How are you handling the mistakes that are bound to occur daily in your business or on your team?

In my consulting practice, I see far too many leaders and team members falling prey to the One and Done view of dealing with mistakes or strategic shortfalls in the workplace.

To be sure, meeting goals and effectively implementing the strategy are very important. But what does taking somebody out of their position in the short term cost us in the long run? Most teams and businesses would be better off and better served if they took a longer view.

We’re not talking about people making catastrophic mistakes, willingly slacking, or missing target numbers. We’re talking about people being eliminated or marginalized, often because it’s just the easiest thing to do.

If you go back and look from a historical perspective, some pretty famous people throughout history made some pretty big mistakes early in their careers, learned from them, and then had amazing success and were heralded for their future contributions.

Take the case of a couple of our famous World War II leaders, for example. General George S. Patton, one of the most famous Generals in World War II, was forced to repeat his first year at West Point for failing grades in mathematics and generally poor academics. By today’s standards, this shortcoming would probably mean that no one would even know his name in the future.

Then General, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who later became the 34th President of the United States, made a huge blunder while planning the invasion of Sicily in 1943, in the early part of World War II. His poorly thought-out strategy for securing Southern Italy in the early part of the war allowed over 100,000 German and Italian troops to escape and seriously prolonged the battle for Italy in the early part of the war. Although he was reprimanded and criticized heavily for the blunder, something important occurred. He learned from it and incorporated the lessons he learned in planning many of the decisive battles later in the war, which contributed substantially to our winning the war.

Quite often, you’d be wise to take a better measure of the person making a mistake and provide adequate coaching, mentoring, and constructive criticism to develop a stronger and more capable leader or team member for the future.

One surefire way to make sure that you’re making better decisions about whether it makes more sense to let these mistakes be opportunities for learning and growth – rather than elimination – is to think of the individual in terms of their long-term qualities rather than their short-term performance.

Reaffirm your trust in the person’s character, capabilities, and contributions to a positive team culture to reinforce and reaffirm your long-term confidence in the individual. Focus on what that person brings to the team and the implementation of your strategy long term and then allow them to learn from their mistakes and get re-focused on the long-term strategy rather than always focusing on the short-term results.

Give your people a chance to learn from their mistakes, and let it pay big long-term dividends for your team. They’ll be happy you did, and you’ll be happier, too, in the long run.