It’s true that there is a lot to learn from the past, but all too often we get stuck there and it can cause great leaders to stumble. Say their team has a critique of them, or a past decision turns out to be a mistake, or that past decision is still cause division among the team. The leader might spend all kinds of time agonizing over how they got to this point, what they did, what they should have done differently. In the end they end up “retrying the case” so to speak, defending, justifying and trying to help others understand how they got here or why they did what they did. And don’t get me wrong, learning from our past is important — but dwelling, defending and explaining ourselves endlessly for those past decisions isn’t going to change your current reality. If your team has a critique of you, that’s reality. The question isn’t just how you got here, it’s: what do we know now that we didn’t know before? What do I need to do to change? Is there a misinterpretation on their end? A misunderstanding on my end? Is it a wholesale wrong, or a partial one? If partial, what do we keep, and what do we change? Make sure you aren’t going back in time and rehashing yesterday’s debates and challenges. The objective of the today’s reality is to design tomorrow’s outcome, NOT justify yesterday.
By all means, learn from your mistakes, but don’t judge yesterday’s decisions with the knowledge of today. You know more now. If nothing else, today you know the results of yesterday’s decisions. Instead of judging yourself of yesterday, be better today. And sometimes being better is helping your team understand their experience. For instance:
I have a client whose staff is very fond of the phrase “leadership doesn’t have our back.” If true, that is a very big problem. So the question is, what has leadership done wrong? And how is the staff interpreting those decisions? The problem with a lot of decisions isn’t that they’re wrong, it’s that everyone isn’t expecting it to solve the same problem the same way. What looks like unwavering support to one can look to another like they’ve been thrown under the bus. In this moment of critique, you have a perfect opportunity for communication and problem solving. Could leadership have done something different? Do something better in the future? Heck yeah — they can communicate decisions, the why, and the how it supports the staff, better. Could the staff do something different? Heck yeah! They can ask clarifying questions and offer a Generous Assumption to the leaders. Both of these are actions that can only be done in the present and future, and neither is about re-debating the past.
By seeing the present reality as a case study, we don’t judge it as either good or bad; we just acknowledge that it is. Then you can ask: What do I want the outcome to be? That’s looking forward, not backward. That’s acknowledging the reality and taking the steps you need to make it better. What decisions do I make going forward to get there?
Sure, you can certainly ask, “What can I learn from the past that can help me get to this new future?” That’s a helpful perspective that gives you the freedom to choose something different. The idea that the past is to be learned form, not relived, sounds so obvious, but it’s so often missed. We have an instinct to wallow, rather than learn and grow and move forward.
Honor the past. Learn from it. But don’t live in it.
