Mistakes, Anyone?

Don’t you hate that feeling when you discover you’ve made a mistake at work -- especially one that involves someone else? Now, I’m not talking about a mistake on the magnitude of somebody dying. I’m talking about the kinds of mistakes we’ve all made: a partner’s misspelled name in the widely-distributed collateral piece you developed, an ill-considered forwarded email containing all manner of things you don’t want people to read, a fan letter with damning-but-funny details about a well-known firm that gets published in the local business paper.

Sadly, I’m intimately familiar with all of these. But I’m not alone. You’ve probably made similar mistakes. Here’s what the wisest among us know: it’s going to happen. Mistakes are inevitable if you live and work long enough. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re just not trying hard enough and probably living a very dull professional life.

So. You’ve made a mistake. What now? From experience, here’s my advice:

1. Keep your perspective. Ask yourself, “Did anyone die?”. If not, take a deep breath. Clear your head. Decide what happens next.
2. If the mistake involves someone else (i.e., if you have hurt or inconvenienced or embarrassed someone), tell them what happened immediately. Often, the aggrieved party will know of your mistake before you know about it and will, undoubtedly, alert you. Either way, you need to take charge of the situation.
3. Tell the person how sorry you are about the error and that you will fix it if you can. Then try like hell to fix it. If you can’t fix it, tell them why. But for heaven’s sake, communicate – starting with the apology.
4. Ah, the apology. Do it in person unless they’re on the other side of the country. At least pick up the phone. That’s right: stop typing that “I’m sorry” email. Don’t even think about it. Here’s why: if you’re really sorry, you need to be sure the aggrieved party understands that and can see it in your eyes or hear it in your voice. This is the best way to restore trust between you. Besides, if the aggrieved party happens to be a truly evil creature, they’re less likely to begin (or continue) the scorched-earth email string that alerted you to your error. I’ve found it’s much tougher for people to be nasty face to face.
5. Finally, take a post-drama minute and figure out what you can learn from your snafu. Do you need to be more thorough? Do you need to get someone else to proofread your materials? Do you need to zip your lips more often? What can you learn so you don’t make the same mistake again? It’s ok to make a mistake, but it’s not ok to make the same one repeatedly.

Mistakes are part of professional life, but you can’t be defined by them. It’s how you recover and what you learn that matters most.