The Truth About Gaining Experience

By Daniel Bobinski

The more genuine experience you accumulate, the better you become at spotting and removing barriers to forward progress. Unfortunately, the concept of gaining experience can be misunderstood. It isn’t as straightforward as simply observing or being involved in something.

True experience must be deliberately built and constructed. And, the more authentic experience we develop, the more skilled we can become at clearing the path to success.

THE REAL MEANING OF EXPERIENCE

Understanding how the word “experience” originated helps us clarify this important distinction. Let’s break down the word experience into its component parts to help us understand its deeper meaning:

ex – “out of” or “from”

perior – (a Latin root) “test” or “try” or “prove”

ence – “action” or “condition” or “quality”

Etymologically speaking, “experience” means successfully navigating through a challenging situation. Therefore, when we say someone has experience, we’re acknowledging they’ve accumulated wisdom by facing and, most crucially, working through risky or difficult circumstances.

I’m not suggesting people should take up extreme sports or death-defying activities, but without stepping outside our comfort zones and being tested in real-world ways, it becomes nearly impossible to gain meaningful experience and the wisdom that follows.

This leads to another point. A true expert, regardless of academic credentials, is someone who has gained substantial real-world experience. Too often, people earn the “expert” label simply for acquiring theoretical knowledge, but in actuality, the word refers to someone with the genuine, hands-on experience of navigating challenging situations.

HOW TO ACTUALLY GAIN EXPERIENCE

How does someone actually gain experience? The straightforward answer is that we must willingly expose ourselves to challenging situations, learn from the mistakes that inevitably occur, and grow through them. Then, with the wisdom gained from these experiences, we develop better skills for recognizing obstacles and handling them in smart, proactive ways.

There’s an old saying I particularly appreciate, not just for its humor, but for the substantial truth it contains:

Good decisions come from experience. 

Experience comes from bad decisions.

Obviously, poor decision-making isn’t a requirement for gaining experience, but this saying does a good job of pointing out that we don’t always make stellar choices when dealing with unfamiliar territory. As we face new challenges, we will often stumble along the way (exercise poor judgment). However, if we’re paying attention and seeking to learn, we’ll gain valuable insights from those missteps and consequently develop the ability to make better decisions.

Think about learning to drive a car. Most new drivers make small mistakes, such as taking corners too fast, braking too hard, or misjudging parking spaces. But by learning from these little mistakes we gain valuable lessons about vehicle control and road awareness that no classroom instruction could provide.

We can also learn from making large mistakes. Consider, a senior software developer at a major tech company. During the rollout of a major product launch, she made a significant error that crashed the system for several hours, costing the company substantial revenue and damaging client relationships. Mortified by her mistake, she could barely face coming to work the following week.

A few days later, she received a meeting request from the CEO. Expecting the worst, she nervously went to his office. However, instead of discussing her termination, the CEO began outlining an ambitious new initiative that could revolutionize their market position. Then he surprised her by saying, “I want you to lead this project.”

Confused, she responded, “I think there might be some misunderstanding. I’m the one who caused that massive system failure last week that hurt our client relationships and cost us significant revenue. Didn’t you call me here to let me go?”

The CEO smiled and replied, “Let you go? Why would I do that? I just invested a substantial amount of money in your education!”

In this scenario, the CEO understood that the experience gained from that costly mistake would make her exceptionally qualified to anticipate problems and prevent similar issues from derailing future projects.

RECOGNIZING REAL EXPERIENCE IN OTHERS

Anyone serving in management or leadership positions should also develop sound judgment about those who have genuinely gained experience versus those who haven’t. This ability typically develops as we accumulate our own experience. 

It’s valuable for managers and leaders to learn how to identify who possesses genuine experience. Just because an employee is dedicated and hardworking doesn’t mean they’ve automatically learned to navigate complex challenges. Experience must be actively gained and learning must be deliberately constructed. Some people can encounter difficult situations repeatedly without extracting meaningful lessons from them.

To identify someone with genuine experience, pay attention to their language patterns. Do they speak like a victim of circumstances, complaining about what’s not working without offering any ideas for how to make things better? Or are they more proactive, discussing how to make things better, such as lessons people can learn or improvements that can be made? 

If you find that people are talking about specific improvements that can be made, listen to determine if they maintain that problem-solving drive. Sometimes people start by acknowledging an opportunity for growth, but then shift their focus and dwell on reasons to avoid challenges. What you see and what you hear will reveal whether you’re dealing with someone who is developing true experience.

BUILDING EXPERIENCE DELIBERATIVELY 

With this understanding, I hope you can appreciate why it’s crucial that each of us actively learn from difficult situations. If we regularly avoid learning from challenging circumstances, we forfeit opportunities to grow. This leaves us poorly equipped to identify and eliminate barriers to success. 

This doesn’t mean we should actively seek out problems, but when difficulties inevitably arise, we gain genuine experience by facing those challenges head-on and working diligently through them to resolution and make improvements.

Bottom line, the most successful people understand that experience isn’t something that happens to them. It’s something we deliberately build by leaning into challenges, learning from our missteps, and using those lessons to create sharper instincts so we can make wiser decisions in the future. •

Daniel Bobinski, is the author of the best-selling book “Creating Passion-Driven Teams” and the owner of Workplace Excellence. Also a certified behavioral analyst, Daniel consults and conducts training on workplace effectiveness and leadership development. He can be reached at danielbobinski@protonmail.com or eqfactor.net.