I have a confession to make. It's of a mistake that I made and I've been feeling bad about it. A lovely picture of my wife and I was posted on Facebook. I thought I needed to give credit to the person who had taken the picture. Thought I had remembered the right person and put his name out there. That person believed that he had taken it, acknowledged it but the person in whose home the picture was taken, wrote in and said, "I'm sorry to burst the bubble but that's not the person who took the picture. It was somebody else." That's the last thing you want – to have given credit, thinking that you were doing the right thing but creating a situation that made it awkward for people.
So I was mulling over mistakes this morning and how they needed to be rectified. I thought of another one that I made some time back. My chair in the office was giving trouble. I knew somebody who could get it fixed. I was going out of town and they said that they would have it fixed by the time I got back. It was done when I got back, so I thought that I would send out a thank you note to them. I had just got a new phone and thought that I could send it to both, husband and wife, and thank them at the same time for the work that they had done. So I wrote, "Thank you for fixing my chair. The castors work beautifully." I thought I'd be smart and put them in a group and send it out together. As I was doing that, the complications of a new phone overwhelmed me and before I knew what was happening, I saw my phone begin to send out messages one by one. In horror, I realized that the message was going out to everybody on my contact list. I tried to stop it, removed the battery; but the moment I put it back in, it continued to do the same. Finally I just had to let go and then deal with the mistake when it was all over. When it finished I had to send a message to everyone on my contact list, apologizing for what happened. But the comments I received were so good. There is some humor in making mistakes too. From just question marks that came back to me to people saying, "I didn't have anything to do with your chair, but I'm so glad it's fixed." Others said, "Even though I had nothing to do with it, I'll take the credit."
But what came home to me today was that we all make mistakes. We know that feeling in the gut like taking a hit in the solar plexus. When that happens, we think, "What do I do now?" Mistakes tend to debilitate us. They immobilize us for a period of time or as long as we allow those mistakes to immobilize us. And why do we get immobilized? We do because of fear of the consequences. The degree of fear, I've found, is very directly proportional to the kind of mistake made or the involvement of other different issues that are caused or affected because of the mistake. It could involve money that could be at stake, or people or clients who are going to be affected, or reputations, either yours or the company's, or even business could be affected because of the mistake. Or personally, it just makes you look stupid. You begin to beat yourself on the head and think – how could I have done something like this.
But I think the key in making mistakes is to be able to deal with them – to deal with them quickly, not let them get out of control, not let them immobilize us, not to get frozen, not hitting ourselves on the head repeatedly – but handling it. I came across this article by Rebekah Epstein writing in the Huffington Post. She says, "There are 4 things that you need to remember about mistakes. People don't remember the mistakes that you make; instead they remember how you react to them." That's so true! Mistakes get forgotten but how we reacted to them is what stays in people's minds. "The way we act in these situations can prevent a small mistake from turning into a full-blown crisis."
She suggests 4 ways to diffuse the situation before it gets blown into something bigger.
1. Admit responsibility. Acknowledge the mistake, apologize and simply ask, "How can I fix it?" Don't waste energy making excuses and deflecting the blame; this will only make you look more incompetent.
2. Don't panic. Panicking in a work environment only elevates the situation. Instead of worrying about what went wrong, take a few deep breaths to clear your head, so you can fix the issue at hand.
3. Acknowledge the inconvenience. Mistakes make other people go through some inconvenience. Chances are that they will impact people around you. So take the time to say, "I'm sorry." People don't mind putting in extra effort, especially if the team is involved, if they know that you've acknowledged the fact that it has impacted them.
4. Be honest. Sometimes it might be easier to lie and defuse the situation. It might make you feel better or look good. But remember that if they later find out that you were lying, their reaction will be even worse. Mistakes will always happen, but once you tarnish your reputation, it is nearly impossible to get it back.
But we all make mistakes and while we treat them as negative things, mistakes can also be positive things. I remember speaking to you all sometime back about Edison. Two of his assistants came to him very dejected because after the seven-hundredth experiment, it had still failed. They felt like real failures. He said, "No. We now know 700 more things about the subject." Mistakes are learning experiences. We can turn them into positive things if we want and if we don't allow it to become negative in our lives.
I like what Dr. David Burns says, "Assert your right to make a few mistakes. If people can't accept your imperfections, that's their fault."
Mahatma Gandhi too remarked, "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."
Growth happens through learning from mistakes. So we need to be able to free ourselves to make mistakes and allow the mistakes of people who work with us.
I like this article by Amy Rees Anderson, writing for Forbes. She says, "Good employees make mistakes; great leaders allow them to. The courage that we need to allow mistakes is the courage to go beyond fear of what will happen." Meg Cabot says, "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." There's a learning experience, a learning curve that comes beyond the mistake.
Amy Anderson says, "The first step in a business is to be able to have a culture that says that mistakes are acceptable. We place certain riders depending on what the policy is. But determine where a mistake can happen without causing too much damage, where it will not involve clients and the trust that they have placed on the company. The second step is also to communicate to the employees that we were setting an official company policy: Making any mistake once was OK, so long as it was an honest mistake made while attempting to do what they felt was right for the company. But repeating the mistake was NOT OK. The hard and fast rule was that if you made any mistake for the first time, the entire team would have your back. If you made it again, you were on your own."
I think that's a good policy to have. She says, "Mistakes are not failures. They're simply the process of eliminating ways that won't work in order to come closer to the ways that will." She ends by saying, "Great people practice six A's of a proper apology:
· Admit – I made a mistake.
· Apologize – I am sorry for making the mistake.
· Acknowledge – I recognize where I went wrong that caused my mistake to occur.
· Attest – I plan to do the following to fix the mistake on this specific timeline.
· Assure – I will put the following protections in place to ensure that I do not make the same mistake again.
· Abstain – Never repeat that same mistake twice.
The bottom line is that we all make mistakes and we normally castigate ourselves for it. We feel bad, hit ourselves and say, "What kind of a person am I that I could make these mistakes?" The end result is that we think less of ourselves. Yet, here's the caveat this morning. In our Holy Book, there's a book that is one of my favorites – a book called Lamentations. It has five dirges that are put together, but in the midst of this very somber writing there's a line that says, "Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness."
I was reminded today that we begin to like ourselves less when we make mistakes. But God never likes us less in spite of our imperfections. That's something that is so encouraging – that God continues to love us and He will continue to redeem us and help us over the mistakes. He will help us to redeem that mistake, to find ways of getting over the mistake and not repeating it. All of that because He loves us. That's a takeaway this morning – a reminder of God's incredible love for you and for me in spite of the fact that we make mistakes and bungle up so often.
Let me pray with you. Almighty God, thank You for that love. Thank You that it is such a sense of solace. It is like a balm to us as we are human, we err, we are imperfect and sometimes we think less of ourselves and less of others as well. Help us to experience your kind of love and show that kind of love to ourselves and to people around us who make mistakes. Give us wisdom to handle them and help us to have a great day. I pray for Your blessing on each one on this call. In Your name, Lord Jesus, I pray these things. Amen.
• Rebekah Epstein, "4 Tips for Handling Mistakes at Work," http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebekah-epstein/crisis-control-4-tips-for_b_3805305.html?view=screen
• Quotes from Dr. David Burns & Mahatma Gandhi: http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/mistakes/
• Amy Rees Anderson, "Good Employees Make Mistakes. Great Leaders Allow Them To." http://www.forbes.com/sites/amyanderson/2013/04/17/good-employees-make-mistakes-great-leaders-allow-them-to/
• Verse quote: Lamentations 3:22-23
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