When Things Go Wrong

Whenever you do anything, sometimes things will go wrong.

Expect this – plan what to do and how to react.

Anticipate and Accept

Expect that things will go wrong and try to anticipate what they might be.

• Miss steps should never come as a complete surprise.
• You should always be prepared for them – with an avoidance plan – and a mitigation plan.

Mistakes are not a bad thing.

People learn more – and take on the learning more deeply – when it is from mistakes.

Build a culture where miss steps are regarded as a learning experience – not an opportunity to criticise, punish, or ridicule.

Your Mistakes

Own up immediately to your own mistakes, and tell people what you have learned.

• It demonstrates honesty and humility – important characteristics in a leader.
• It’s an opportunity for you to ask for help and support.
• It highlights that miss steps are not something to hide, or about which to feel embarrassed.

Make this the normal response to making a mistake in your organisation, both for you and for all of your people.

Others Mistakes

Don’t criticise those who miss step – it’s a learning experience after all.

• Ask instead what they have learned – focus on how you can all benefit from that learning to avoid the same mistake in the future.
• Jumping to criticism causes people to cover up their mistakes – and you need to know about failures to avoid them next time.

Junior staff, and those new to a role, will often make more mistakes.

• Anticipate these additional learning opportunities.
• Help minimise their mistakes by coaching.
• Be ready to hand hold them through a mistake – letting them fail sometimes, and then helping them to recover.

Repeated Mistakes

If mistakes are repeated then the learning may not have happened – but before criticising, first find out why.

• Is it really the same mistake?
• Are the circumstances different? Preventing the same mistake from been foreseen.
• Is the mistake built in to your processes or tools?

If you do need to take action, criticise quietly – don’t allow the criticism to derail your culture of ‘learning from mistakes’.

Points to take away …

• Anticipate mistakes – things will sometimes go wrong – and accept them – they are not a bad thing.
• Set a good example by admitting your own mistakes immediately and explaining what you have learned.
• Build a culture of learning from mistakes that excludes criticism and ridicule.