Making the Most of Your Workplace Mistakes By PHYLLIS KORKKI

January 18, 2009
Career Couch
Making the Most of Your Workplace Mistakes By PHYLLIS KORKKI

Q. You realize that you made a terrible mistake at work. Your first instinct is to deny that it happened or to cover it up. Then you feel angry and defensive, and want to blame other people. Then you want to hide. Are these reactions normal?

A. It is only human for people who have made a mistake to have any or all of these initial reactions.

A mistake can contradict your view of yourself as an effective worker, creating cognitive dissonance, said Carol Tavris, a social psychologist and co-author of "Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)." You think, "On this dimension where I pride myself on my abilities, I screwed up? Not possible," Dr. Tavris said.

To reconcile these opposing views, the mind tries various forms of self-justification. Dr. Tavris said that this is "the protective process by which we get to keep seeing ourselves as ethical, smart and competent, and reject, ignore, dismiss or minimize the evidence that we were wrong."

That's when the lies, the blame and the defensiveness erupt. But these self-protective responses don't help you or your organization because they block any understanding of what went wrong, she said.

Not only that, but covering up one error can lead to more — and bigger — mistakes, until you are entangled in a mess you never intended, she said.

One key to handling errors effectively is to recognize they aren't necessarily a reflection of your native abilities and intelligence, Dr. Tavris said. Once you have separated the action from you as a person, you can work quickly to correct the error and move on.

Q. Still, you can't help thinking, "How could I have let such a stupid thing happen?"

A. "Mistakes will happen; that's a given," especially in complex work environments, said Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis professor of leadership and management at the Harvard Business School.

In any job that requires continuing thought and judgment, we need to be "aware of the huge potential of things to go wrong," Professor Edmondson said, because "we all can handle only so much cognitively at a time."

Because layoffs have shrunk the staffing of many businesses, "we need to recognize that we're more vulnerable than usual to mistakes," she said. "We should be encouraging people to speak up sooner rather than later."

Q. How do you start dealing with your mistake?

A. First, go to the people who are affected by it and apologize, Professor Edmondson said. Then work with them to correct the situation and come up with changes you can make so the error won't happen again. The sooner you come clean, the better — both for your peace of mind and the good of the organization.

"Stand up, turn around, do it now," she said.

Acknowledging a mistake is hard because of the fear of being perceived as stupid or incompetent, Dr. Tavris said, but keeping it inside can be an enormous psychological burden. "People are often surprised to learn that when they admit the mistake, not only do they feel better, but the response is often much better than they expected," she said.

Q. Can your manager affect the way you deal with your mistake?

A. Your manager and company can make all the difference in the world in the way mistakes are handled. If your manager is the type who will become angry at you for a mistake, you will be less likely to disclose it — and that wastes valuable time, Professor Edmondson said.

The best companies make it a policy to show gratitude and reward employees for revealing their mistakes, Dr. Tavris said. Workers and managers need to view a mistake "as an inevitable human step on the path to improvement," she said.

David D. Woods, a professor of human systems integration at Ohio State University, said managers need to make clear that "it's more important to share the information than it is to identify the culprit."

Occasionally, if a person makes many mistakes and cannot reduce them, a manager may realize that "this person is not well placed in this role," Professor Edmondson said. "That's not fun but it is a leadership job." Still, she said, she has found that this situation is rare.

Q. Can a mistake be a sign of a larger problem in your organization?

A. It's possible. You may view your error in very personal terms, but it may reflect a fundamental flaw in a company, a system or a product.

Professor Woods gave an example of someone who inadvertently hits "Reply to all" in an e-mail message, sending confidential information to a large group. This could well reflect poor design of the e-mail system, with "Reply" and "Reply to all" placed too closely together, he said.

Other examples of flaws, he said, are a breakdown in communication among departments, a fear among subordinates to question higher-ups and a failure to incorporate crosschecks — the way airline workers do for safety reasons — or checklists.

See a mistake as an opportunity, Professor Woods said. All of these events, he said, "are opportunities for the system to learn and change."

E-mail: ccouch@nytimes.com.


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