Acknowledge mistakes, deal with guilt

A friend and client of mine, Malcolm Ferguson (owner of Strategy Activator), whilst preparing for a talk about failure, spoke to me about the approach he should take for the speech. He noted that he wanted to use a facilitation example for the talk where one of his previous delegates felt that he was picking on her and was rude to her, even though he didn’t believe that what he had said landed in the way she described. We spoke about authenticity, transparency and fear for a while — particularly fear in the light of how others attending his speech would perceive him knowing that his quoted previous facilitation attempt had partially failed. He said: “Given that this talk is going to put me out there in front of my boss and colleagues, I want to be perceived positively. I need the work as a contractor and don’t need them thinking of me in a negative way.”

I asked: “Malcolm, what is the origin of this fear, as we all make mistakes? What is the original story?”

Malcolm answered: “I grew up on a fruit farm. According to my mother, fruit was more important than people. Everything revolved around fruit. Fruit trees were only partially pruned because my mother didn’t want to hurt them in any way. As such, overgrown fruit trees lined the roads in the orchards and even the main roads on the farm. No-one was allowed to cut them back because of their importance. Trucks and tractors could hardly make their way down the roads on account of overhanging branches. Our roads were difficult to navigate.

When I was young, during the time when we harvested pears, on one occasion, the tractor driver was missing. I knew I could drive a tractor even though my legs at that time could hardly reach the pedals. I jumped on the tractor and drove it towards the harvesting operations. Unfortunately, I had to stand to operate the pedals and a low-hanging branch knocked me off the tractor. It carried on straight into one of my mom’s precious pear trees, damaging the tree substantially. My mother was furious and handed me red wood-sealant to paint on the tree to prevent the wood from rotting. The tree became a red monument to my failures — a constant reminder, as you could go nowhere on the farm without passing the pear tree with bright red bark.”

So many of us are haunted by red monuments that remind us of all our failures. If we allow them to linger in our thoughts and we develop guilt, we debilitate ourselves. We all make mistakes — many of them — but guilt, and not the mistakes, holds us back from development and growth. We can do nothing about past mistakes as they are in the past, but we can learn from them. Guilt holds us back, however, its claws impeding progress.

The red-barked pear tree is still growing, still bearing fruit, still standing sentinel over the farm. All is not lost, so we don’t need to feel guilty anymore.

Originally published at https://www.stretchforgrowth.com on August 11, 2024.