Fire Me, I Made A Mistake!

When was the last time you made a mistake? Did you beat up on yourself? Did you grovel to the person or people who might have been affected by your actions or did you take the action to put it right and move on? I guess these last points may not be mutually exclusive for some. However, we may need to apologise but this does not mean grovelling. It means taking responsibility for our actions and seeking to remedy what we have done – or not done.

You have probably all heard the Henry Ford story about the employee who made a mistake that cost the company $100,000. He went to Ford and told him what he had done and that Ford should fire him. Wisely Ford responded by saying that he would not fire him as he had $100,000 invested in him now and he would not make the same mistake again. However, many of us seem to forget that when we make a mistake. It is often our own internal voice that punishes us and all too often this voice is harsher than any one else’s.

There is an American expression “Don’t sweat the small stuff”, well, actually we should also not “sweat the large stuff” either. Problem solve, apologise, and check out what we can do to put it right and then learn from the mistake so that it doesn’t happen again. This might mean setting up new systems, or getting extra help, but it does not mean berating ourselves over and over again – how will that help?

So, get resilient. Think before acting, check that systems are in place to ensure the same thing does not happen again. Only take on the amount of work you can take on, rather than letting people down because you took on too much. Take responsibility when, and if, things go wrong. Learn the skills needed to improve performance, and, above all, keep everyone, including ourselves, OK.