I subscribe to a great newsletter entitled Crucial Skills from the same folks who wrote Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations and Influencer (see recommended books on my Resources page). In this month’s newsletter, Kerry Patterson writes eloquently about the lessons that life experience teaches us. He reminds us that when we hit a rough patch, it is important to step back a bit and ask ourselves, “what is the lesson here?” Patterson’s article, It Is Rocket Science, recounts a story from his childhood where he accidentally set a fire in his bedroom while conducting a science experiment. His parents made him pay for the repairs and his mother asked him what he had learned from the experience. Now, why didn’t I think to ask that when my kids melted the carpet with a hot blow dryer?

Here is an excerpt:

And then Mom said something that was so quintessential “Mom” that I’ve never forgotten it: “What did you learn from this adventure?” Most parents, when faced with the smoldering shell of a bedroom would have grounded their careless son through social security. Or maybe they would have hurled threats, pulled out their hair, or perhaps guilt-tripped their soon-to-be-jailed juvenile delinquent into years of therapy. But Mom simply wanted to know what I had learned from the incident. It wasn’t a trick on her part; it was how Mom treated debacles. For her, every calamity was a learning opportunity, every mishap a chance to glean one more morsel of truth from the infinitely instructive universe.

So many times when things go wrong, we look for someone to blame rather than looking for the lessons learned. This is common with individuals and within organizations. Teams, departments, divisions, and entire organizations look outward for a scapegoat to take the fall. It’s no wonder that people don’t want to take even calculated risks in some organizations.

The implication of this message to parents and leaders alike is profound. It’s the adult’s or leader’s job to establish an environment where their charges can learn and grow (even experiment) without fear of being grounded through social security. This isn’t to suggest that either the home or the corporate learning environment should allow individuals to run about willy-nilly—heating up rocket fuel without a single thought as to what might go wrong. I had been irresponsible, and I was held accountable. But I had also had been experimenting with rocket science, and mom didn’t want to stifle this part of me. She wanted me to experiment, and this called for calculated risks. She saw it as her job to teach me how to make the calculations, not to set aside my test tubes and chemicals.

We all operate within a larger system.  Your history and your current environment influence how willing you are to take risks.  What is your risk tolerance?