Mistakes. We all make them, we’re human beings and by definition 99.9% imperfect (with apologies to those of you who think otherwise), which results in, guess what? Mistakes (we make them hourly at FIG)! That gaffes, miscalculations and oversights are a part of our collective experience on this earth. Why (on earth!) is it so hard to admit to making mistakes, take responsibility for these human aberrations and move on after making a miscalculation or error? Hmmmm?
Safety is the primary reason. Many of us came up in an environment where making mistakes got us into trouble: spilling milk at the dinner table often resulted in a tongue lashing, forgetting our homework at school? Detention, even more homework (or worse the teacher calling our parents). Missed curfew? Grounded for a month. Pretty Draconian by today's standard (we hope), but the message was clear: if you made a mistake, there would be hell to pay. Fast forward to adulthood and working situations: (unusually) late for work? Get written up. Can’t work the 10 hours a day our bosses do (because we have a life!) only to get the side-eye from management or colleagues indicating we’re inadequately measuring up to their arbitrary “company standards” - sure, that feels (insert sublime sarcasm here) awesome. Miscalculating the timeline for a deal to close and having the client reassigned to another representative, thereby losing a source of personal revenue. Getting in trouble for needing to leave work early to take your child to the doctor - of all things! Yep, seen it, experienced it, lived to tell about it and there was nothing safe about making these unintended mistakes, emphasis on mistakes! None were catastrophic, life altering or irreparable - they were mistakes.
There are big mistakes which are usually costly, hurt property, yourself or others and generally have consequences all their own, so we’ll leave those for another time. But the smaller, more (relatively) insignificant mistakes (misspeaking, forgetting someone’s name, forgetting to calendar a meeting and missing it, oversleeping, butt-dialing your boss, realizing you didn’t close your garage door when leaving for work, leaving your office access fob at home, burning your dinner, mis-numbering the pages of a presentation - you get the general idea), which are decidedly annoying, time consuming, embarrassing, awkward, inconvenient, can be horribly troublesome and uncomfortable but not disastrous! How we accept, manage and deal with making errors, with ourselves and others, is what interests us.
Embarrassment, shame, fear (of a reaction, how someone will respond, what the ramifications will be, looking like an idiot etc); The expectation of perfection, especially in younger generations who think they have or can find the answers for everything (Google, www, etc.), instead of subjecting themselves to potential chagrin or admission that they don’t know an answer. On the receiving end of mistakes, assumptions of why so-and-so did something, projections of intent instead of taking the error at face value, thinking you know “why” someone did what they did instead of just dealing with the situation as it is can also be problematic: inserting our opinions onto an otherwise pretty straightforward mistake in action can seriously impair the facts of the matter.
Likewise, on the bearer of the misdeed, justifying the behaviour, making excuses or shifting blame instead of simply owning the blunder will merely escalate the issue. That pesky amygdala BS meter will surely activate on the receiver's end, (not kidding here).
When my son was a little guy, and by definition, made a bunch of mistakes as he was new to the world, customs, rules and expectations of being human, I very rarely lost my temper when he made them (I can count on less than one hand the times when I did, and he can site every reason for why I lost my my mind!). I’d simply ask him, “What'd you learn?” “How might we avoid making the same mistake in the future?” We’d come up with an answer together and that was that. What we DO with the lessons is important, nobody wants to make mistakes, but we’re going to, so let’s get comfortable with this part of being human! How mistakes are received: graciousness, patience and understanding goes a long way in the recognition that we’re all human and all make mistakes on occasion. On the delivery side, fess up! Acknowledge the error in full, say you’re terribly sorry and will do everything in your power to fix whatever it is; If you don’t know how, ask for help in finding a resolution. Ask for guidance, who knows? It might spark a conversation (just sayin’!).
Humble candor, acknowledgement and confession is very hard to stay mad at. Kindness, acceptance and forgiveness will not be forgotten and may just spark an attitude of empathy, gentleness, altruism and cordiality in the relationship going forward. Acceptance is at the root of all human needs and consent of our fallibility is paramount. So let’s all breathe, accept the frailty of the human species and forgive each other their (and our!) transgressions.
Until next time……..