Messed-up trail

We can’t learn without making mistakes. We only grow by overcoming the own boundaries. Unfortunately, in the corporate world, we are often trying to avoid talking about mistakes. But this leads to the fact that we cannot really learn.

Talking about errors can be very inspiring. One surprising and often funny way to do this is the fucked-up trail.

Applying the messed-up trail

Regularly replace your bilateral conversations with your team members with a fucked-up trail by going for a walk outside, either in pairs or with the entire team.

During the walk, talk about mistakes you have committed, either in your professional or in your private life (if someone wants to reveal that about oneself). To initiate the debate, you could bring in the first case.

The following structure facilitates the approach:

• What did I do?
• What was the result?
• What did I learn from it? What do I do differently now? or – alternatively –
• Ask others what they would advise you to do in the situation?
  This last question incumbes the same logic as the Feedforward.

It’s important to talk about your own mistakes by using the “I”-form to be convincing.

The intention of this exercise is to normalize the discussion about mistakes, to build up mutual trust and to build up an environment where all of us dare to progress.

Each one can organise a messed-up trail with everyone at his/her request.

Source

ProMove TM (2021):
Enabling transformation. Internal tool box for clients.