The Role Of Experience In Your Growth Journey

Experience plus honest self-examination leads to wisdom.

One of the most frustrating things for young leaders is having to wait to get their chance to shine. Leaders are naturally impatient, and I was no different. During the first ten years of my leadership, I heard a lot about the importance of experience. In my first position, people did not trust my judgment. They said I was too young and inexperienced. I was frustrated, but at the same time I understood their scepticism. I was young and new into the job. After I led for a couple of years, people began to take notice of me. They saw that I had some ability.

Time after time, my youth and inexperience were pointed out to me. And I was willing to pay my dues, learn my lessons, and wait my turn. As these more experienced people passed me, I would observe their lives to try to learn from them. I looked to see what kind of foundation they had built their lives on, which influential people they knew, how they conducted themselves. Sometimes I learned much by watching them. But many times I was disappointed. There were many people with years of experience under their belts but not much wisdom or skill to show for it.

That got me to wondering: Why had experience helped some leaders and not others? Slowly my confusion began to clear. What I had been taught all my life was not true: experience is not the best teacher! Some people learn and grow as a result of their experience; some people don’t. Everybody has some kind of experience. It’s what you do with that experience that matters.

HOW WILL EXPERIENCE MARK YOU?

We all begin our lives as empty notebooks. Every day we have an opportunity to record new experiences on our pages. With the turning of each page, we gain more knowledge and understanding. Ideally, as we progress our notebooks become filled with notations and observations. The problem is that not all people make the best use of their notebooks.

Some people seem to leave the notebook closed most of their lives. They rarely jot down anything at all. Others fill their pages, but they never take the time to reflect on them and gain greater wisdom and understanding. But a few not only make a record of what they experience; they linger over it and ponder its meaning. They reread what is written and reflect on it. Reflection turns experience into insight, so they not only live the experience but learn from it. They understand that time is on their side if they use their notebook as a learning tool, not just as a calendar. They have come to understand a secret. Experience teaches nothing, but evaluated experience teaches everything.

GAINING FROM EXPERIENCE

Do you know people who have lots of knowledge but little understanding? They may have means, but don’t know the meaning of anything important? Even if they have a lot of know-how, they seem to possess little know-why? What is the problem with these individuals? Their life experience is void of reflection and evaluation. When twenty-five years go by, they don’t gain twenty-five years of experience. They gain one year of experience twenty-five times!

If you want to gain from your experience—to become a wiser and more effective leader—there are some things about experience you need to know:

• We All Experience More Than We Understand

Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. Let’s face it: we’re going to make mistakes. Too much happens to us in life for us to be able to understand all of it. Our experiences overwhelm our understanding. And no matter how smart we are, our understanding will never catch up with our experience.

So what is a person supposed to do? Make the most of what we can understand. I do that in two ways. First, at the end of each day I try to remember to ask myself, “What did I learn today?” That prompts me to “review the page” of my notebook for the day. The second thing I do is take the last week of every year to spend time reviewing the previous twelve months. I reflect on my experiences—my successes and failures, my goals accomplished and dreams unmet, the relationships I built and the ones I lost. In this way, I try to help close some of the gap between what I experience and what I understand.

• Our Attitude Toward Unplanned And Unpleasant Experiences Determines Our Growth

Life is full of unforeseen detours. Circumstances happen which seem to completely cut across our plans. Learn to turn your detours into delights. Treat them as special excursions and learning tours. Don’t fight them or you will never learn their purpose. Enjoy the moments and pretty soon you will be back on track again, probably wiser and stronger because of your little detour.”

I must admit, having a positive attitude about life’s detours is a constant battle for me. I prefer the expressway and a straight route to a winding scenic road. Anytime I find myself traveling on a detour, I’m looking for the quickest way out—not trying to enjoy the process. I know that’s ironic for a guy who teaches people that the difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure. Just because I know something is true and work to practice it doesn’t mean it’s easy.

• Lack Of Experience Is Costly

At the age of forty I now look back at my youth and I cringe at my naïveté. My toolbox of experience had only one tool in it: a hammer. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So I pounded and pounded. I fought many battles I shouldn’t have. I enthusiastically led people down dead-end roads. I possessed the confidence that only the inexperienced can possess. I had no idea how little I knew.

The arrogance of the young is a direct result of not having known enough consequences. Now I know that the rooster that every day greedily approaches the farmer who tosses him grain is not wrong. It is just that no one ever told him about Christmas. I made plenty of mistakes as a young leader, but I was fortunate. None of them was disastrous. Most of the damage was self-inflicted, and the departments I led didn’t suffer terrible consequences for my inexperience.

• Experience Is Also Costly

Lack of experience may be costly—but so is experience. It’s a fact that you cannot gain experience without paying a price. The great American novelist Mark Twain once remarked, “I know a man who grabbed a cat by the tail and he learned 40 percent more about cats than the man who didn’t.” You just have to hope that the price is not greater than the value of the experience you gain, and sometimes you cannot judge what the price will be until after you have gained the experience.

It is as the old saying goes: experience gives the test first and the lesson later. The acquisition of experience can be costly. But it’s not as costly as not gaining experience.

• Not Evaluating And Learning From Experience Is More Costly

It’s a terrible thing to pay the price for experience and not receive the lesson. But that is often what happens with people. Why? Because when an experience is negative, people often run away from it. They’re very quick to say, “I’ll never do that again!”

Mark Twain had something to say on this subject too. He observed, “If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won’t sit on that hot stove again. In fact, that cat won’t sit on a cold stove either.” A cat doesn’t have the mental capacity to evaluate his experience and gain from it. The best he can hope to do is follow his instinct for survival. If we want to gain wisdom and improve as leaders, we need to do better than that. We need to heed this: Don’t just learn something from every experience. Learn something positive.

• Evaluated Experience Lifts A Person Above The Crowd

People who make it a regular practice to reflect on their experiences, evaluate what went wrong and right, and learn from them are rare. But when you meet one, you know it. There is a parable of a fox, a wolf, and a lion. One day they went hunting together, and after each of them caught a deer, they discussed how to divide the spoils.

The lion asked the wolf how he thought it should be done. The wolf said everyone should get one deer. Suddenly the lion ate the wolf.

Then the lion asked the fox how he proposed to divide things up. The fox offered the lion his deer and then said the lion ought to take the wolf’s deer as well. 

“Where did you get such wisdom?” asked the lion.

“From the wolf,” replied the fox.

The school of life offers many difficult courses. Some we sign up for willingly. Others we find ourselves taking unexpectedly. All can teach us valuable lessons, but only if we desire to learn and are willing to reflect on their lessons. If you are, what will be the result? You may exemplify the sentiment expressed by Rudyard Kipling in his poem “If ”:

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

But make allowance for their doubting too,

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master,

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Not only will you be a man—or woman—of integrity and wisdom, you will also benefit your people because you will be a better leader.

Thanks for visiting our website and finding time to read this blog article. In our next article we shall find out the things we should be willing to give up to keep growing. Let’s grow together!