What to do if you make a mistake so you can turn it into a benefit.
Have you ever had a time where you did something wrong, or said the wrong thing, and worried about how to fix it.
When my friend Roger says something he later wished he hadn’t, he says he had an ‘open mouth, insert foot moment’.
When you make a mistake, do what Successful People do!
People admire people who admit their mistakes, fix them and learn from them. If you want to build trust in any relationship, own the mistakes you make, fix them and learn from them.
We’ve all made mistakes. There is an opportunity to turn it into a benefit when we handle the situation with integrity and honesty.
When I owned cellular phone stores, often mistakes were made by inexperienced sales and service people managing expectations.
Once, a customer was so angry, he wanted to cancel everything after two days of using his phone. He was causing a ruckus in the store.
I brought him into my office, calmed him down and listened to his concerns. I immediately validated them. We made a mistake in our expectation management when we sold the phone.
He thought he was told the phone would work anywhere he needed it to. It was a time that was when cellular phones had only been on the market for about 5 years in our city. Coverage was limited, especially in rural parts of the province outside of the city. Canada has large rural areas and it was very expensive and time consuming for cellular providers to cover the rural areas of our provinces. It took 20 years.
I the owned the mistakes our sales person had made in giving him wrong information about coverage and access. I clarified his expectations, told him what was realistically available from us and our competitors. I offered to hook him up with our best competitors that offered different coverage. Better in some places than us and told him where we were better than them. I managed his expectations. Told him what he could realistically expect from the options available in the marketplace. He decided to keep his phone and buy a second one from us and left a happy customer. I checked back a couple weeks and he was still a happy customer and referring others to us.
We made a mistake in our expectation management. As soon as we realized we had set his expectations to be unrealistic, I owned the mistake our people had made. Then I fixed it immediately. I clarified and re-set expectations. I was open and honest about where the competition was better than us and where we were better than them. The next thing I did was coach the sales and customer service teams on how to prevent this from happening in the future. We learned from our mistake.
The customer service we provided became some of the best in the industry. We built our business on referrals. Our stores performed often in the top 5 in the country for sales. We won many network sales contests. Trips and bonuses. Using these types of success formula’s I was able to grown a cellular phone business from the trunk of my car to 3 stroes and 3 million in annual sales in 9 years.
To recap, here’s the 3 steps.
1: They admit it and own it as soon as they realize it.
We want you to do the same so you develop the habits of a successful person! Man or woman up, admit your mistake. Access courage inside of you. Access your discipline. We all have courage and discipline. Some of us access it more than others.
No matter what your pattern, there is courage and discipline inside you to access. Think of a time you did it. Remember the process. Use it again. It might take a change in perspective to access your courage and discipline. Talk to someone to get a different perspective.
My wife is a physician and has come to me often after having difficult conversations with co-workers. There’s been times where she realized she could have said something differently and it may have been received better.
Any time that happens, she revisits the subject with the co-worker the next day. She tells them she thinks she could have said what she did in a better way. She owns her mistake and apologizes. She then repeats her concerns using the new words. She fixes her mistake. By going through this process she learns from her mistake and plans her words more carefully before she speaks the next time.
Her co-workers respect for her grows because she admitted she made a mistake. Admiration for being open, honest, thoughtful and caring builds. The relationship gets stronger. Trust builds.
Another mistake very important to own, fix and learn from are those times when we can’t keep agreements. Not keeping an agreement is a mistake. When you realize you can’t keep an agreement, renegotiate as soon as you can! An unspoken expected rule of life is that we keep agreements.
Fix it now by re-negotiating. Even when I’m going to be 5 minutes late for a meeting, I call ahead and let the person know. I renegotiate instantly. That’s fixing the mistake. The other person appreciates it and admires the respect I show by letting them know before the agreement is actually broken. Here’s a bonus tip: As soon as you realize you can’t keep an agreement, fix it before the other person finds out on their own.
Don’t forget the importance of taking mistake fixing to the next level. Learn from the mistake and work really hard to make agreements you can keep. If you continually break agreements; unspoken, spoken, or written, you are not learning from your mistakes and you are hindering your process of turning adversity into to benefit.
Successful people grow in character after mistakes! You can grow your character!
When you make a mistake! Do what Successful People do!
The benefits will be; peoples respect for you will grow, you’ll make fewer mistakes and you’ll feel more confident! You will be more successful in every aspect of life.
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