No one mistakes, but we all have at one time in business and life. Despite the horrible feeling and dread that it brings, it is possible to take those mistakes and make them into valuable lessons that you can learn from and ensure they don’t happen in the future.
When it comes to mistakes, I’ve made my fair share. I always take my own experiences into account when I have to deal with an employee who has made a mistake.
In an article for Madison.com, I shared one mistake I made when I worked for a company and missed a major deadline that my bosses were not expecting to miss. I answered honestly about what I did and accepted the responsibility for my actions. While it was still not an experience I like to dwell on, my superiors did appreciate that I admitted my mistake. After all, they already knew it was me, so it would have just made it worse if I lied about it or tried to blame someone else. You’ve got to own your mistake, learn, and move forward.
I did spend time after the situation, thinking about how I would have done a better job at hitting that deadline if I could have done it all over again. This helped me create a better plan for future projects so I made sure no deadlines were missed again.
