How To Let Others Fail

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever decided between letting someone fail (aka face another important lesson or learn from their own mistakes) and jumping in to “save the world”? As Coaches, we often coach others to let folks experiment and learn. It is especially difficult for very technical folks who just became managers. Rather than empowering their team members to make their own decisions, they often jump in and tell them exactly how something should be done. As a Coach, on many occasions, I found myself having those tough conversations with managers and executives on different levels of an organization. What I heard back was often, “The people on my team are too inexperienced, and so I have to tell them what to do.” As a Coach, you do all in your power to get folks out of this “I need to control things” mentality, but it is one of the most difficult ones to crack (especially when there are tight deadlines and there is no room to “fail”). In this blog, I share how I found myself to be that controlling person, what it took NOT to jump in, and how I was able to let others make mistakes.