Hold on to Those Who Make Mistakes

“Hey Boss, um, we made a mistake.”

The dreaded quote.  You had an employee come up and alert you to a mistake, a big one on an important project.  It’s so big it has to run up the chain of command all the way to the CEO.  Lump-in-throat.

Everyone begins to get angry.  Conversations abound, and more than just ‘what do we do about it’ and ‘how do we solve this’.  Conversations about the employee who made the mistake, the employee who found the mistake, the manager of the employee, the manager’s manager.  Human Resources is starting to get involved.

The employe who made the mistake and pointed it out gets called into the manager’s office.  A discussion is had.  How did it go?

The employee walks out of the discussion, some time later, content, relieved and maybe even borderline happy.  They are engaged, focused, and more than ready to tackle the next big obstacle.  You need something in the future, this is one of your go to employees.

What?!?!  (I thought for sure they were going to be walked out.)

As a great leader, you just set a great example.  You encouraged not only this employee but all others to make mistakes, alert the team, and find the solution.  Sure the company was upset, management now has their eye on you and your team, but you and your team are now stronger and better prepared for future problems.

There will be future problems, we are human, we make mistakes.  Wouldn’t you want a team unafraid of mistakes, and most importantly, unafraid to bring them up when they occur?  Would you rather your team hide them from you?  That’s what would happen if that discussion went down a dark and negative road.  If that employee walked out upset, or even worse, was walked out of the building, you and your management team would have ensured a much quieter remaining team.

Another benefit of this trust is that you now have a much more alert and focused employee.  Think back to when you made a mistake.  Are you a little bit embarrassed?  Does that embarrassment, pride in work, get you to focus even more on eliminating future errors?  Sure it does, you don’t want to be in that type of spotlight again.  Think about the employee, chances are they don’t want that spotlight again either, so they will be much more diligent from here on out.  If they don’t have this new drive, and you should understand that from the discussion and future observation, then there are other plans of action.  Most people will have this new driver.

Instead replace that employee either within or a new hire.  They are not thinking about this mistake, they haven’t learned the lesson, and they don’t have that level of embarrassment to help them focus.  If they are new they will most likely make a lot of mistakes, so someone better be checking their work, and all because they are new.  If they are from within, they most likely have an already full work load and make mistakes from being overwhelmed.

Entrust and you have a natural driver within this employee and others who are watching.  Replace and you are setting yourself and your team up for more problems and errors.

This can be a difficult path to choose.  There is a lot of pressure from yourself for wanting to be successful to outside forces such as management who is seeing this error in a negative light.  Most of the other managers around you are probably encouraging the negative path with this employee, and chances are that would be their choose path, in this situation.  You are the great manager and leader, you have courage, you now have more knowledge, and you set the examples.

As a strong leader, you set the example.  Are you going to show the team how to keep silent, or are you going to empower the team to be even better.  Show courage.