This week I had the privilege of receiving an email from someone I have been coaching regarding a deal they landed. I liked this person before I received the email. I grew to respect this person after I received the email. Let me tell you why.
What I read was more of a story, then an email. As a matter of fact he called it, “Tales from the Field.” He wrote about the deal he landed, but more importantly than that, he wrote about why he landed the deal he landed. He wrote about what he did right, and he wrote about what he did wrong. Landing the deal was great. Examining why he landed the deal was even better.
I do not claim to be a genius, but I am what I call, “methodically observant.” I’ve taken notes like the ones I read for almost twenty years, and these notes are now closing in on 2,000 pages. I was not quite as smart as my friend here because I thought I was taking notes from the business I was conducting so I would have something to share with my kids when I retired. What I learned was by taking these kinds of notes was a whole lot more important than that. Taking these kinds of notes, and looking for the lessons within these notes made me wiser. That’s because whether you like it or not, when you lean back and analyze what it is you are doing, and make a consistent habit of this kind of analysis, you have no choice but to learn from it.
And quite simply, that’s how I think people become wiser. It doesn’t come from making mistakes or not making mistakes. It comes from being consciously aware of the mistakes you are making, the successes you are enjoying, and most importantly, the lessons learned from each!
So kudos to my friend Stephen for his, “Tales from the Field.” He not only landed a nice deal for the company he works for, he became wiser by writing about it. He helped others he works with become wiser too because he distributed this tale to them as well. Imagine if all of us took a moment or two each time we invested our time with a potential client and recorded our own version of, “Tales from the Field.” Regardless of the outcome, we would become wiser. Sounds like a good plan to me.