To err is inevitable. Although in theory it might be possible to achieve a goal without a single thing going wrong, you'd be more likely to win the lottery. You're going to make mistakes and so will every single one of your team members.

You Want Mistakes

This seems insane on the surface. Why would you want your team to make mistakes? Because it needs to — at least part of the time. Of course you don't want rampant ineptitude; you'd spend as much time correcting mistakes as you would doing anything else. Think about what usually minimizes mistakes: practice. As you do something repeatedly, you get better at it.

At first impression, that might seem like the best route for your team. All you have to do is get them to work on the same thing repeatedly, and eventually the task will go more smoothly. There's only one problem: Your team is trying to achieve multiple goals, not the same goal over and over again. You may have continuing tasks that can benefit from practice. However, if the team remains in the same place, not going anywhere, then you aren't a leader so much as a caretaker.

Mistakes are the axel of choice and opportunity. Progress depends on movement, and you can only move if you are free to pick the wrong direction or action. Otherwise you'd be in a rigged game, where there was only one way to make things work, and you'd virtually never make a wrong decision. You can't always know what is right, but usually a mistake becomes obvious. Mistakes are the ultimate teacher. Given a set of circumstances or a type of task, they help you discern the proper direction by underscoring all the wrong ones. You want to embrace the mistakes that help the team progress while holding their number to a minimum.

Your Mistakes

You will make your share of mistakes. Learn to accept this and don't allow it to paralyze you. You should not ignore mistakes or assume that they cause no problems. However, the worst course you can take is to become so afraid that you avoid decisions as a way to avoid error. Inaction can be far more detrimental than making wrong decisions. Leaders must take calculated chances and learn from their mistakes. Moving past these issues allows you to lead in a meaningful and productive way.

Accomplishment always requires a degree of risk, which is not inherently bad. Every day you take risks, even if you don't realize it. There is a chance of being injured in doing many everyday things, from driving a car to using a paring knife, that you think you've mastered. By the time we become adults, most of us learn to handle some degree of risk management. Look both ways before crossing a street. Grab a pot holder before lifting up a hot pan. Wear a seat belt. You use your experience and knowledge to apply sound judgment based on what you learned from your mistakes in the past. As a leader, you do the same thing for the team: Stay informed and use common sense. Make sure you and the others on your team have all the information you need to make smart decisions.

Team Member Mistakes

It can get frustrating to deal with other people's mistakes, but you must get used to it. If you can make mistakes, why expect the other people on the team to be perfect? You'll only get frustrated and things will never work any better. Mistakes will happen on the team, and you need to learn to deal with them.

Don't try to reduce error by creating an atmosphere of fear. Many who have gone through the management ranks lean on this behavior, as wasteful and counter-productive as it is. How do people react when they are scared? They indulge in that ancient heritage, the fight or flight response. Either they become belligerent and defensive, denying the mistake and even continuing on the same path, or they run away and hide, ignoring the problem and your demand to fix it.

When fear is the motivator, the result is a positive feedback loop, which, ironically, is anything but positive. In positive feedback, a system reinforces what is happening, like turning a car wheel in the same direction that the front is moving during a skid. The result is that things spin out of control.

The team member errs, the leader becomes angry, the team member compounds the error to avoid facing it, the leader gets more angry, and so the cycle goes around and around — a complete waste of time. Keep the atmosphere, and either the leader discharges the team member or the latter, having had enough of the nonsense, leaves. When someone new comes in and inevitably makes mistakes, the cycle begins anew.

Whenever possible, keeping people in place after they make mistakes is the economical action. You save money, efficiency, time, and goodwill among team members. There are some areas in which mistakes are intolerable — generally in the realm of law and ethics. However, if people haven't absconded with the funds, caused death, wreaked havoc, or otherwise decimated the reputation of the organization, keep them on. Why would you want to remove someone who has just learned a lesson that would cost you as much to repeat for the next candidate?

However, you do want to minimize the number of mistakes necessary to learning. Start people on smaller projects that have a greater chance of success. As they gain experience, you can increase the complexity of responsibility and the difficulty of the assignment. Throughout it all, make sure team members learn how to handle mistakes and learn from them.