The longer you feel bad after making a mistake, the less likely you are to learn and take appropriate actions on the outcome.<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m going to say it again in a different way: The longer that you think about feeling bad (sorry, shoulda’ coulda’ woulda\u2019, bad thoughts) after you fail or make a mistake, the less likely you\u2019ll learn from your mistake and take the appropriate actions to fix it or prevent a similar mistake or failure from happening again.<\/p>\n
What this means is, we\u2019ve been taught to make a mistake and feel really bad about it to no end.<\/p>\n
Study after study has shown that in order to have breakthroughs, to have great relationships and so on, humans need to spend less time in the feel-really-bad-phase and quickly move on to the learning stage.<\/p>\n
The Practice<\/h4>\n The practice that I am giving you to combat this is very simple: Mistake – Learn. In an organizational structure, depending on how dysfunctional your agency is, this looks deceptively simple.<\/p>\n
Let me give you an example in practice. I was working with a company and every time something failed, they would all sit in a room to figure out who screwed up and then the manager would make that person or team feel really bad in front of everyone. Afterward, they’d scramble for ways to fix it, but not until after the whole feel bad part lasted at least one to two hours and sometimes even weeks.<\/p>\n
And, invariably, I would get pulled into it because I was the consultant on the project and they always like to blame the consultant (that’s a rule and we accept it as consultants). At which point I said, \u201cYou know you’ve spent two and a half weeks figuring out who failed and yet you haven\u2019t fixed the failure.\u201d He kind of looked at me and he said, \u201cYeah!\u201d To which I replied, \u201cNext time there’s a breakdown on the project, can you just have the meeting and say \u2018This failed\u2019 and then go straight to the fix, and not waste time worrying about who was responsible?\u201d<\/p>\n
At their next post-breakdown meeting they worked it out in only twenty minutes. Twenty minutes versus two or three hours! If you do the numbers on that, three hours down to twenty minutes\u2014that\u2019s huge! At the end of the meeting everybody walked out in a great space. It went like this, \u201cOh yeah, that screwed up. Here’s what we all have to do. De\u2026de\u2026de… and here’s the check-in.\u201d The emotion was taken right out of it, and suddenly, they went from a dysfunctional organization to a functional organization.<\/p>\n
Five Minute Rule<\/h4>\n The thing is, and why I said that this practice looks deceptively simple, is the fact that some people really like to make other people feel bad and some of you like to feel bad.<\/p>\n
So, I have a rule: If you have to feel bad, if you have to apologize, if you really did screw up, you get five minutes. Set a timer. You have five minutes to apologize. Say whatever you want but after the buzzer goes off that\u2019s it. <\/p>\n
Same thing goes with employee evaluations. I just did an evaluation of one of my own employees and she sent me three pages of email of why she was so sorry she couldn\u2019t meet all of her goals. I glanced through the email and I thought, \u201cThat took a lot of time for her to write a three page email.\u201d So, I shot her back an email that said, \u201cI didn\u2019t even read this. It\u2019s mistake-learn.\u201d That’s it. I said, \u201cI don\u2019t need to hear how you feel bad, just send me what you’re going to do to fix it.\u201d She sent me back a message saying, \u201cOh my god! I though you were so upset.\u201d I replied, \u201cI\u2019m not upset. I just want to know how we’re going to move it. And if we can\u2019t move it, then obviously we’ll separate ways at some point, but I believe we can move it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Again, huge time saver, so deceptively simple and works great.<\/p>\n
Up Next<\/h4>\n Phew! I\u2019m glad we\u2019re past the F-word and ready to move on to the next empowerment: The Story Versus What Really Happened<\/strong>. If you learn and practice what I am going to teach you, you will be the hero in your organization. Check back to learn how.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you\u2019ve been following along with my \u201cDefying Gravity Leadership […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
Defying Gravity Leadership Series: #3 Make a Mistake and Move On - Your Corporate Shrink<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n