By Kelly K. James, Next Avenue
During an interdepartmental Zoom meeting, a vice president asked for feedback about a video he’d produced, on a tight timeframe, to promote our company. On the video, one employee made a comment that made our company look bad. I thought she may have misspoken (and later learned she had) but I reflexively said that part of the video was “terrible.”
Then I repeated myself.
I’m a direct person by nature. And I could tell that by the vice president’s reaction that in this situation, that directness had been a mistake on my part — one that could hurt my relationship with him.
Fortunately, I realized I’d made a blunder, and immediately called the vice president after our meeting. I apologized and promised to be more thoughtful when delivering negative feedback in the future.
This wasn’t the first mistake I’ve made at work, and will doubtless not be my last. However, knowing how to address the errors you make on the job can keep a mistake from hurting your professional career — and can even help you thrive at work.
Consider the Nature of the Mistake
First, everyone makes mistakes. And they can range from the seemingly insignificant — you spelled someone’s name wrong in an email — to the major, like missing an important deadline that cost your company a client or a contract. Your first step should be considering how serious it is, and how it’s likely to affect you.
“There are solid-line mistakes and dotted-line mistakes,” says career and executive leadership coach Tammy Gooler Loeb, author of “Work From the Inside Out: Break Through 9 Common Obstacles and Design a Career that Fulfills You.”
A solid-line mistakes is when a rule or policy is clear, and you’ve violated it. A dotted-line mistake might include exercising poor judgment (like I did with the workplace video) or misunderstanding your responsibilities. Making a solid-line mistake is likely a bigger deal than a dotted-line mistake.
Respond Rather than React
When you discover you’ve made a mistake, or someone else points out your error, you may be upset. Lynn Berger, a career counselor based in New York City, advises you to keep your emotions in check and figure out what happened.
“Step back and examine what happened and put it in perspective,” says Berger. “Look at exactly what happened. How does it affect you? How does it affect other people? Take a moment and respond instead of reacting.”
Does the mistake have potential long-term consequences? Does it affect other people, your department or your company as a whole? Is it a major issue or are you overreacting? And how likely is someone to learn of it?
“One of the questions to ask is, ‘What are the consequences of this mistake, and if I’m the only one who knows about it, should I alert anyone else?’ ” says Minda Zetlin, a contributing editor at Inc. and the author of “Career Self-Care: Find Your Happiness, Success and Fulfillment at Work.”
“The answer may depend on the culture of your company and your standing within it,” Zetlin explains.
Loeb concurs. “The way that you own your mistakes and correct them depends on your workplace culture and the repercussions of that,” she says. And addressing a mistake doesn’t mean you have to confess it.
“Say you spelled someone’s name wrong in an email,” says Loeb. “You might just send another email, with the subject line being, ‘ignore my previous email — this is the correct email’ and leave it at that. You don’t have to shine a bright light on all your mistakes. There is such a thing as telling the truth and such a thing as shooting yourself in the foot.”
Take Responsibility
In some cases, you can address the mistake without letting anyone else know about it. In others, you have to tell your boss or your team that you made a mistake. This may not be as much of a disadvantage as you fear, says Berger. “When you own up to a mistake, you can gain a lot from that because people will see you as sincere and honest,” she says.
Zetlin says she recently made a mistake in an article she wrote for Inc., mislabeling Kansas City Chiefs’ Travis Kelce as a wide receiver instead of a tight end in the subhead of the piece. The mistake was an oversight — she had his position correct in the article itself — but football fans noticed her error, as did her editor. Zetlin corrected the mistake immediately and apologized to her editor for the oversight.
If you apologize, keep your focus on the effect your mistake had on the other person, not on explaining why it happened. “If you’re specific about the effect on the other person (e.g., ‘I’m sorry this made us look bad’), your apology carries more weight,” says Zetlin.
What shouldn’t you do? Blame someone else for the error if you were at least partially at fault. “Never blame someone else — that is the worst thing you can do,” says Loeb. “Don’t get defensive. You have to take responsibility and do everything you can to correct it . . . getting defensive or blaming others is a huge mistake in itself.”
Move Forward
The good news is that making a mistake may reveal a systemic weakness that can be an opportunity for you, says Zetlin. “Bring systems thinking to it — like what’s the procedure for this? How do I do this? How does my team do this?” she says. “What can you do to improve the process?”
When you know why you made a mistake, you can help prevent it from happening again. But be careful of the promises you make to your boss. “You want to take ownership and responsibility for what you’ve done, and speak to whatever corrective action you’ve taken or will take,” says Loeb. “But don’t make absolutes like, ‘It will never happen again.’ That may be beyond your control.
“The biggest mistake is thinking you’re never going to make a mistake,” she adds. “Learning and growing from making mistakes is a part of life.”
And, as I’ve learned, part of work, too.