It was a bright sunny day on the beach in Hilton Head, SC. This was the first of what would become an annual gathering of college friends for 20+ years and still going strong. I invited my brother’s wife, Marla, to join us that year.
As my long time friend, Sheri, my very new sister-in-law, Marla, and I walked down the beach one afternoon we passed by a line up of small Catamaran’s. I loved to sail although I didn’t know a lot about how to do it myself. Marla wasn’t too fond of the water as she did not know how to swim. But I was sure Sheri knew how to sail so I asked if she wanted to rent a sailboat. We seemed so confident Marla chose to join us for a new adventure. Soon it felt like we were flying over the waves.
We got out past the breakers and I asked Sheri: “so how do we turn around?” She quickly replied with: “stop kidding around”. At that moment I wondered who was actually kidding. So did Marla who quickly tightened the straps on her life vest.
Turned out both Sheri and I knew more than enough to get started, but neither one of us knew how to actually sail (which involves being able to turn the boat!). Sheri thought I knew because I apparently asked with great certainty. I have no idea why I thought she knew how, but I was clearly mistaken. Fortunately for us we both knew enough to find a way to get the boat back to shore, albeit 200 yards from where we were supposed to end up. We got lucky. We also did not spend one moment on blame and all three of us got focused on what we needed to do to figure out how to get back to shore safely.
I learned some very important lessons that day. We are all in un-chartered territory in some respect. To say things are changing fast is an understatement. I don’t know about you, but there are many days I wish I knew far more than I do in many arenas. These days we often do not know how to accomplish the things we start when we start them. Sometimes it’s because we have never done them. Other times it’s because we run into things the people who are teaching us have never encountered either. And for the most courageous among us it’s because no one has done it before.
I was thinking about that day on the beach this morning and how the lessons apply to life and business today. There is a big difference between taking a chance and taking a risk. Either way things might not turn out the way you hope and intend, but if you want to stack the odds in your favor more often than not here are some things to keep in mind…
- Be clear about what you know and what you don’t, and be forthcoming with what you don’t know. As leaders in any capacity this is especially important because the more certainty with which we speak, the less likely others are to ask questions or challenge our thinking.
- Be willing to question what you think you know. What we know can gives us confidence and comfort. However, in a fast changing world it is prudent to question often what we think we know so we can learn what we need to learn to succeed.
- Be willing to learn from both the usual and the unusual places. This includes seeking feedback from the people who aren’t speaking when everyone else in is agreement or who we know see things differently than we do.
- Be willing to fail, accept the consequences and most of all learn from your mis-steps and failures. Kriss Akabusi, an Olympic Gold Medalist says “you lose your way to winning.” If you are not failing, or at least falling down once in a while, you are probably not risking, learning or growing very much.
- Be the kind of person who can be counted on and surround yourself with people you can count on. You will know just how important this is when the going gets tough.
I’ll leave you with one last observation…In hindsight I can see that when I have taken chances the only things I could point to as the “reasons why” it didn’t work out were my circumstances. When I have taken risks there are no reasons, there is only what happened, what there is to learn from it, and a choice about what to do now.
So what about you? Do you take chances or risks? And what wisdom do you have to share with us from your experience with either?
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