One comment was especially insightful for me. In that comment someone pointed to failures I made. It is nice if someone provides such feedback and you can learn from it. But that’s not the point.

After rereading the comment and thinking about it, I realized something more important. If you work together with another person and you point to a failure this person makes, you provide feedback for this person. But that’s only half of the work. You also have to ask yourself: “What do I wrong that the other person fails?” I know, it sounds a bit counter-intuitive to ask yourself this question and you may think it is enough if you provide feedback. Well, sometimes it is enough, sometimes not. Let me give you an example:

During my time as an apprentice there was an appraisal interview twice a year. One topic discussed and rated was “order at the workplace”. It was a topic where I got always a bad rating. On my desk, there was usually a creative chaos with books and papers ;-) Even though I was told by my boss to change that and there was a financial incentive, after some time the creative chaos was back and I failed. Maybe I would have been more successful if my boss asked himself this question and noticed he was a bad example with his much more chaotic desk…

So the next time someone in your team/family/whatever fails with something, you may ask yourself: “What do I wrong that the other person fails?”