It wasn’t one of my best moments. I was aggravated, careless and in a hurry, which is not a great combination. The e-mail I recently sent mentioned someone by name, and not in a favorable way. I then had a thought pop through my head, did I clean him off the e-mail list? I did not take him off, which meant he was inadvertently included and that was bad. Nuts! I felt terrible in so many ways. I couldn’t take it back and I couldn’t hide from it. Of course, I wondered if he would read the e-mail but quickly realized he would, or if he didn’t someone would tell him. I needed to deal with it; waiting wouldn’t help. I went to see my boss, closed the door and told him what happened. He wasn’t happy but seemed to appreciate my coming to him directly and owning my mistake. Thankfully he didn’t make me feel too much worse. Then of course I needed to make a call to the person I mentioned in the e-mail, apologize profusely, and listen to him give me the earful I deserved. I did. We moved on and I learned a lesson.

How about you, ever screw up? I have, way more times than this story. How do we handle our mistakes? If I’m honest, sometimes I did what I should do, other times I followed the pack and did what did what aggravated me in others. Here are the ones that irritate me the most.

Deny it – Yes, people really do deny mistakes they have been made, even ones that are obviously theirs. They’ll say something like, “I don’t recall doing that”, or “was that really a problem?” or “no one told me.” Some leaders will question themselves or choose not to deal with it and leave it alone, walking away frustrated.

 Minimize it – They’ll act like their mistake wasn’t much of a mistake at all. It was a minor misunderstanding, or it hardly registers as a mistake. And why would I (their supervisor) be concerned or upset.

 Blame others – Yes, the “blame game.” It was their mistake, but they won’t admit it and instead will pass off the responsibility to others. The response you receive will be, “don’t blame me, it’s not my fault, they didn’t do what were supposed to do”, or “they didn’t give me it to me in time”. In their eyes they are blameless.

When you make a mistake, there are four things you should do.

• Admit it. Don’t deny or minimize it, and please don’t blame others. Hold yourself accountable and you will set yourself apart from others.
• Apologize. Yes, a sincere apology will go a long way. If you hurt someone, they need to know you are sorry. If you let your boss or team down, they need to know you have remorse over it and an apology helps.
• Learn from it. Ask yourself what you learned that you would do differently. In my opening story, believe me, I learned to re-read e-mails and double check addresses. I also learned that an e-mail where I mentioned someone else wasn’t helpful. If you can’t figure out what you’ve learned, you have bigger problems.
• Move on. Don’t hold it in and dwell on it. We all make mistakes because we are human. If you can’t let it go, you won’t move on, and you’ll become overly cautious. Mistakes are part of life, making the same mistake repeatedly is a problem.

If you are a leader, when mistakes are made by your team, what should you do?

Hold them accountable. It’s not fun, but it’s critical.

Don’t let them get away with denying, minimizing or blaming someone else. You must set boundaries that anything other than owning the mistakes is not tolerated. If you don’t, you’ll get more mistakes. What was a small mistake without accountability will become a tsunami because everyone will assume there is no accountability, so why should I work at being careful and not making mistakes.

If we say that we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth.  1 John 1:8 (TLB)