Owning up to mistakesI think most of us could empathise with the stomach-sinking feeling that the Leaving Certificate examination invigilator must have experienced when he realised he’d given out the wrong paper thereby giving a number of students a sneek preview of the following day’s English exam. Which of us can put hand on heart and say we’ve never made a mistake like that? Errors happen when humans are involved. It has transpired that had the man involved notified the department of education immediately contingency plans could have been enacted to allow a replacement paper be distributed in time for the exam to go ahead as scheduled. Equally in business if we can find out about problems and potential issues early we usually have more chance of taking corrective action and limiting the damage. So how can we make it easier to find out about the stuff that’s going wrong quickly? The key differentiator seems to be how amenable we are to hearing bad news. Do we go into a rage and make our displeasure known which of course in the long term will result in people doing their utmost to hide the mistakes they make? Or do we react calmly and look for solutions? Recently my five year old niece was staying with us. She was sitting at the kitchen counter colouring. I had (stupidly) left my new red handbag near her. ‘Oh, oh. Gráinne I’ve got some marker on your bag’. I was about to react with irritation when I thought to myself that at least she’d told me immediately and maybe I could remove the mark. What lesson did I want her to learn about future mistakes? Did I really want to teach her to hide things? So I restrained myself and thanked her for telling me. A silly example perhaps but it has relevance for big business too. Add a CommentYour comment will appear once it has been approved. |