If there is one thing that all of us do, it is make mistakes. We are imperfect individuals and at times, we do things that are not right.
There may be times when we make mistakes on purpose but at other times, they are just accidents that occur for any number of different reasons. When they happen to us, we don’t typically want to admit to them but sometimes, it is inevitable.
That is what we learn in the following fictional story. Not only do we hear about an employee who made a huge mistake, we hear about his boss, who really made a difference for all the right reasons.
My old boss, the CEO of a small hospital, told me a story from back when he was a lab technician (for simplicity, let’s call him Dan). Dan had forgotten to check some sort of mechanism on a piece of equipment he used, it malfunctioned and broke the equipment which ended up having around a $250,000 repair bill.
The next day Dan’s boss called him in to talk about it, and he was sure he was going to be fired. His boss asked him why he didn’t do a proper check, made sure he understood what happened and sent him back to work.
Dan asked him “Am I not getting fired? I was almost sure that’s what this was about.” His boss said “No way, I just spent $250,000 teaching you a lesson you’ll never forget. Why would I fire you now?”
It seems silly, but that attitude always resonated with me. Don’t make professional decisions based on emotional responses.
Always know what your goal is when dealing with someone, and what exact problem you are trying to solve.
Everyone makes mistakes, and yelling at them just makes them resent you and become defensive. Being calm and understanding will make people look up to you.
Only people who don’t work make no mistakes.