Growing up in my Farmington neighborhood, there was a memorable crossroads (as shown in the picture) on an alternate route to my Elementary School. I arrived back late from lunch one day and was interrogated on the reason for my tardiness. I quickly replied about my alternate route that took me by this intersection (and switched the first letters of each street around). That got me a quick trip to the Principle’s office, where they called my mother. I was freaking out because my mother has a low tolerance for swearing, and I still had recent memories of soap on my molars. Luckily my mother saw it as a simple mistake, and we were fine, but the damage was done. All my classmates knew about the crime, and I had two more years of teasing to tolerate. That one stuck with me for a while.
Fast forward to one of my first cooking jobs. I was putting away a vendor delivery and dropped a case of frozen peach pies. I was upset about the cost of the drop. The manager smiled and shared that mistakes happen, and hopefully, we learn from them, so we don’t make the same mistake over again. We thawed and baked the crumbled pies, chopped them up more, and put Peach Cobbler on the Specials Board (creating a higher profit margin than selling a single piece of pie). I never dropped another case of pies, but I now knew what to do if they came in broken.
I never mixed up those 2 street names either, being very careful in the future to slow down and pronounce them accurately. People make mistakes! We are human. Some of them are huge! I heard the following from a leader I interviewed, who shared this Henry Ford story. Apparently, an engineer made a huge mistake costing the company millions in today’s dollars. The employee thought that it meant termination for him. Henry Ford was quoted as saying, “Why would I fire you now after I just invested so much in your education?” I am sure that was one of his most loyal team members going forward.
We are generally harder on ourselves when we make mistakes. Most people don’t intentionally make mistakes. As a leader that works in a culture of freedom in a framework, mistakes are a part of the learning process. How we handle them as a leader will determine whether we build loyalty or a fatal blow.
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