Mistakes Merely Opportunities in Disguise
OfficePRO magazine, November/December 1998 issue

Accept your mistakes, accept yourself, and turn blunders and missteps into lessons learned

 By Dr. Gene Sharratt and Eldene Wall, CEOE

 Mistakes are a part of life. We all make mistakes, but the real mistake is not to learn from them. How can mistakes be turned into opportunities? Effective office professionals acknowledge that errors happen. Most importantly, they learn from their mistakes and move forward.

 Each person reacts to mistakes differently, but it's natural to feel angry and disappointed when errors are made. While these are normal responses, your reaction to mistakes largely determines what you learn from them. Some people criticize and belittle themselves for their errors longer than necessary, which can be counterproductive to professional growth.

 Why are mistakes so painful? Whether a huge and costly mistake, or a relatively minor one, individuals often feel a strong sense of personal failure. While criticism is usually painful and can even be traumatic, the personal disappointment a person feels can be devastating.

Clues to Your Strengths, Weaknesses
A mistake is an important means of discovering what works for you-and what doesn't. It offers a unique opportunity to learn about your weaknesses and where you need to improve. A misstep also serves as an excellent flag to warn against repeating the same behavior.

Accepting a new position or challenge can leave you vulnerable to the possibility of failure. You may worry about taking chances, but you must be willing to take prudent risks. As office professionals, it's important to look at failure as an opportunity, not as a disaster. Reverend Dale Turner, a Seattle Times columnist, says: "People without mistakes are brakes on the wheels of progress." Consider these examples of moving ahead after mistakes: Henry Ford I, the mechanical genius who "conquered the world" with the automobile, but neglected to put a reverse gear in his first model; and Thomas Edison, who late in his career spent more than $1 million on an invention that proved of little value.

Conquering Fear
Following are some ways to overcome the fear of mistakes:

• Acknowledge your mistake. Denial of responsibility for a mistake is understandable, but it opens up the possibility of making the same mistake again. Don't be defensive or deny that a problem exists. Assume your critic is right until he or she is proven wrong.
   

• Tame your inner critic. Learn to accept being wrong without suffering or experiencing self-abuse.
   

• Be curious. Develop a healthy curiosity about what went wrong and why things didn't work out as you had planned. It's impossible to dwell on your shortcomings when you're absorbed in a quest to understand your mistakes. Use children as role models-they keep repeating things unashamedly until they get it right.
   

• Get feedback. When you're criticized for a mistake, your first reaction is to ignore what is being said or to become angry or hurt. But if you accept feedback, you can learn a great deal from the critic's point of view. One strategy is to go back to the source of criticism to thank him and even ask him to elaborate. This turns your critic into a mentor and facilitates bonding with that person with increased trust.
   

• Pay attention to opportunity. While some mistakes in life or business merely reflect a lack of understanding or inefficiency, the best mistakes lead you to brilliant ways of solving or avoiding the problem the next time.
   

• Know when to say when. Sometimes failure comes from a relationship that is in itself abusive or a lost cause.

 Sam Levenson said, "You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself." Objectivity provides us with a golden opportunity to see exactly why specific mistakes are made and how we can avoid them. Read good biographies about famous people. Carefully observe errors made by friends or colleagues. Ask yourself what they could have done to prevent their mistakes. For example, some professionals are consistently uncooperative on projects and therefore are not invited to key meetings. Wisely observe other office workers' blunders and remind yourself of them before yielding to the temptation to join the office critics.

The most rewarding workplace is found where members of the team overlook, or at least minimize, the mistakes of their co-workers. One disgruntled employee was heard to say, "The only time I know that my boss even knows what I do is when I don't do it." It does no good to constantly look for the mistakes of others. The best person to start changing is yourself.

Misplaced Blame
Inevitably, at times you'll be wrongfully blamed, either by a supervisor or a co-worker, for something someone else has done. How should you react? First, talk to your supervisor. Don't be defensive, but ask what can be done to avoid the same situation happening again. If that doesn't work, you may have to defend yourself to the person in authority over your supervisor.

If the problems continues, documentation should be kept for self defense, including memos to show who approved decisions or where ideas originated. Writing memos to the boss ahead of time expressing your concerns also can protect you. Communication and resolution are also of vast importance. Nothing will spoil the joy of your work more than unresolved conflicts.

Everyone makes mistakes. You must accept these mistakes and get on with life. As the words from a popular Rogers and Hammerstein musical say: "Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again."

 "Never let yesterday use up too much of today," Will Rogers said. We should not let "regrets from the past and our fear of tomorrow become the twin themes that rob us of our todays." Put yesterday behind you and focus attention on today. Plan wisely for the future, accepting your mistakes, accepting yourself, and viewing mistakes as opportunities in disguise.

Gene Sharratt is superintendent and Eldene Wall is executive secretary for the North Central Educational Service District in Wenatchee, WA.

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