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Remember this when you need to handle a mistake
Have you ever worked for a boss where you felt you couldn’t do anything right? Then there is the other extreme: The boss who never says anything. You don’t know if what you are doing is right or wrong.
To be a successful team, each member must be clear of their role. In addition, performance standards and expectations must be clearly defined so that we have maximum control of desired results.
Once we have agreed upon specific expectations, we need to prepare ourselves for the inevitable: People will make mistakes and sometimes deviate from the standards. With that as a given, the next challenge is how and when to approach the person to re-direct them. In previous blogs, I have talked about the “how”. Let’s consider the “when”.
I will start with a scenario: You go out to your car tomorrow, and you notice that one of your tires appears to be low. What do you do? Most people I know would go to a service station and put some air in it. Very few would change the tire right there on the spot. On the other hand, if your tire was completely flat, you probably would not drive on it. You would fix the tire right away.
The same is true with errors and deviations. Some errors we make are minor. They have mild consequences. Instead of stopping everything, we may just want to put that on a checklist and talk about it during our next discussion. There are other errors that are more serious. They could be very costly, or even life threatening. A commercial pilot who failed to check his checklist before a flight would be in serious trouble, and they would hear about it right away. Here is the key point: When someone you are managing makes a mistake, remember these three steps:
- Make sure that our expectations were made clear.
- Assess whether it is a subtle deviation, (slow leak) or an obvious deviation (flat tire)
- If it is subtle, considering waiting rather than interrupting. If it is obvious, interrupt!