Inevitably, people make mistakes when they’re on the job. Nobody’s perfect and it’s how you tackle the aftermath that defines who you are as person and an employee.
Upset worker with lots of feels picture from Shutterstock
Messing up at work can stressful and upsetting. You get that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach as you beat yourself up and replay the mistake over and over again in your head. You think about how you may have disappointed your boss and colleagues. Depending on how big the screw up is, the whole experience could be quite debilitating. At least for me, anyway.
We’ve written about this topic before that provided a guide on how to mitigate the fallout of a huge work mistake, but everybody has their own way of dealing with these kinds of problems.
So how do you get through the day when you’ve screwed up at work? Let us know in the comments.
Comments
7 responses to “How Do You Deal With Screw Ups At Work?”
If it’s your fault, you take responsibility, and you do your best to fix it. You make sure you write up some documentation on what went wrong, how you rectified it and how your processes can be changed to avoid it in the future.
It’s important not only for the health of your business, but if you’re an employee you’re demonstrating to your boss that you’re all about responsibility and a commitment to improving the way you and your team works.
But yeah, that cold feeling in the pit of the stomach? We’re oooold friends. 🙂
I misinterpreted the title, I was expecting an article on how to deal with people at work who are screwups. Too bad.
That could be a separate LH article all on it’s own!
Whiskey on the rocks.
But seriously, we all stuff up from time to time. Focusing on a mistake is not worth the attention or stress, you should however focus on what you would do better if placed in the same situation. We are constantly evolving forward, one little misstep means nothing in the greater picture.
Admit it. Fix it.
In live TV I was told “forget about it and move on” because if you keep thinking about it, you’re just going to keep stuffing up. Unfortunately there’s no “fix it” in that situation.
If I’m responsible I immediately confess to my manager and then we start brainstorming ways to fix the problem.
I like the ideas of these companies.
Celebrate your screw ups. When you think about the reasons why, it makes sense.
http://www.happy.co.uk/8-companies-that-celebrate-mistakes/