March 20, 2024 • 27 mins
In today's episode, Erin delves into the nuanced process of managing work mistakes with resilience and self-assurance. She addresses the complex emotions that you might be navigating after you make a mistake. This episode offers helpful insights on how to gain self-awareness, take responsibility, and overcome the fear of failure and mistakes in a professional settings.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Making a mistake is a very normal part of adjusting
and learning a new role.
So, in today's episode, if youare finding yourself terrified
of mistakes and reactingemotionally internally when
you've made a mistake, this isthe episode for you.
Tune in and I'm going to teachyou what to do when you've made
(00:21):
a mistake at work.
Hello, hello, welcome backfriends, happy 2024.
Listen, I know it's been aminute.
I know it has taken me longerthan some of you may have wanted
for me to come in here and diveback into this episode.
For those of you who havereached out, told me how much
(00:43):
you're loving the podcast,talked to me about how much you
liked the last episode on fearof making a mistake.
I see you.
I really appreciate you givingme feedback.
I've been working away with allof my clients, but now I am
back to give you this episode onwhat to do if you've made a
mistake.
So, for today's episode, if youhave not heard the last episode
(01:06):
on fear of making a mistake, Iwant to encourage you to go back
and listen to that.
What it does is it helps laythe foundation of how I want you
to think about mistakes.
You want to think about it aslike creating your own
philosophy around mistakes andreally internalizing that and
reinforcing that with yourself.
Creating that philosophy isvery important in terms of it
(01:27):
setting you up for how you'regoing to feel and how you're
possibly going to react when amistake happens.
So in this episode I'm going totake that foundation and I'm
going to talk you through sortof how to operationalize that or
how to put that into practicewhen you've actually made a
mistake at work, particularlyfor those of you who find that
(01:47):
making a mistake at work reallyspirals you out.
You think about it for days,you feel a ton of anxiety and
because of that, you may findyourself really over squeezing
your work because you're alwaysafraid of making that mistake
and you're always afraid of thefallout from that mistake.
So I'm going to talk about twosteps to my process when it
(02:09):
comes to what to do when you'vemade a mistake.
The first is going to beaddressing the mistake
internally with yourself, andthe second is going to be
addressing the mistakeexternally with your supervisor
or co-worker, client, colleague,whoever it is that that mistake
may have affected.
And let me just say this thefirst part of this podcast
episode where I'm going to talkabout addressing this mistake
(02:31):
internally with yourself is, inmy opinion, the most important
part of what you do when youmake a mistake.
This is the key to reallyreinforcing your philosophy on
making mistakes.
This is the key to how you'regoing to feel moving forward
each time you make a mistake isbased on how you address
(02:54):
mistakes internally withyourself.
This is where I believe thecrux of the shifts can happen
with you.
I'm certainly going to talkabout what to do with your
supervisor, if you're talkingabout the mistake and owning it,
but the truth is, many of youwho are listening to this
already know exactly how to ownyour mistake to your supervisor,
(03:17):
to the client.
You already know what kind oflanguage to use.
You already know how to do it.
I'm going to talk about itanyway and I'm going to give you
some possibly additional tipsthat perhaps you don't know.
But what many of you are notdoing is step one.
You're not addressing themistake internally with yourself
in a way that is productive andeffective at not creating shame
(03:42):
, anxiety and self-judgmentaround the mistake.
So let's dive in.
Let's say you have made amistake at work.
We could look at lots ofdifferent examples.
It could be a small mistake.
Maybe you misquoted somethingwith a client and you quickly
corrected for that, followed upwith the client, told them so
(04:02):
sorry, I sent you the wronginformation.
Here's the correct information.
So it might have been an easymistake.
It might have been somethingthat you were able to course
correct quickly.
It could be that you made amore significant mistake.
Maybe you closed out a dealwith someone and you forgot to
take into account the currencychange and maybe it costs
(04:25):
thousands of dollars for thecompany because of that mistake.
So that mistake would be alittle more high impact,
something that you can't coursecorrect quickly or easily and
something that you will need toreach out and have a
conversation with yoursupervisor about.
What's interesting is that bothof these mistakes one we could
argue is pretty low impact andone is a little bit more high
(04:47):
impact I have seen people havevery intense reactions to both
of these type of mistakes andthose intense reactions are
often because of what ishappening internally when
they've made that mistake.
So you know, person one whosemistake was pretty small and was
(05:08):
course corrected easily stillmay find themselves really
feeling like I shouldn't havedone this, really feeling like
there's no room for this kind ofmistake, really feeling deep
embarrassment and shame aroundthe mistake, despite the fact
that it's a pretty low impactmistake and it can be corrected
quickly.
(05:29):
So the key for step one, whenyou realize you've made a
mistake, is owning it toyourself, without defending,
diminishing or blaming.
And this is the reallydifficult part.
Your brain internally is goingto want to jump into a defensive
(05:51):
mode.
It's going to want to look atyour external circumstance as
the reason for the mistake andyou're going to hear things like
they set me up to fail.
I should be trained better thanthis.
How am I supposed to do allthis?
I'm doing too many things.
That's why this mistakehappened.
The workload is unreasonable.
(06:12):
I was given too much freedomtoo fast.
Someone should be watching overwhat I'm doing.
It's not fair the way that theyare, you know, putting all of
this on me independently soquickly.
So your brain's going to jumpinto immediate protection mode
where it wants to kind ofdiminish and defend yourself.
(06:34):
It wants to blame externalcircumstances, and this is where
things get very tricky.
I am not saying that externalcircumstances did not contribute
to the mistake.
It very well may be thatmultiple factors in your
external circumstance is whatled to this error.
(06:55):
But it becomes really difficultto parse that out when we're in
an emotional space of focusingexternally.
And what happens when you startto indulge that external blame
is that you're shaming yourselffor making a mistake and you're
(07:22):
shaming yourself in a way that'stricky for you to catch.
And what I mean by that is if Iam reinforcing this idea that
it has to be externally caused,because if I were to own it as
internally something that I did,it would be bad.
So when you're indulging blame,defending and diminishing and
(07:46):
what I mean by indulging that isyou're making those arguments
to yourself.
We've all done this, like I'vedone this a million times, my
head starts to build theargument.
Then I go home and I build theargument to my husband.
Then my best friend calls and Itell my best friend about how
this mistake happened and howit's BS and all of the things
that the company has done to setme up for this and all of the
(08:07):
circumstances that led to this.
I'm building a case and I'mbuilding it over and over and
over again.
And what happens when we're inthat space is you are
unconsciously sending yourself amessage that there's something
very wrong with having made amistake, that it's unsafe to
make mistakes and that it'sunsafe to own mistakes, that it
(08:30):
has to be something outside ofyou, because if it's something
inside of you and you justmissed something or you forgot
something or whatever the reasonmay be that the mistake
happened, your brain isbasically telling you that
that's unacceptable and that weneed to focus externally.
And so it hurts yourrelationship to mistakes.
(08:55):
And my goal as a coach who'strying to up-level people
professionally and get youfeeling very resilient in the
workspace, is that yourrelationship with mistakes is a
good one.
It's a resilient one.
You're not afraid of them, youknow how to bounce back from
them, you know how to takeaccountability, you know how to
(09:15):
move on without getting lost orspinning in that mistake.
And if your brain creates thisunconscious shame spiral where
it's almost pushing the mistakeaway from you and pushing it
externally and focusing on allthese other people and all these
(09:37):
reasons why that mistakehappened, it makes it very
difficult for you to build ahealthy relationship with
mistakes.
So what happens when you're inthat headspace and you are
really fired up and you arefinding yourself making all of
those arguments and finding thepeople around you indulging in
those with you, which is fineand totally normal and what we
(10:00):
want from our family and friendsto validate us and be on our
team.
But in this circumstance, whatbecomes problematic is that the
message you're sending toyourself is me making a mistake
is bad, I should never make amistake.
And what is really behind itmost of the time is that you're
trying to avoid a correlationthat you're making that me
(10:24):
making a mistake means I'm notcompetent or capable.
And if that correlation issomething that you buy into on
any level that if I make amistake it means I'm not
competent or capable, that Ican't learn this job, that I
can't succeed in this, then youwill push the mistake away,
(10:44):
because to accept it would meanthat you are telling yourself
you're not competent or capable.
And the truth is therelationship we want you to have
with mistakes is they're not aproblem for me.
I'm not above them.
I make mistakes, I am competentand I make mistakes.
(11:06):
Making mistakes is not somethingI can't come back from.
You will react very differentlyto a mistake, depending on your
relationship to mistakes andwhat you make it mean about
yourself.
So, if I allowed it, if Istarted from the assumption that
it is okay to make a mistakewithout justifying the external
(11:29):
circumstances that contributedto that mistake at the start.
Then I can come from the spacethat I'm competent and capable
and I can work on trustingmyself to not spiral out when
I've made a mistake on myself.
And I know that a lot of youyour brain, is saying but I'm in
(11:51):
a workspace and my supervisormight be hard on me and people
around me might call me out, andI understand all of that.
Some of you are in a workspacethat's a little bit less
forgiving of mistakes.
A lot of you, however, that Iwork with are in workspaces
where your supervisors and thepeople around you are far more
forgiving of a mistake than youare of yourself.
(12:14):
When you've made a mistake,oftentimes the way they react
and the feedback they give youis quite minimal and you will
spiral anyway, or your brainwill tell you they might have
said that, but now they'reactually thinking bad things
about me, or they don't trust meor they don't think I'm
competent.
So so much of the load is oftenbased on your own relationship
(12:36):
to the mistake and the way inwhich you are moving through the
process of.
It's almost like a pendulum andyou tend to swing from all
these.
External circumstances createdthis mistake and it's not my
fault.
Another end of the pendulumthat you swing to is oh my gosh,
I'm not competent, I'm notcapable, I should quit this job.
(12:56):
You know I shouldn't be makingthese mistakes, and so you're
flipping between one extreme tothe other because of the
discomfort of your relationshipwith mistakes, and where we want
you is really cleanly in themiddle.
So the first step is to reallywork to not overindulge that
external focus and to get to thepoint where you can just name
(13:20):
the mistake to yourself in aclear and neutralized manner.
Take out the drama, take outthe.
I was super busy.
I was doing all of these things.
They threw 10 things at me.
I was trying to work quickly.
There was a deadline.
Take out all of that and justname the mistake.
I misquoted the number.
I made a mistake.
I misquoted the number.
(13:41):
I made a mistake.
I did not account for thecurrency change Period.
I want you to get into your ownclarity, into a single sentence
about the mistake that you made,and I want you to take all of
the emotional language around itout and just sit with the
(14:03):
sentence, the neutralizedsentence and I want you to focus
on how you would feel aboutthis mistake if you believed you
can handle coming back frommistakes.
It is not a reflection on yourcompetency, your capabilities or
(14:23):
your future success, and I wantyou to really think about how
you would feel about the mistakeand about yourself if you were
coming from that perspective.
The place we want to get yourbrain to is where you don't feel
like you need to protectyourself from a mistake
emotionally.
That you don't feel like it'sdangerous.
(14:44):
It doesn't mean you're going tolove it.
It doesn't mean that we'relooking to make mistakes.
It just means that you can getclean much faster.
Defensiveness assumes you haveto defend something.
If you believe mistakes willhappen, they're going to happen.
Even when you're competent,you're going to feel much less
(15:05):
defensive internally.
So, regardless of how you ownit externally, what matters the
most is what you make it meaninternally.
So internally, we're not goingto feed that shame spiral.
We're not going to send themessage to ourselves that this
mistake is something that weneed to grossly defend, that we
(15:27):
need to run from that.
We need to blame everyone forbecause mistakes are fine and
they happen, regardless of howpeople externally react to that
mistake.
Even if your supervisor doesreact in a way that is intense,
you don't have to react in a waythat is intense.
(15:48):
You get to decide what yourrelationship is with mistakes
and you get to have your ownback.
And the trick is, oftentimespeople confuse that and they
make having their own back meannot literally taking on the
mistake, because that feelsheavy, and instead I want you to
have your own back by takingthe mistake, owning the mistake
(16:10):
and not making it mean anythingabout yourself, showing yourself
you can carry that mistake andown it and move forward right
that you don't have your ownback by pushing the mistake off
of you and onto someone else.
Okay, step two is owning itexternally to your boss, your
client, your colleague, whoeverthis might have affected.
(16:33):
One of the questions that Isometimes get is should I own it
?
Should I tell them, should Ifess up?
This is a nuanced question andit really is dependent on your
workplace culture how oftenpeople have their hands on what
you're doing, how much they wantto be in the loop on whether it
was a high impact or a lowimpact mistake.
Is it something that's going tocome back to your supervisor If
(16:57):
you're feeling like you'rehiding it, if you're feeling
like you're not sure whether ornot you should tell your
supervisor or not, then I alwayserr on the side of telling them
right.
I don't want you again shamingyourself unconsciously by hiding
an error or a mistake.
If it's a low impact mistakeand you can clearly correct it,
(17:20):
it doesn't have a high impact ona lot of people.
It's likely not something thatyour supervisor needs to be
bothered with or has anythingthat they're going to need to do
because of it, then you move onfrom it.
But what becomes important inthat circumstance is that you
use that as an opportunity towork through your own
relationship with mistakes.
Notice how much do you feel theneed to defend it, talk about
(17:43):
it, blame, get mad about it,tell your family and friends
about it.
If you notice you're in thatheadspace, you probably are
still having a relationship withmistakes where you feel very
fearful and you're holding astandard for yourself where
you're just not allowing it.
So many people will tell memistakes are human, mistakes are
normal.
But they do not practice thaton themselves, right, it's like
(18:06):
a philosophy they have.
They'll say it to their bestfriend.
They'll tell you that's howthey feel about mistakes, but
when push comes to shove andthey make a mistake, they will
actually feel a ton of shame anda ton of resistance to sort of
being wrong or having made thatmistake, and so you want to call
yourself on your own BS.
(18:27):
You want to notice if youbelieve mistakes are okay for
other people, then you have toalso believe they're okay for
you.
If you believe mistakes areokay for other people but not
for you, then you're holdingyourself above other people, and
I think it's always importantto remember you don't have to be
(18:47):
better than everyone else to besuccessful.
You don't have to be held to astandard that is different than
everyone else around you.
You, too, are allowed to makemistakes, just like your
coworkers and your colleaguesand your supervisors and
everyone else in yourprofessional industry who also
(19:08):
makes mistakes.
So if you are in the positionwhere you are realizing you need
to own it externally to asupervisor and you are going to
share with them what happened,the first, most important thing
is to get to that headspace thatI talked about, where you've
neutralized it and you reallyhave owned it in a very clean
(19:30):
way, without all of the drama,and so the first thing you want
to do when you're takingaccountability is you want to
own it in a very simple way thatdoesn't diminish blame or
defend Right.
I misquoted the client.
I sent an email back and letthem know and course corrected,
(19:50):
without a lot of drama, withouta lot of explaining away.
And the reason why that is soimportant because we have this
tendency to want to explain whyit happened in terms of I was
really busy or all these thingswere coming at me, or maybe
we're trying to likesignificantly diminish it and be
(20:11):
like it really wasn't that bigof a deal.
What happens on the other endis the supervisor, who's
listening, feels unsafe anduntrusting, like if someone
doesn't own a mistake veryclearly and they don't
articulate what they did andmake it clear to us that they
can see that we feel unsafebecause we start to feel like
(20:32):
this person isn't seeing thisclearly.
And that's when you'll get intoa situation where your
supervisor, your colleague,might start pushing on trying to
explain to you why it was anerror and why it's problematic.
If they're pushing a lot on whyit was an error and why it's
problematic, it's probablybecause you've been talking
(20:52):
around it in some way or you'vebeen putting a but on your
sentence, meaning you've beenclear that you made this mistake
, but you keep trying to put abut to diminish the
responsibility of it, and itmakes people feel untrusting.
So a lot of us think, oh,people aren't going to trust me
if I own this mistake and tellthem that I did it.
(21:15):
But most of the time theopposite is true.
When you don't clearly own itor take accountability for it
and show that you're very clearon what happened and very clear
on what you're going to domoving forward, people feel very
uneasy and they want to try toget you to that headspace.
So they start pushing on youmore and more and overly
(21:37):
explaining what you did and whyit was wrong.
So you want to kind of cut themoff before they have to even
get to that, not literally cutthem off, but you want to come
in clear and owning it Right.
You want to come in firstsaying I made the mistake, I'm
really sorry, I misquoted theclient, I sent a follow up and
(21:58):
corrected it, and then you wantto just offer what you're going
to do, moving forward, tocorrect for that.
I noticed that I was sendingtwo follow ups at the same time.
I'm going to start just sendingone so that I can make sure I'm
looking through all the details.
So the first thing that you'redoing is really just being
(22:18):
neutral and really clear,apologizing for the error,
owning it, being clear aboutwhat you're going to do, moving
forward to make sure it doesn'thappen again.
And you want to give that space, and what I mean by that is
stop there, allow the personyou're speaking to to respond,
(22:39):
allow them to have whateverfeelings they need to have about
it.
Allow them to say whatever itis they want to say.
Give that space, sit with thatbefore you offer any feedback on
things that you feel like youneed to help you moving forward.
So it isn't that I don't wantyou to be clear.
(23:01):
If you feel like there'ssomething that you're asking for
to help you moving forward, ifit's, could someone double-check
this?
Or is there a training on X, yand Z that I could dive into so
I could learn more about?
I understand that many of youmight be feeling like there is
something in the circumstance,the environment, the training
(23:21):
that I would like to help meavoid making that mistake in the
future.
But that needs to be the lastthing you say, not the first
thing you say.
When you are offering peopleownership, accountability,
clarity that you understand themistake, clarity that you
understand how you coursecorrected it if you are able to,
(23:44):
and ownership on what you'redoing, moving forward on your
part, you are putting yourselfin a position where people are
going to be so much more open toalso supporting you, helping
you, moving forward, versuspeople tend to come in really
moving past that first piecevery quickly, right, like owning
(24:05):
it very quickly, kind ofdiminishing it and then being
like can you do X, y and Z?
I really need help with a lot'scoming at me, whatever it is,
and so they'll do it in a waythat makes the person feel like
who's listening to you?
You're not owning it.
They start to feel unsafe, theystart to push back and they're
(24:27):
just way less likely to begiving you the support that you
need.
So that's my tips on what to doif you've made a mistake at
work.
The most important part, as Ihave said over and over again in
this, is what you do internallyyour ability to sit with
yourself owning the mistake,owning it in a very neutral way,
(24:48):
without a lot of drama, owningyour parts of it, owning what
you did that led to it, andowning it without shaming
yourself, without needing toblame others, without needing to
push all of that externally,but instead just making it okay
that you made a mistake andreally building a relationship
with mistakes that feelsresilient to you, that feels
(25:12):
like I know how to handle itwhen I make a mistake and I know
how to move forward and I knowhow to own it.
And I'm not gonna make it meanthat I'm not competent or I'm
not capable or I'm not going tobe successful in my job, because
if you really believe in yourcompetency and you also know
that I'm competent and mistakeshappen, your reaction to them
will be drastically different.
(25:34):
All right, thank you so muchfor tuning in and for your
patience on me diving back in in2024 with podcast episodes.
I'll be back with more greatinformation for you all.
If you are interested inworking with me one-on-one, you
want help getting more resilient, dealing with your fear of
making a mistake, your fear offailure, your overwhelm in your
(25:55):
new position, feel free to graba consultation session.
Go to Erin M as in mindsetfullycom.
I will be back with more greatinformation for you.
In the meantime, have a greatweek.
Bye.
Making a mistake is a very normal part of adjusting
and learning a new role.
So, in today's episode, if youare finding yourself terrified
of mistakes and reactingemotionally internally when
you've made a mistake, this isthe episode for you.
Tune in and I'm going to teachyou what to do when you've made
(00:21):
a mistake at work.
Hello, hello, welcome backfriends, happy 2024.
Listen, I know it's been aminute.
I know it has taken me longerthan some of you may have wanted
for me to come in here and diveback into this episode.
For those of you who havereached out, told me how much
(00:43):
you're loving the podcast,talked to me about how much you
liked the last episode on fearof making a mistake.
I see you.
I really appreciate you givingme feedback.
I've been working away with allof my clients, but now I am
back to give you this episode onwhat to do if you've made a
mistake.
So, for today's episode, if youhave not heard the last episode
(01:06):
on fear of making a mistake, Iwant to encourage you to go back
and listen to that.
What it does is it helps laythe foundation of how I want you
to think about mistakes.
You want to think about it aslike creating your own
philosophy around mistakes andreally internalizing that and
reinforcing that with yourself.
Creating that philosophy isvery important in terms of it
(01:27):
setting you up for how you'regoing to feel and how you're
possibly going to react when amistake happens.
So in this episode I'm going totake that foundation and I'm
going to talk you through sortof how to operationalize that or
how to put that into practicewhen you've actually made a
mistake at work, particularlyfor those of you who find that
(01:47):
making a mistake at work reallyspirals you out.
You think about it for days,you feel a ton of anxiety and
because of that, you may findyourself really over squeezing
your work because you're alwaysafraid of making that mistake
and you're always afraid of thefallout from that mistake.
So I'm going to talk about twosteps to my process when it
(02:09):
comes to what to do when you'vemade a mistake.
The first is going to beaddressing the mistake
internally with yourself, andthe second is going to be
addressing the mistakeexternally with your supervisor
or co-worker, client, colleague,whoever it is that that mistake
may have affected.
And let me just say this thefirst part of this podcast
episode where I'm going to talkabout addressing this mistake
(02:31):
internally with yourself is, inmy opinion, the most important
part of what you do when youmake a mistake.
This is the key to reallyreinforcing your philosophy on
making mistakes.
This is the key to how you'regoing to feel moving forward
each time you make a mistake isbased on how you address
(02:54):
mistakes internally withyourself.
This is where I believe thecrux of the shifts can happen
with you.
I'm certainly going to talkabout what to do with your
supervisor, if you're talkingabout the mistake and owning it,
but the truth is, many of youwho are listening to this
already know exactly how to ownyour mistake to your supervisor,
(03:17):
to the client.
You already know what kind oflanguage to use.
You already know how to do it.
I'm going to talk about itanyway and I'm going to give you
some possibly additional tipsthat perhaps you don't know.
But what many of you are notdoing is step one.
You're not addressing themistake internally with yourself
in a way that is productive andeffective at not creating shame
(03:42):
, anxiety and self-judgmentaround the mistake.
So let's dive in.
Let's say you have made amistake at work.
We could look at lots ofdifferent examples.
It could be a small mistake.
Maybe you misquoted somethingwith a client and you quickly
corrected for that, followed upwith the client, told them so
(04:02):
sorry, I sent you the wronginformation.
Here's the correct information.
So it might have been an easymistake.
It might have been somethingthat you were able to course
correct quickly.
It could be that you made amore significant mistake.
Maybe you closed out a dealwith someone and you forgot to
take into account the currencychange and maybe it costs
(04:25):
thousands of dollars for thecompany because of that mistake.
So that mistake would be alittle more high impact,
something that you can't coursecorrect quickly or easily and
something that you will need toreach out and have a
conversation with yoursupervisor about.
What's interesting is that bothof these mistakes one we could
argue is pretty low impact andone is a little bit more high
(04:47):
impact I have seen people havevery intense reactions to both
of these type of mistakes andthose intense reactions are
often because of what ishappening internally when
they've made that mistake.
So you know, person one whosemistake was pretty small and was
(05:08):
course corrected easily stillmay find themselves really
feeling like I shouldn't havedone this, really feeling like
there's no room for this kind ofmistake, really feeling deep
embarrassment and shame aroundthe mistake, despite the fact
that it's a pretty low impactmistake and it can be corrected
quickly.
(05:29):
So the key for step one, whenyou realize you've made a
mistake, is owning it toyourself, without defending,
diminishing or blaming.
And this is the reallydifficult part.
Your brain internally is goingto want to jump into a defensive
(05:51):
mode.
It's going to want to look atyour external circumstance as
the reason for the mistake andyou're going to hear things like
they set me up to fail.
I should be trained better thanthis.
How am I supposed to do allthis?
I'm doing too many things.
That's why this mistakehappened.
The workload is unreasonable.
(06:12):
I was given too much freedomtoo fast.
Someone should be watching overwhat I'm doing.
It's not fair the way that theyare, you know, putting all of
this on me independently soquickly.
So your brain's going to jumpinto immediate protection mode
where it wants to kind ofdiminish and defend yourself.
(06:34):
It wants to blame externalcircumstances, and this is where
things get very tricky.
I am not saying that externalcircumstances did not contribute
to the mistake.
It very well may be thatmultiple factors in your
external circumstance is whatled to this error.
(06:55):
But it becomes really difficultto parse that out when we're in
an emotional space of focusingexternally.
And what happens when you startto indulge that external blame
is that you're shaming yourselffor making a mistake and you're
(07:22):
shaming yourself in a way that'stricky for you to catch.
And what I mean by that is if Iam reinforcing this idea that
it has to be externally caused,because if I were to own it as
internally something that I did,it would be bad.
So when you're indulging blame,defending and diminishing and
(07:46):
what I mean by indulging that isyou're making those arguments
to yourself.
We've all done this, like I'vedone this a million times, my
head starts to build theargument.
Then I go home and I build theargument to my husband.
Then my best friend calls and Itell my best friend about how
this mistake happened and howit's BS and all of the things
that the company has done to setme up for this and all of the
(08:07):
circumstances that led to this.
I'm building a case and I'mbuilding it over and over and
over again.
And what happens when we're inthat space is you are
unconsciously sending yourself amessage that there's something
very wrong with having made amistake, that it's unsafe to
make mistakes and that it'sunsafe to own mistakes, that it
(08:30):
has to be something outside ofyou, because if it's something
inside of you and you justmissed something or you forgot
something or whatever the reasonmay be that the mistake
happened, your brain isbasically telling you that
that's unacceptable and that weneed to focus externally.
And so it hurts yourrelationship to mistakes.
(08:55):
And my goal as a coach who'strying to up-level people
professionally and get youfeeling very resilient in the
workspace, is that yourrelationship with mistakes is a
good one.
It's a resilient one.
You're not afraid of them, youknow how to bounce back from
them, you know how to takeaccountability, you know how to
(09:15):
move on without getting lost orspinning in that mistake.
And if your brain creates thisunconscious shame spiral where
it's almost pushing the mistakeaway from you and pushing it
externally and focusing on allthese other people and all these
(09:37):
reasons why that mistakehappened, it makes it very
difficult for you to build ahealthy relationship with
mistakes.
So what happens when you're inthat headspace and you are
really fired up and you arefinding yourself making all of
those arguments and finding thepeople around you indulging in
those with you, which is fineand totally normal and what we
(10:00):
want from our family and friendsto validate us and be on our
team.
But in this circumstance, whatbecomes problematic is that the
message you're sending toyourself is me making a mistake
is bad, I should never make amistake.
And what is really behind itmost of the time is that you're
trying to avoid a correlationthat you're making that me
(10:24):
making a mistake means I'm notcompetent or capable.
And if that correlation issomething that you buy into on
any level that if I make amistake it means I'm not
competent or capable, that Ican't learn this job, that I
can't succeed in this, then youwill push the mistake away,
(10:44):
because to accept it would meanthat you are telling yourself
you're not competent or capable.
And the truth is therelationship we want you to have
with mistakes is they're not aproblem for me.
I'm not above them.
I make mistakes, I am competentand I make mistakes.
(11:06):
Making mistakes is not somethingI can't come back from.
You will react very differentlyto a mistake, depending on your
relationship to mistakes andwhat you make it mean about
yourself.
So, if I allowed it, if Istarted from the assumption that
it is okay to make a mistakewithout justifying the external
(11:29):
circumstances that contributedto that mistake at the start.
Then I can come from the spacethat I'm competent and capable
and I can work on trustingmyself to not spiral out when
I've made a mistake on myself.
And I know that a lot of youyour brain, is saying but I'm in
(11:51):
a workspace and my supervisormight be hard on me and people
around me might call me out, andI understand all of that.
Some of you are in a workspacethat's a little bit less
forgiving of mistakes.
A lot of you, however, that Iwork with are in workspaces
where your supervisors and thepeople around you are far more
forgiving of a mistake than youare of yourself.
(12:14):
When you've made a mistake,oftentimes the way they react
and the feedback they give youis quite minimal and you will
spiral anyway, or your brainwill tell you they might have
said that, but now they'reactually thinking bad things
about me, or they don't trust meor they don't think I'm
competent.
So so much of the load is oftenbased on your own relationship
(12:36):
to the mistake and the way inwhich you are moving through the
process of.
It's almost like a pendulum andyou tend to swing from all
these.
External circumstances createdthis mistake and it's not my
fault.
Another end of the pendulumthat you swing to is oh my gosh,
I'm not competent, I'm notcapable, I should quit this job.
(12:56):
You know I shouldn't be makingthese mistakes, and so you're
flipping between one extreme tothe other because of the
discomfort of your relationshipwith mistakes, and where we want
you is really cleanly in themiddle.
So the first step is to reallywork to not overindulge that
external focus and to get to thepoint where you can just name
(13:20):
the mistake to yourself in aclear and neutralized manner.
Take out the drama, take outthe.
I was super busy.
I was doing all of these things.
They threw 10 things at me.
I was trying to work quickly.
There was a deadline.
Take out all of that and justname the mistake.
I misquoted the number.
I made a mistake.
I misquoted the number.
(13:41):
I made a mistake.
I did not account for thecurrency change Period.
I want you to get into your ownclarity, into a single sentence
about the mistake that you made,and I want you to take all of
the emotional language around itout and just sit with the
(14:03):
sentence, the neutralizedsentence and I want you to focus
on how you would feel aboutthis mistake if you believed you
can handle coming back frommistakes.
It is not a reflection on yourcompetency, your capabilities or
(14:23):
your future success, and I wantyou to really think about how
you would feel about the mistakeand about yourself if you were
coming from that perspective.
The place we want to get yourbrain to is where you don't feel
like you need to protectyourself from a mistake
emotionally.
That you don't feel like it'sdangerous.
(14:44):
It doesn't mean you're going tolove it.
It doesn't mean that we'relooking to make mistakes.
It just means that you can getclean much faster.
Defensiveness assumes you haveto defend something.
If you believe mistakes willhappen, they're going to happen.
Even when you're competent,you're going to feel much less
(15:05):
defensive internally.
So, regardless of how you ownit externally, what matters the
most is what you make it meaninternally.
So internally, we're not goingto feed that shame spiral.
We're not going to send themessage to ourselves that this
mistake is something that weneed to grossly defend, that we
(15:27):
need to run from that.
We need to blame everyone forbecause mistakes are fine and
they happen, regardless of howpeople externally react to that
mistake.
Even if your supervisor doesreact in a way that is intense,
you don't have to react in a waythat is intense.
(15:48):
You get to decide what yourrelationship is with mistakes
and you get to have your ownback.
And the trick is, oftentimespeople confuse that and they
make having their own back meannot literally taking on the
mistake, because that feelsheavy, and instead I want you to
have your own back by takingthe mistake, owning the mistake
(16:10):
and not making it mean anythingabout yourself, showing yourself
you can carry that mistake andown it and move forward right
that you don't have your ownback by pushing the mistake off
of you and onto someone else.
Okay, step two is owning itexternally to your boss, your
client, your colleague, whoeverthis might have affected.
(16:33):
One of the questions that Isometimes get is should I own it
?
Should I tell them, should Ifess up?
This is a nuanced question andit really is dependent on your
workplace culture how oftenpeople have their hands on what
you're doing, how much they wantto be in the loop on whether it
was a high impact or a lowimpact mistake.
Is it something that's going tocome back to your supervisor If
(16:57):
you're feeling like you'rehiding it, if you're feeling
like you're not sure whether ornot you should tell your
supervisor or not, then I alwayserr on the side of telling them
right.
I don't want you again shamingyourself unconsciously by hiding
an error or a mistake.
If it's a low impact mistakeand you can clearly correct it,
(17:20):
it doesn't have a high impact ona lot of people.
It's likely not something thatyour supervisor needs to be
bothered with or has anythingthat they're going to need to do
because of it, then you move onfrom it.
But what becomes important inthat circumstance is that you
use that as an opportunity towork through your own
relationship with mistakes.
Notice how much do you feel theneed to defend it, talk about
(17:43):
it, blame, get mad about it,tell your family and friends
about it.
If you notice you're in thatheadspace, you probably are
still having a relationship withmistakes where you feel very
fearful and you're holding astandard for yourself where
you're just not allowing it.
So many people will tell memistakes are human, mistakes are
normal.
But they do not practice thaton themselves, right, it's like
(18:06):
a philosophy they have.
They'll say it to their bestfriend.
They'll tell you that's howthey feel about mistakes, but
when push comes to shove andthey make a mistake, they will
actually feel a ton of shame anda ton of resistance to sort of
being wrong or having made thatmistake, and so you want to call
yourself on your own BS.
(18:27):
You want to notice if youbelieve mistakes are okay for
other people, then you have toalso believe they're okay for
you.
If you believe mistakes areokay for other people but not
for you, then you're holdingyourself above other people, and
I think it's always importantto remember you don't have to be
(18:47):
better than everyone else to besuccessful.
You don't have to be held to astandard that is different than
everyone else around you.
You, too, are allowed to makemistakes, just like your
coworkers and your colleaguesand your supervisors and
everyone else in yourprofessional industry who also
(19:08):
makes mistakes.
So if you are in the positionwhere you are realizing you need
to own it externally to asupervisor and you are going to
share with them what happened,the first, most important thing
is to get to that headspace thatI talked about, where you've
neutralized it and you reallyhave owned it in a very clean
(19:30):
way, without all of the drama,and so the first thing you want
to do when you're takingaccountability is you want to
own it in a very simple way thatdoesn't diminish blame or
defend Right.
I misquoted the client.
I sent an email back and letthem know and course corrected,
(19:50):
without a lot of drama, withouta lot of explaining away.
And the reason why that is soimportant because we have this
tendency to want to explain whyit happened in terms of I was
really busy or all these thingswere coming at me, or maybe
we're trying to likesignificantly diminish it and be
(20:11):
like it really wasn't that bigof a deal.
What happens on the other endis the supervisor, who's
listening, feels unsafe anduntrusting, like if someone
doesn't own a mistake veryclearly and they don't
articulate what they did andmake it clear to us that they
can see that we feel unsafebecause we start to feel like
(20:32):
this person isn't seeing thisclearly.
And that's when you'll get intoa situation where your
supervisor, your colleague,might start pushing on trying to
explain to you why it was anerror and why it's problematic.
If they're pushing a lot on whyit was an error and why it's
problematic, it's probablybecause you've been talking
(20:52):
around it in some way or you'vebeen putting a but on your
sentence, meaning you've beenclear that you made this mistake
, but you keep trying to put abut to diminish the
responsibility of it, and itmakes people feel untrusting.
So a lot of us think, oh,people aren't going to trust me
if I own this mistake and tellthem that I did it.
(21:15):
But most of the time theopposite is true.
When you don't clearly own itor take accountability for it
and show that you're very clearon what happened and very clear
on what you're going to domoving forward, people feel very
uneasy and they want to try toget you to that headspace.
So they start pushing on youmore and more and overly
(21:37):
explaining what you did and whyit was wrong.
So you want to kind of cut themoff before they have to even
get to that, not literally cutthem off, but you want to come
in clear and owning it Right.
You want to come in firstsaying I made the mistake, I'm
really sorry, I misquoted theclient, I sent a follow up and
(21:58):
corrected it, and then you wantto just offer what you're going
to do, moving forward, tocorrect for that.
I noticed that I was sendingtwo follow ups at the same time.
I'm going to start just sendingone so that I can make sure I'm
looking through all the details.
So the first thing that you'redoing is really just being
(22:18):
neutral and really clear,apologizing for the error,
owning it, being clear aboutwhat you're going to do, moving
forward to make sure it doesn'thappen again.
And you want to give that space, and what I mean by that is
stop there, allow the personyou're speaking to to respond,
(22:39):
allow them to have whateverfeelings they need to have about
it.
Allow them to say whatever itis they want to say.
Give that space, sit with thatbefore you offer any feedback on
things that you feel like youneed to help you moving forward.
So it isn't that I don't wantyou to be clear.
(23:01):
If you feel like there'ssomething that you're asking for
to help you moving forward, ifit's, could someone double-check
this?
Or is there a training on X, yand Z that I could dive into so
I could learn more about?
I understand that many of youmight be feeling like there is
something in the circumstance,the environment, the training
(23:21):
that I would like to help meavoid making that mistake in the
future.
But that needs to be the lastthing you say, not the first
thing you say.
When you are offering peopleownership, accountability,
clarity that you understand themistake, clarity that you
understand how you coursecorrected it if you are able to,
(23:44):
and ownership on what you'redoing, moving forward on your
part, you are putting yourselfin a position where people are
going to be so much more open toalso supporting you, helping
you, moving forward, versuspeople tend to come in really
moving past that first piecevery quickly, right, like owning
(24:05):
it very quickly, kind ofdiminishing it and then being
like can you do X, y and Z?
I really need help with a lot'scoming at me, whatever it is,
and so they'll do it in a waythat makes the person feel like
who's listening to you?
You're not owning it.
They start to feel unsafe, theystart to push back and they're
(24:27):
just way less likely to begiving you the support that you
need.
So that's my tips on what to doif you've made a mistake at
work.
The most important part, as Ihave said over and over again in
this, is what you do internallyyour ability to sit with
yourself owning the mistake,owning it in a very neutral way,
(24:48):
without a lot of drama, owningyour parts of it, owning what
you did that led to it, andowning it without shaming
yourself, without needing toblame others, without needing to
push all of that externally,but instead just making it okay
that you made a mistake andreally building a relationship
with mistakes that feelsresilient to you, that feels
(25:12):
like I know how to handle itwhen I make a mistake and I know
how to move forward and I knowhow to own it.
And I'm not gonna make it meanthat I'm not competent or I'm
not capable or I'm not going tobe successful in my job, because
if you really believe in yourcompetency and you also know
that I'm competent and mistakeshappen, your reaction to them
will be drastically different.
(25:34):
All right, thank you so muchfor tuning in and for your
patience on me diving back in in2024 with podcast episodes.
I'll be back with more greatinformation for you all.
If you are interested inworking with me one-on-one, you
want help getting more resilient, dealing with your fear of
making a mistake, your fear offailure, your overwhelm in your
(25:55):
new position, feel free to graba consultation session.
Go to Erin M as in mindsetfullycom.
I will be back with more greatinformation for you.
In the meantime, have a greatweek.
Bye.
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