On ownership: own your praises but also your mistakes

Owning praises doesn't come very natural to me. In my mind I know I've worked hard to achieve objectives and the part I played in it, but I kind of don’t know how to react when I receive praises. For me, I just did what had to be done and was in front of me and within my authority, knowledge and ability to do.

But knowing how to react with others when praised is a good skill to have whilst avoiding cockiness, especially for goals that aren't achieved in isolation which almost none are. Use it as further motivation to keep working. But this is usually the easy part, owning praises…

The lack of ownership of mistakes in our society is generally appalling. The moment there’s a need to own a mistake, most have a bunch of excuses lined up to justify everything that everyone else didn't do, everything else that didn't happen or other random types of misfortune.

Don’t do that. Never do that. Owning mistakes is a characteristic of a strong, confident  and mature person that is ready to learn and ensure they don’t happen again. If you need to apologize, so be it. As soon as a mistake happens that you know will affect someone, address it immediately.

Let them know what happened, apologize, learn to make sure it doesn't happen again and move on with your life. But don’t obscure it, don’t deny or justify it. If you know it was within your ability and knowledge to address it and you didn't, just assume the mistake and carry on.

It’s not about feeling good inside. Personally, I really like to avoid having to do it, but when I need to, I do. I’m less concerned about people knowing I made a mistake, than I am to ensure the memory of the event is imprinted in my memory along with those feelings so I have a better chance of not making it again in the future.

And lastly, it’s also about the respect you get from behaving this way. Owning your mistakes promotes the establishment of trust and respect, especially because it’s so scarce. When most of the world default to pointing fingers at everything at everyone, and someone comes along that practices and preaches extreme ownership on everything that happens to itself, you’ll be miles ahead of any possible competition.

What is scarce is always valuable. Remember this.