping them improve their interpersonal communications, emotional intelligence, and resiliency.
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