“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”
– Rita Mae Brown
Despite your best efforts, you blew it.
You stepped in it, goofed up, made a mess.
And now one or more of your colleagues is mad at you, or worse yet, accusing you of something.
Objectively, the mess you made may not even be that big of a deal, and yet you find the heat in your body rising, your stomach reforming into a knot, your ears up to your shoulders, and your face flushed.
Your instinct might be to argue with the other person, challenge their accusations, or even want to throw it back in their face.
Or maybe, instead, you’d rather just duck the whole thing: cover your head and go back under the covers until it blows over.
And somewhere deep inside, you feel terrible about the whole situation and worry: what’s wrong with me? Why am I such a screwup?
Everyone goofs up sometimes
I hate to break it to you, but even you, with your superhero powers of awesomeness, will make mistakes.
I know, I know: wouldn’t be nice if we didn’t?
But it’s part of the deal of being human.
The good news about messing up
But there’s an upside: as a starting point, at least seeing that you’ve made a mistake is the way toward remedying it.
If you couldn’t see it, or even feel the knots or remorse, you wouldn’t be able to do something about it.
The way I see it, conflict is just a signal for change: something new is trying to happen.
The only real mistake you can make with mistakes or conflict is not learning from the experience.
What do you when you mess up
- Take a breath. As soon as you notice that there’s a problem, first take a breath: either literally breathing, or by taking a break. If you are flooded with cortisol and fear, you lose access to your higher thinking ability, which you’ll need. Even a few minutes of breathing, or taking a short walk, can help you regain thinking power to address the issue.
- Own your part of the problem. As they say, it takes two to tango. Which means that in any situation, you likely have some responsibility for it. Instead of getting into the dance of defensiveness (“I didn’t…” “it’s not my fault…” “they should have…”), simply own your part of what went wrong. Take enough of the responsibility, but also not to much. Aim for owning at least 2% of the issue.
- Find their request behind their complaint. Underneath the other’s complaint or frustration with you, look for what the real need is: what do they want or need from you? Underlying all problems is a real and legitimate need. Identify it as best you can, check it out with the other person, and see what you can do the address the real need, instead of getting hooked by how the message was delivered.
- Manage your inner critic. If you find yourself caught in the shame spiral about making a mistake, stick a leg out and find solid ground. Use the suggestions above to own your piece (but no more), and to acknowledge and address the real underlying needs, but put down the baseball bat you may be applying to your own head. Your critic loves you, but is typically an unskillful messenger of feedback about your performance. Acknowledge your errors, but don’t add to the problem by making up stories about your worth.
- Notice your own progress. You can’t fix problems you can’t see, so the ability to notice, fix and learn is actually growth. Notice the good in you, and your increasing ability to address problems proactively, as well as learn from your own experience.
Your Turn
In the Comments below, I’d love to hear your take on this issue.
- What helps you notice, repair and learn from mistakes?
- How have mistakes been important or helpful on your path as a leader?
(And if you want more help turning around any persistent or on-going conflict in your team, contact me for more information about work pair or team coaching.)
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Before specializing as a professional coach in 2004, I spent more than a decade in leadership, management and program development for state and local government and non-profit organizations. Now I get to help leaders and teams have more clarity and ability to stand up for what's important in their work and in their organizations. Working with me, leaders and teams find more meaning and purpose, feel happier and more confident, navigate change and conflict, and work together better.
This is ABSOLUTELY where I am at the moment. Two weeks ago I was hauled up to London (90 min journey) for what was supposed to be a normal one to one review. Three and a half hours later, having been told that it was my negativity when approaching potential target audiences that was the reason I wasn’t hitting target, I crawled out of the room having had no break or food from the start of the meeting.
I have been well aware that my boss and I don’t see eye to eye personally but he had no justification or evidence for what he accused me of.
I am really trying to take board all your suggestions about what to do in the light of this experience. But I suspect this is the end of my time with the organisation.
Hey Alison,
Ah, sorry to hear that – that’s a lot to take in all at once, especially if you were expecting a regular 1:1 review, but get hit with a hammer instead.
I’m curious, thought: even in the midst of this, what can you acknowledge about yourself here? What did it take in you to stay present to this feedback?
I hope the suggestions in the blog are helpful. And while we can aim to self-manage and learn from whatever arises, some conflict is unresolvable.
Hang in there!
I actually did manage to take a breath and not enter into an argument (or not too much) When he told me the same thing for the 8th time I pulled him up and asked if we could please move on. And when he started talking about feedback about how negative I had been about some sandwich fillings on a training course……well if that was proof then we had a problem.
I also did own your part of the problem. I have known from the start that we “didn’t get each other” so some parts of what he said kind of rang true from his point of view I am sure.
I very deliberately let him say what he wanted to say and only responded when he really pushed me – despite saying he wanted me to listen and consider, he didn’t like the fact I wasn’t responding/ denying/ arguing. When pushed I simply said that if that was what he believed, then me protesting it was not true would not necessarily change that belief. I disagreed but could not see that an argument would help.
That said there were times I felt attacked, emotional and on the verge of walking out. But I am too stubborn. I want to know that even if I don’t hit my targets that there is nothing else I could have done. I hopefully I will meet them despite him.
•Find their request behind their complaint. Underneath the other’s complaint or frustration with you, look for what the real need is: what do they want or need from you? Underlying all problems is a real and legitimate need. Identify it as best you can, check it out with the other person, and see what you can do the address the real need, instead of getting hooked by how the message was delivered.
Alison, sounds like courage to me! Way to stay in the game, and connected to yourself in the midst of it all.