How to Make a Better Mistake
Worst-Case Scenario
Picture yourself on a stage with 200 people in the audience. You’re ten minutes into your set, and things are going as planned, but then suddenly, the audience turns on you, booing you.
Their faces are animated, and they are booing loudly. A few of them are even gesturing for you to get off the stage. One particularly sweet-looking woman motions “bye-bye” and makes the “you’re dead” gesture.
Your body floods with anxiety, embarrassment, and confusion. What just happened? One of the worst-case scenarios is playing out right before your eyes, and you have no idea why.
You must be having another of those horrible dreams where you are the victim of your fears. You think, if I could only wake up, it could all be over.
Unfortunately, this time, it isn’t a dream. It’s really happening.
Fortunately, it’s not happening to you, but it is happening to me while I’m wide awake and with one of my biggest clients. I’ve never felt so humiliated or misunderstood.
Making Mistakes
Over the forty or so years of your professional career, you will eventually say the wrong thing, burn a few bridges, and likely be let go or fired. You are going to lose money and clients. You will exercise poor judgment and make more bad decisions than you can count.
You are going to make mistakes. You will try your hardest to avoid them, but they are inevitable. If you’re not making mistakes, then you are playing it safe, and what could be a more significant mistake than a legacy of playing it safe?
If you accept that mistakes are a part of holding a growth mindset and the learning process, then shouldn’t you learn to make better mistakes? Wouldn’t you benefit from being the very best mistake maker? Couldn’t it be powerful if you could use your mistakes to strengthen your mind, spirit, and relationship?
Five Steps to Making Better Mistakes
1. Avoid defending or blaming
When it comes to making mistakes, our instincts can work against us. If you’re anything like me, then the minute you’ve made a mistake, you want to set the record straight on your intentions. Rarely do we make mistakes intentionally, so we want to let others know that we didn’t mean to make a mistake or worse yet blame it on someone else or circumstances.
This perpetuates the error and often makes it worse; better to quickly acknowledge it and own it right away. No one cares about your intentions; they only care about the results. It may be unfair and unjust, but the fact is that you aren’t going to change the other person’s mind.
In my worst-case stage moment, I unintentionally said the name of the competitor, and many in the audience thought I had called them by the competitor’s name. You could see why they started booing. Imagine yourself in their shoes: Some clown on stage who is getting paid a lot of money to be there can’t even remember whom he’s with today. What a careless jerk!
From my point of view, a moment passed before I realized what I had done to make them boo me. Instantly, I wanted to explain that they had misunderstood me and that they were wrongly accusing me of something I hadn’t done.
It’s a familiar moment if you have kids. One kid hits their sister or breaks something of grandma’s. The victim complains to mom, and the perpetrator responds, “I didn't mean to do it!” Yet, the damage is done. No one cares what you meant to do.
2. Say, “I’m sorry”
Think about that one person in your life who refuses to say the words “I’m sorry.” How hard is it to reconcile with this person? How frustrating is it to have a relationship with this person? You want to forgive them, but you can’t because they won’t say, “I’m sorry.” What a missed opportunity!
The fastest way to turn the corner on a mistake is to make a sincere apology right away. Recognizing and admitting that you made a mistake validates the other party and reduces the amount of emotional energy behind the injury.
I once got into a car accident where I was sideswiped by another driver who made a left turn from the right lane and collided with my car. I could read the guy’s face when I got out of my vehicle, and I fully expected that he was going to blame me for the accident.
To my surprise, he immediately said he was sorry and that it was his fault. Whoa! My perception of him completely changed in an instant. He went from being a careless monster to a fellow human just trying to make it home to see his kids. It completely changed the dynamic of the situation. We sat on the curb together, talking about kids and work, just a couple of guys waiting for the police to arrive and give him the ticket.
It can be uncomfortable telling another person you are sorry, but the healing process doesn’t begin until you do.
3. Recover Quickly
Picture yourself trying to get home from a long work trip to see your family. You can’t wait to hug your kids, but the flight is delayed because of the airline, and it doesn’t look like you’re getting home tonight. You’re frustrated. No, you’re angry. Now, picture the airline responding in one of two ways:
You didn’t arrive home when planned, and the airline mails you a free flight voucher two weeks later. The voucher covers the entire cost of the flight.
You didn’t arrive home when planned, and extra employees immediately arrive on the scene to help passengers reroute on different planes and/or airlines to get you home as soon as physically possible.
Which solution do you think is better? When someone makes a mistake, we need to see and feel the effort made to remedy the situation. The speed of recovery is often more valuable than the size of recovery.
Option one is clearly a higher dollar value, but option two provides more emotional significance. If you make a mistake and you want to fix it, then you need to fix it right away. Doing so communicates dedication to getting things and making things right for the others involved. It shows that you care, and caring is another vital part of the healing process.
4. Learn from it
If you have completed Steps 1-3, then you’ve done everything you could for the other parties involved. It’s now time to focus on yourself and what you can learn from the mistake. This isn’t always easy to do. Important questions to ask yourself include the following:
What did I do or fail to do leading up to the mistake?
What signals did I miss along the way that would have prevented the error?
What can I do better next time?
The point is to get yourself in an objective state of mind so that you can see the mistake from multiple perspectives. By now, you may be saying, “Jeff, this is obvious stuff.” You’re right, it seems to be obvious, but then why do we see people make the same mistakes over and over again? They fail to be objective and learn from the mistakes they’ve made. The goal isn’t to be the person who makes the least mistakes; rather, it’s to learn the fastest from the mistakes that you will inevitably make.
5. Keep taking risks
One of the last and most damaging mistakes people can make is to stop taking risks because of an error they made earlier in their life or their career. If you want to have a lasting impact on the people around you, then you will take some risks. Only those willing to make mistakes and learn from them can do something new or different than what’s been done before.
My personal perceived worst-case stage scenario turned out to not be so bad. It was terrifying at the moment, but with greater perspective, I can now see that I’ve been to the worst-case scenario frontier as a presenter and lived. This particular “mistake” may have been the best thing that has ever happened to me as a presenter and facilitator. Because of the experience, I feel freer than ever to take risks because I know it won’t be nearly as uncomfortable as I previously imagined. What’s the worst that can happen? I’ve “been there, done that.”
What Happened Next?
Before the program was over, I went back up on stage to address the audience about my wording mistake.
Why do it? I couldn’t imagine a better moment to apologize to everyone present for my careless words. It was the only way I could see to begin earning back the lost credibility.
What did I say? “I own it, and I am sincerely sorry.”
There was a long silence, so I repeated myself. Slowly the audience began to clap, the faces in the room softened, and the collective energy changed. The healing process had begun.
Sharing this story with you is my way of learning from the mistake. If you take anything away from this story, I hope it’s that even your worst-case scenarios aren’t as bad as you think because, if you go through the process, you will recover, and everyone will move on; you may even laugh about it later, too.
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