The New York Times’ Career Couch feature recently offered advice for dealing with workplace mistakes. A lot of the insights can also be applied to journalistic errors. Here are some relevant excerpts:
One key to handling errors effectively is to recognize they aren’t necessarily a reflection of your native abilities and intelligence, [Carol Tavris, a social psychologist and co-author of “Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)”] said. Once you have separated the action from you as a person, you can work quickly to correct the error and move on.
Because layoffs have shrunk the staffing of many businesses, “we need to recognize that we’re more vulnerable than usual to mistakes,” [Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis professor of leadership and management at the Harvard Business School] said. “We should be encouraging people to speak up sooner rather than later.”
The comment about layoffs will ring true to a lot of journalists.
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.
Another great section:
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.
And here’s a good example of how the technologies we use can sometimes force us into mistakes (think spellcheckers):
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.
Finally, an endorsement of checklists:
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.
I’m working on a checklist-related project that I hope to unveil soon.
