Kintsugi is an old Japanese art of repairing broken ceramic pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold. Instead of hiding the fact that the ceramic was broken, the art accentuates and celebrates this by converting the ordinary piece of ceramic to a piece of art.
You can find more information about this art and the philosophy behind the same in the video here.
There are many some very important lessons in leadership that we can gleam from this art, if we so desire.
Ceramic articles tend to break. That is in their nature. Same way, people make mistakes. We, as leaders, make mistakes. People whom we lead make mistakes. That is in our nature and in the nature of our work.
Just like the art of Kintsugi doesn’t try to hide the fact that the ceramic was broken, instead of hiding from our mistakes, it would be a much better idea to own them and do so publicly, for all to see. They would be reminders of our fallibility and can help us keep us on our toes in the future.
The ceramic becomes a piece of art not just by being put together, but by being put together along with lacquer and gold dust, which add their character to the ceramic and transform it into a piece of art that can be displayed proudly.
Similarly, it is not enough to accept and own our mistakes, we need to learn from them (why we did what we did and how can we ensure we will not commit the same mistake again) in order for them to become the reminders that we want them to be.
One requires a lot of patience and mindfulness to mend the broken ceramics using the art of Kintsugi. Similarly, we need a lot of patience and mindfulness to truly understand our mistakes and the lessons that the mistakes has to teach us.
Conclusion:
Let us always remember that every mistake that we make has the potential to make us better and more beautiful, if we allow that to happen by owning the mistakes and learning from them.
You can even watch a 4 episode documentary by Candice Kumai on Kintsugi here.
