First Mistakes

I remember mine distinctly. My very first job out of college was working on a political campaign, earning $500 per month. I wrote a press release and copied it onto 100 sheets of expensive letterhead. It was pre-internet. We were on a tight budget. My boss found a typo. I had to stay late and redo the whole thing. I was so embarrassed.

We all make mistakes, it’s inevitable. And it’s generally embarrassing. But a good boss knows how to make it something more.?

Most often these first mistakes are called learning moments. And they are. We are forced to think about what went wrong, how we can avoid the same mistake, what systems and redundancies we need to put in place. This self-reflection is important and no doubt most of us do not make the same mistake a second time, so we do learn. But equally important is how the boss handles this mistake and what that teaches the mistake-maker.

Messing up is human (and now of course we see it’s also innate to artificial intelligence), and it should be humanizing. I have high standards and get frustrated with slip-ups or errors (mine and others’), and I make that clear. But I also don’t penalize or shame someone who makes a mistake. I discuss it in private, very directly, and acknowledge both that mistakes will happen and that we really can’t have them. It’s a contradiction and that is the healthy tension of high expectations I believe. Sometimes we fall short but we keep ourselves oriented toward an incredibly high bar.

When I made the typo in my first job, my boss expressed her frustration and disappointment. She outlined how I needed to right the situation, and she moved on. She continued to trust me with assignments and didn’t revisit my mistake. I learned, became even more diligent in reviewing my work, and I got better.?

As a manager, my responsibility is to help my team members both learn and grow when they make a mistake. No one benefits from shaming and certainly no one’s work improves.

I’ve been thinking about this as my young adult children enter the work world ready to make their first professional mistakes. I certainly hope my kids lead with high standards for themselves and at the same time, I hope their bosses show some compassion. Because at some point, we all make a (first) mistake.