#5 The Good, Bad & Ugly of Regrets at Work

THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU THINK

• “What if I did something to stop him earlier?”
• “I should have defended my work. I wish I stood up to them. I wish I stood up for myself for once.”
• “I really f***ed it up with my team. I should not have betrayed their trust.”
• “I wanted to learn more with him but things got busy and he transferred out.”

…you’re in the Good, Bad & Ugly of regrets at work.

THINK // 3 insights from the field

?? THE GOOD THING about regrets is as long as you are an imperfect human being with imperfect behaviour, you will have them.

Regret is a common humbling experience. If you are able to confess your regrets, you are admitting to your imperfection and displaying a capacity for humility.

Regret is not fun to feel but it is useful. It's the emotion whose job is to kick us in the ass to remind us: “You messed up and you got some reflection to do, kid.”

Regret is necessary for us to do 3 important things that lead to our growth and learning:

• acknowledge we did something NOT OK by our own standards and desires,
• own that we knew what was the more OK thing to do (no feigned plea of ignorance)
• learn how to repair and make it better somehow

Regrets are always centred on past choices we made that led to unhappy consequences. We acknowledge we had agency, control and responsibility - and we did not wield it well.

If we are willing to acknowledge our regrets, admit where we fell short, we have more ability to do better in the future. We aren’t running away from our mistakes. We are willing to humble ourselves to learn, grow and write a better next chapter in the book of our lives.

?? THE BAD THING about regret is it feels awful and vulnerable to admit to ourselves - let alone others - that we mucked up.

So many of us prefer to silence our regrets, pretend they don't exist or hide them behind some proud, bravado statement like "I live my life with no regrets"

“No regrets” is a snappy T-shirt slogan and an awesome French torch song but it’s a potentially harmful life motto.?

Saying "I choose to live my life without regrets" is essentially the same as saying "I choose to live my life without reflection - I don't look back and I am proud of it.

In Daniel Pink’s World Regret Survey, he discovered 4 big themes that our regrets centre on across the world:

Foundation regrets: I should have started doing this way earlier - it would have made a huge difference.

• “What if I did something to stop him earlier?”
• “If only we started looking into that earlier, we could be on the top of our game instead of trailing behind”

Moral regrets: I should have done the right thing but I did the wrong, cowardly and hurtful thing instead.

• “I really f***ed it up with my team. I should not have betrayed their trust"
• “I should never have bad-mouthed him behind his back. It was a s****y thing to do to someone who was only nice to me.”

Boldness regrets: I should have done the braver thing instead of cave into my fears.

• “I should have defended my work. I wish I stood up for myself.”
• “I could have terminated that contract when all the bad signs were there but I was too afraid of losing face”

Connection regrets: I should have reached out to this person.

• “I wanted to learn more with him but things got busy and he transferred out.”
• “I didn’t know she was so lonely at work. We should have included her for lunch more often.”

?? THE UGLY THING about regret is it can feel so deeply shameful to admit we have them that we might choose to exhibit some really ugly behaviours to get away from that hard truth.

Some of us will rather deflect, deny, bluster, stone-wall, strong-arm, bully or lie our way through anyone’s attempt to get us to acknowledge and reflect on what we did wrong.

The ugly news for us is this: those who never look back to learn from their past are fated to repeat the cycle of their patterns in the future, to ever worsening degrees.

Certainly, there will always be individuals and organisations who never seem to have regrets about their terrible ways and yet seem to continue being richly rewarded for it.

But the past has a way of slowly but surely catching up in a sudden and explosive way.

A company who covers up their growing pile of mistakes with bluster, bullying and an arrogant "no regrets" attitude will eventually collapse like a house of cards. A predatory, narcissistic leader who never looks back with regret at the trail of wreckage and dead bodies he leaves behind will eventually see their life implode in catastrophe.

Never ever place your bets on someone who does questionable things and seems proud about having no regrets or reluctant to admit even one shred of regret.

There will always be a day of reckoning. We cannot tell when the day is - but it arrives, sometimes decades later.

FEEL // 2 links to help you feel less alone

• WATCH Author Daniel Pink talk about his findings from combing through 19,000 regrets reported in the World Regret Survey captured in his book, The Power of Regret.
• READ Psychotherapist Bryan Robinson on the phenomenon of "Boomerang Employees" and "The Great Regret" in Employment

DO // 1 actionable strategy to try in the week

??? NOTICE how you feel when you do something even mildly regrettable - like saying something unnecessarily mean, telling a tiny lie when you value honesty, not daring to give feedback to someone about things that matter to you etc.

FIRST, GET CURIOUS

• Do I allow myself to feel regret or do I run away from that yucky feeling?
• Does my regret fall under one of the 4 big themes: foundation regret, moral regret, boldness regret, connection regret?

THEN, PRACTICE VERBALISING THE REGRET IN A USEFUL WAY THAT SUPPORTS YOU AND THE OTHER PERSON INVOLVED

? Unsupportive expression of regret

• "I'm sorry I said that mean thing to you. I'm such an asshole. I wish you didn't pick this time to have the conversation though - I'm tired and hangry."

? Supportive expression of regret

• Acknowledge we did something NOT OK by our own standards and desires: "I regret that I said that mean thing to you just now. That is not who I want to be and not how I want to treat you."
• own that we knew what was the more OK thing to do: "I own that I knew you just needed me to be supportive. I knew and yet I still sniped at you in my tiredness."
• show what you are learning + request to repair: "I am learning that I get snippy when I am tired and hangry and that's not fair to you. I want to still have that conversation with you. Can we start again?"

? Unsupportive expression of regret

• "Hey, actually just now, I didn't have the guts to tell the boss that I was the one who approved your work. I threw you under the bus and I'm really sorry, man. Please forgive me?"

? Supportive expression of regret

• Acknowledge we did something NOT OK by our own standards and desires: "Hey about just now, I regret that I did not own up to Jack that I was the one who approved your work. I threw you under the bus and that is not who I want to be and not how I want to treat you."
• own that we knew what was the more OK thing to do: "I own that I knew you needed me to have your back. I own that I could have easily spoken up."
• show what you are learning + request to repair: "I am learning that I must admit to my mistakes in the moment instead of freezing up like that. I intend to go back to Jack tomorrow morning and let him know what I did and take full responsibility. Can I talk to you about whether that works for you? Please call me back."

?? REFLECT You can also consider Daniel Pink's suggestion of doing a weekly “regrets” journalling check-in, framed after his 4 big regrets.

You can make it monthly or quarterly if that works better. Pink suggests weekly so you can catch the regretful things as soon as possible so the chances of early repair are higher.

1. I really wish I did this earlier this week:
2. I really wish I connected with this person:
3. I really wish I did the morally right thing here:
4. I really wish I did this brave thing:

You can also turn the regrets into an actionable:

1. Better late than never, I will start doing X this week...
2. I will connect with X by this week in this way...
3. I will do right by my value of X by doing this...
4. I will be braver to do this...

If you want to shift the personal dynamics, professional situations or organisational cultures around you, I would love to help you.

I help my organisational clients strategise how to change what's working/not working in their culture. I design interventions, train leaders & their people in necessary skills and facilitate necessary conversations on their behalf. You can also look up our public training offerings at Common Ground Civic Centre such as this one:

Have a worthy weekend, workplace warriors.

Leading organisational cultural change is a good and meaningful thing. But it can be a battlefield through some bad things and ugly things. I'm here for you in the trenches.

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Meanwhile, get some rest this weekend.

I'll see you next Friday,

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Wishing you love, power & meaning,

Shiao