Making mistakes is such a massive part of life, and I believe they are not dealt with correctly from an early age. This then can create a fear of making mistakes; sadly, this then continues through life. Mistakes can form negative thoughts and beliefs that will play out in peoples personal and professional lives.

Making mistakes can cause self-esteem and confidence problems. The word ‘confidence’ is such a huge word, and when you ask coachees to talk about the word ‘confidence’ in their own words, it can create such sadness in their faces and words.

There are many ways to deal with this as a coach. I sometimes suggest the change of a word and one I have used is to change the word from ‘confidence’ to ‘courage’. This then creates a different approach or idea in a coachee and sometimes can create such a different mindset. The word ‘confidence’ can create such negativity.

Sadly, making mistakes can hold coachees back in both personal and professional lives.  When someone has a superb idea, let’s face it most of us in a lifetime will come up with thousands of ideas but will do nothing with them. Sometimes in those ideas will be a million-dollar idea, but most of us will refrain from suggesting it through fear of looking silly. This is where if you create a habit of smiling at responses to your ideas, you will always share your thoughts because it is OK to make mistakes.

I always with anyone I am ‘coaching’ or in the past ‘training’ say “make as many mistakes as you can, enjoy making mistakes”. Then help them to learn to deal with the mistakes correctly, remember mistakes create creativity, and you can push yourselves in so many ways. Don’t hold yourself back. I know I have always done better when I have just scraped through an exam or even failed one by thinking about the subject or me in a completely different way. I always come away with doing better in the long run because the process in the brain allows this to happen. It is dealing with making mistakes, which is the key.

If you wish to learn more, you can attend any of our coaching courses; you can either do one to one coaching or attend some coaching skills course to learn a few techniques yourself.

Claire Moody is our head coach at Target Training, and you can read more about her here.  She delivers training on all coaching and numerous training the trainer courses.