Week 12: Learning Leadership>>>Trenton Prieshoff

"Some leaders learn to lead by making mistakes and then reflecting enough on those mistakes to develop principles for the future... another way is to learn the principles based on the mistakes of others."

I wish I could say the later were just as effective as the former, but there is something about the experience, the tension, the pain, the failure of experiencing the failure firsthand. There is much to be learned from others. I grew up watching my sister fight with my parents which I learned a lot from second hand, seeing what did and didn't work, learning what my parents really wanted and how to get what I wanted by giving them what they wanted. I have certainly learned a lot from the mistakes I have seen made in other churches about how to keep myself safe from malicious people and how to approach conflict.

I think we often play up the idea of learning from others' mistakes more than is realistic. Things can be learned from others, but the truth is that the people who learn from their own mistakes learn the same lessons in so much more of a profound way than others that perhaps the best way to learn is through gradual increases in responsibilities and controlled "labs" where people can experience mistakes in a way that is personal and effective but not devastating to their future. That is the purpose, I believe, of our Practicum opportunities, whether we take advantage of them or not.