In the 80s, I trained to become an instructor for the Dale Carnegie Leadership Course. As part of the training, we learned how to coach class members while they gave speeches. Our focus was on the impact of the speaker on the audience, rather than the mechanics of speech-making. Occasionally we had to push the speaker to dig a little deeper, allow more emotion to come through or even veer off their planned talk in order to make their point more effectively.
All of us in the training found it very hard to interrupt people during their speeches—we didn’t want to unless it was truly necessary. The trainer saw this and stepped in with these wise words:
Err on the side of commission, rather than omission.
In other words, be willing to make a mistake while trying because there are also consequences of non-action.
In the leadership course, the consequences of non-action included lack of impact for the speaker, mediocrity, lack of growth and perhaps regret that they had not given it their all. These people were paying big bucks to become better communicators and it was my job to push them in that direction.
That lesson has stayed with me ever since. When I teeter on the edge of a decision, “should I? Or maybe not,” I think back to those words. Err on the side of commission. Take action and then let the chips fall. And know that when you take no action, some chips are still falling.
Lucille Ball said it best:
I’ll bet that you have taken some sort of action that maybe you regretted a little, but you knew that not acting would be worse! I’d love to hear about it!
