Episode 14 - Turn Your Failure into a Breakthrough: Master Mistake Recovery at Work

In this conversation, Katie and Mary discuss the importance of self-awareness and learning from mistakes. They share personal anecdotes and examples from their careers to highlight the impact of mistakes and how they can be opportunities for growth. They emphasize the need to remain open, curious, and willing to learn from mistakes, while also acknowledging the role of organizational dynamics and politics in how mistakes are handled. The conversation provides valuable insights and advice for navigating mistakes in both personal and professional contexts.

Recovering from mistakes downloadable worksheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10OtcAJus7HnCs-A_h6Mxu26F8kk_RUOw/view?usp=sharing

Chapters

• 0:00 Part One: The Comeback: Recovery from Work Mistakes
• 12:20 Part Two: Mistakes Happen—Recover From Political and Emotional Fallout
• 33:51 Part Three: Redefine Failure: From Setback to Opportunity

Transcript

Katie Bickford (00:06.126)
We are back for episode 14 and I am actively trying to keep my head. We've got a lot of feedback that my head was really massive compared to yours. So I'm really trying to keep it like as I'm zooming in and out. But I think, I think one of the things that is part of the reason that I lean in is because I should be wearing glasses and yeah, so I'm trying to, I'm trying to see the screen.

Mary (00:16.183)
Jesus!

Mary (00:30.48)
Mmm.

We did that. We have an episode where you're wearing glasses and I have one where I'm wearing glasses. I forget which one that was.

Katie Bickford (00:40.943)
And it really made a big difference for me because I remember being like, this is what it's like to have vision. But I will say right now it is plausible deniability because I am kind of distance blind. so I can sort of, it's like, it's just like, you know, people are in a just like far enough away. can't even really distinguish who they are. So it gives me an excuse when I seem like I was being sort of, you know, haughty.

Mary (01:08.434)
have everything at like 180 magnification on my monitor right now so I don't have to wear my glasses.

Katie Bickford (01:12.602)
That's smart. So, okay, that's the hack that I was looking for. So yeah, well, okay. So for my banter point before we jump into the episode today is that this weekend, I watched Alien, the first one with Sigourney Weaver. Have you ever seen

Mary (01:17.84)
Yeah.

Mary (01:32.422)
Yeah, like a bazillion years ago. Really?

Katie Bickford (01:34.678)
Really? I've never seen it. And so, yeah, and I was inspired to see it by all the memes right now that are pointing out the, you know, the cat lady who warned everybody and she's the only one who lives in a room with her cat. So of course I was like, well, this is a movie I've got to check out.

Mary (01:51.164)
Yeah.

Sold. Yeah, doesn't, you're, I think they got, have your algorithm pretty, pretty down, Katie.

Katie Bickford (02:01.92)
My algorithm is like, it's actually so sobering to see that it's a wall of cat content. It's just childlike. It's not childish, it's childlike. I was at, I was at

Mary (02:18.106)
It's cultivated. would, I'm going to challenge you and say it's cultivated.

Katie Bickford (02:21.767)
It's cultivated. Yeah, I was at a business meeting with literally not people I know very well. And in the sort of get to know each other sort of chat part, they were talking about their kids and slang. And I knew all the slang. And I was like, well, there's this too. And they said, what, do you have kids? I do not have kids.

I am a internet child who is a middle -aged internet child, but yeah, but I have so many lowbrow interests. I mean, it's just kind of off the charts and you sometimes I think people track me as being kind of like, I don't know, not that way. But as far as a lowbrow recommendation and you've already suffered my relentless promotion of this.

But, and I'm gonna say the artist's name and it's immediately gonna like lead to, you know, people like sort of their eyes, you know, sort of glazing over. But Kesha's album, she has this album called Gag Order. And it's all, it's been out for like a year or so. And it is so good. I can't believe it. I know, I know, I know Kesha has, right, I know every...

Mary (03:31.94)
All right, I'll make a note. I'm aware of Kesha. have to say I'm not a big listener, but that's because my own algorithm is filtering this stuff out. So I will take your recommendation and I will.

Katie Bickford (03:39.886)
Yeah.

Katie Bickford (03:47.456)
Yeah, so it was an algorithm thing that Kesha came through just for her new song. But when I looked her up on Spotify, there was her old album and I started listening to it and I was like, gobsmacked. It's so good. It's becoming my album of the summer. It's just this really low key, but also like pop banger kind of album that has a lot of content that

I think, and I have my own projection into this, I think people who are interested in the kind of stuff we talk about in the podcast, or least a sliver of them, would find enjoyable. But what do I know? What do I know? Tell me I'm wrong.

Mary (04:29.926)
Okay. Can I offer something for you that we've already talked about, but I'm gonna throw it in there. House of Dragon, so good. So yeah, I went to the beach yesterday with some friends and you know, you go to the beach and you can actually hear really well around you. Like you can hear everyone's conversations. I can't help I'm like fascinated. Like, what are they saying?

Katie Bickford (04:38.304)
please do. Yeah, please.

How's the dragon? Okay, I'm gonna write it

Mary (04:59.474)
So I was sat near some people, I was reading and then I heard somebody, was like a group of like, I don't know, like 10 or 11 people, all different ages. And I hear some guy just go, anybody watching House of Dragon? And I almost wanted to be like, me over here, can I talk to you stranger? And then there was some girl in his group that went, I haven't seen any of the Lord of the Rings. And I was like, my God, that's offensive on two different dimensions. It's neither Lord of the Rings nor is it Game of Thrones.

Katie Bickford (05:13.627)
my god.

Katie Bickford (05:26.446)
Toe stranger.

Mary (05:29.574)
You've offended me twice.

Katie Bickford (05:31.66)
And I don't even know you. Hello beach stranger, get your life together.

Mary (05:35.472)
I just wanted to go over to that guy and say, come sit by me. I'll talk to you about this. It's okay. And it's so, it's like, for anyone who's out there, like I, it's the show that's so creative and it's not, it's not super easy. It's one of these things that it's not a show you can sit on your phone during. It's like, I'm just gonna tell you that. Like you need to be all in, you need to pay attention. Which I think a lot of programming right now is actually being created.

Katie Bickford (05:40.046)
Like, they're

Katie Bickford (06:00.271)
Okay.

Mary (06:04.848)
with the understanding that people are also on their phones. So I think like things are shorter, things are, I don't know, they're either extracted longer, you there's either like an eight episode series that could probably be four, but they kind of just drag it out and repeat the content over and over again. It's like, yes, I know, just stop repeating yourself. But this is like, this is heavy and it's like multi -generational and the names are very similar, Agon, you

Katie Bickford (06:11.137)
Yeah.

Mary (06:34.448)
Damon, Reyna, Raniara, like it's just, you have to pay attention, but it's worth it. It's worth it, it's worth it. And then you have to watch Game of Thrones. so there's two, this is an investment, maybe like if you watch one of them and if it's not your thing, then that's fine. But I just, it's so good, it's so good. And there's only two more left or one more left. One was last night, so I can't be on anything until I watch the show and then we're done for the season.

Katie Bickford (06:35.01)
Mmm.

Katie Bickford (06:54.466)
Yeah, I have.

Katie Bickford (07:03.362)
Yeah, I really, you know, back to the theme of being a really like low brow entertainment consumer. It's I think part of it is that those shows have, you know, they really require something of you. But I will say, you know, is a kind of a note about the Tolkien verse, Lord of the Rings. I was listening to a podcast. is a there's a CEO that I've been working with.

And he was on a podcast being interviewed and he referred to his CFO as guarding the Mines of Moria. And I was like immediately, and I'll tell you that it, and as somebody who's not, I just was like, I recognized it. I was like, that's a, that's a Tolkien reference. That's a Lord of the Rings reference. And it immediately made me like him more because I was like, it's a really dynamic person. That's like nerd.

Mary (07:58.566)
yeah. yeah. Yeah, these little breadcrumbs, right? If you know, know, you're in the club. It's like the first time I ever realized that like Led Zeppelin put in a little Lord of the Rings reference too.

Katie Bickford (08:02.912)
Trust the nerds. Trust the

Katie Bickford (08:13.652)
Yeah, all the cool people are doing it. And I'm not doing

Mary (08:16.918)
And I'm just gonna say, if you like Lord of the Rings, you probably will like Game of Thrones. And my understand is Duolingo now has Valerian as well as Elvish, two languages that, it's fantasy. I mean, it is a lot of work, but it's one of those things where you do it because you're getting something out of it, right? Like I'm online and I'm like, let me download this family tree. Let me like analyze.

like the geography of all these different houses and how that might've impacted their strategy in West Rose. It's like, it's fascinating. I love it. It's all make pretend.

Katie Bickford (08:53.9)
love that though. I will say that I love that kind of use of people being like creative and like really digging into the creation of something that's really elaborate. And that's something that is, you know, after my own heart. But then there I am listening to Kesha watching TikToks at middle age. Okay. Thank you. Thank

Mary (09:13.374)
There's room for it all. I think you can't have all the heavy stuff. I mean look, C .S. Lewis and Tolkien both went through a terrible period of history and the world built to escape it or to heal from it or whatever and there's a lot in there. people think some of this stuff, someone thinks me watching Game of Thrones is lowbrow.

Katie Bickford (09:43.522)
Those are people there.

Mary (09:43.868)
Someone, know, something is there, but you need like a, you need a mix, you need some junk

Katie Bickford (09:46.636)
Those people are like, they're so above my level that I can't even comprehend it. But speaking of games, think we're, we've got some game discussion per usual for the pod this week. So yeah, I'm looking forward to this topic. And, and I think that our listeners will find this.

as therapeutic as I did working on it. So, Yen and Mary who works on all the structure and pre -production, once again, an extraordinary job. join us dear listeners for another fantastic episode.

Mary (10:27.57)
jump

Mary (10:32.145)
and we're gonna

Mary (10:37.606)
Yeah, so I don't know how we'll talk about it. don't cook. Anyway, we'll have to figure out how to stitch it together since we're cutting and then whatever like the transition. Okay, so we got scene two and this is me. Let me make this bigger. As I said, I've had a hundred eighty fun. They don't squint.

Katie Bickford (10:45.686)
I'll figure it out.

Katie Bickford (10:53.294)
This.

my god, that's so brilliant.

Mary (11:02.045)
I have the Word document up on my screen. just make it

Katie Bickford (11:02.114)
that you're so.

Yeah, I just did it too. I'm like, Mary, you did it again.

Mary (11:09.67)
Okay. And action. We talk about winning the game a lot on the show. There's a crucial element to every person's journey towards success. The ability to recover from mistakes. Look, it's going to happen. You know this. I know my fellow former and not yet former perfectionists are squirming in their seats right now. And this is the point. We don't even like to imagine ourselves messing

And so we don't. And therein lies the problem. We know that through practice, we learn mastery, but we don't apply this to the process of falling short itself. Carl Jung said, we meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life. What we disavow and reject about ourselves often resurfaces in different forms, reminding us of the outstanding lessons awaiting us. Success requires a solid understanding of oneself.

having deeper understanding of what makes you tick, how you react in different situations, including when things go wrong, will benefit you both personally and professionally.

Katie Bickford (12:24.238)
Right, so speaking for myself, making errors tends to happen when I'm either overextended and tired, and I would include here trying to do things when I'm sick, or when I'm trying something where I'm stretched past my current level of expertise and ability. I notice that if I feel disproportionately bad,

about the mistake, it has to do with believing that I was supposed to be something that I'm not. For example, not tired, not inexperienced. And this is typically combined with some aspect of a self -awareness and a communication gap, not being upfront and honest with myself or others or both. So I want to make a case for the role of self -awareness in both avoiding mistakes and correcting and recovering from them.

Most established organizations have some kind of protocol for mistakes. Maybe you work for a store and you're registered short 15 bucks at the end of the day, or you're in finance and use an incorrect formula in an Excel sheet for an important piece of analysis, or you forgot to get your sales leaders sign off on giving a discount to an important customer. Depending on your role,

The mistake and its related risks to the company. There may be a set of procedures to go through after a mistake. These include things such as reporting, documenting the error, assessing, analyzing its impact and root cause, communicating the issue to key stakeholders, and potentially creating corrective actions such as preventive measures to ensure the mistake doesn't happen again. At a minimum,

Most organizations will have some form of discussion or post -mortem review with lessons learned and assurance that all activities were satisfied for any legal and compliance requirements. Well, an organization will no doubt be involved in these kinds of processes to ensure understanding and learning from the mistake. Rarely do managers discuss how to recover.

Katie Bickford (14:41.358)
from making a mistake either emotionally or politically, it's impossible to get a sense of the total number of workplace mistakes and their impact. But we know that a study by John Hopkins in 2016 estimated that 250 ,000 deaths have been attributed to medical error. And OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, cites 2

million non -fatal workplace illnesses and injuries, many of which may be directly attributable to mistakes or lapses in safety protocols. The point is mistakes happen. Our focus for this episode will be on recovering from them. The ability to navigate a mistake with an appropriate level of accountability and self -awareness is crucial.

to your work relationships and your professional brand and your credibility. It's also an important part of the bigger picture task of growing self -awareness. So through self -knowledge and deeper awareness of our motivations, we have a chance to lead more conscious, intentional, happier and successful lives.

Mary (16:04.274)
That was awesome.

Katie Bickford (16:07.158)
Yeah, you did a good job writing

Mary (16:08.986)
You did a great job delivering it. Scene two. I had a young woman working for me some years ago, let's call her Evie, who was very bright and had a lot of potential. She'd worked her way up in the company and had a grit and determination that I admired. I was aware that she needed support, but also opportunities to stretch and grow.

And I remember being very thoughtful at the time about getting this balance right. I didn't want to push her too far or fast because we were in a hyper competitive and high performing environment. So my group held a global offsite every year. These were extensively planned three day events with a good mix of business talk, personal interaction and bonding. Since I designed the agenda and itinerary,

I offered to give Evie a short presentation slot on the last day so she could get some visibility and well -earned recognition for the internal projects she was heading up for me in the group. She was excited about the opportunity and shared with me what she had planned to discuss, a mix of operational improvements and some longer -term projects she was doing by herself. After our informal chat, she sent me three nice slides that she had put together.

The quality of her presentation was strong and she was extremely excited to be participating in the meeting instead of just helping organize it. Evie had a 10 minute slot at 3 p on the last day. We'd lost some international colleagues who had to catch flights. So she had a smaller group to present to, maybe 20 colleagues, most of whom were from our office and knew her well. I introduced her, she came up to the front of the room, progressed her slide.

And then something very odd happened. She sort of froze for a while. And when she began to talk, I don't know how to really describe it, except that it was a bit like hearing someone speaking in tongues. She was so nervous that the words coming out of her mouth didn't really make sense. She tried to present without any speaking notes and her nerves got the best of her. And she was struggling to dig

Mary (18:29.914)
I felt terrible, but it occurred to me that it would have been worse to interrupt her, so I let her finish. Luckily, the colleagues in the room stayed engaged and clapped politely when she finished. Evie approached me the next day to apologize for what had happened. We went for a walk to a local park and sat and talked for a while. She told me that she knew it didn't go well and was flooded with embarrassment and worry that everyone would think her incompetent.

My advice to Evie was to pause and focus on soothing herself with the idea that if you aren't making mistakes, you aren't pushing yourself enough. When the initial shock of embarrassment, fear, shame hits, it's best to tell yourself this until those self -critical feelings start to dissipate. This is super important, especially for folks who grew up in overly critical and or emotionally withholding environments.

where love and your value was conditional and based on performative behaviors. Once you're calm and not feeling emotionally flooded by feelings, test and do a quick objective assessment of what happened and be realistic about its impact. In Evie's example, she didn't do something that was gonna get her fired or send the company into financial ruin, though emotionally, sure, I knew that she felt pretty bad in the

Next, I advised Evie to admire the lesson. Why admire? Because it's a verb we don't usually apply to mistakes. So it sounds incongruent in our mind. Our thinking brain wakes up and tries to make sense of why it should admire something negative. Admiration is to regard something with respect or warm approval. So use curiosity and creativity to admire the lesson in the mistake.

For Evie, the experience taught her that while she had good verbal, written, and PowerPoint skills, public speaking was an area she wasn't naturally gifted at, just yet. Working in our company, she had seen countless presentations in public speaking, and on the plus side, she had the confidence in herself to try it, which is awesome. The experience gave her an important lesson that she needed to learn a bit more about the art of speaking. This lesson was a real gift for

Mary (20:56.39)
The presentation was made in a small group amongst friendly people she knew. It was even a smaller group than had been planned. And those who remained attended out of respect and genuine interest in her. They were also tired and hungover from the night before, but that's another story for another show. In all seriousness, not only did everyone in the room want Evie to succeed, but they had all once been in the exact same position, so could empathize with her.

The last thing I told Evie was to realize the opportunity. This experience helped her recognize a gap in her knowledge base that would be important to address if she wanted to continue growing her career and opening up more opportunities for herself at the firm. She asked me if I would sponsor her for training and then arrange to practice presenting with one or two colleagues before trying again at another meeting in the future.

The mistake became an important catalyst for Evie's leveling up in her career. If she hadn't made it, or if she allowed it to undermine her confidence, she wouldn't have been able to eventually go on to bigger things, which I'm happy to report she absolutely did.

Katie Bickford (22:12.718)
That was such a great vignette. I you're such an excellent storyteller, Mary. And you had me on the edge of my seat. And I want to underline in bold what you said about curiosity, creativity, and as the word you'd used is admiration. To remain open instead of defensive.

There is nothing that creates organizational toxicity and signals a lack of command than pointing fingers and only blaming outside circumstances. Usually it's a mix of factors, you know, outside your immediate influence that could have been better positioned along with personal responsibility for how we responded to them.

But one note I'll say is that actually for people who experience that like Evie, where it's like a real shock to the system, I have a tendency to really shrug things off. And I think that the limitation that that creates for me is that I'm less prone to learn from those errors because they don't upset me that much. for folks who are really struggling with being upset is realizing and kind

you know, using the admiration that you're talking about to really look at these as opportunities to seek growth and level up your career. But you're so good, Mary, with speaking notes. I've been so off the cuff from my career and working on the pod with you has leveled me up. I'm like the Eliza Doolittle to your Henry Higgins. That's a reference for the seniors in our audience.

Mary (23:57.926)
Got it. Thank

Katie Bickford (24:00.641)
and

Mary (24:03.152)
love that reference that's cool.

Katie Bickford (24:05.024)
It's I love it too because it's so you like you're like literally like pigmallioning me. All right cut and let's go next

Katie Bickford (24:15.778)
So I want to use a recent example of a fumble, but the specifics would reveal an active of negotiation. So I'll reach back a bit. So when I think of my leadership career, I think the theme of my biggest mistakes personally was making promises that became difficult to keep, something we've talked about in other episodes, and having to spend valuable political capital to uphold

and also valuable emotional energy. So my examples are so boring compared to Mary's. So I'm going to try to see if I can make this interesting, but the listeners already know that it's going to be what it's going to be. So the example I'll use here would be two different outcomes for the same issue. Forgive me if it's a little bit dry, but in software sales, the lifetime value of a contract

is factored into determining the valuation of a company. So the term of renewal of a deal can make a $100 ,000 contract worth four to 15 times more, depending on how the investors are calculating the valuation of the company. So negotiating contracts can be challenging. from the on the ground of the individual sales,

contributors, it takes time. And especially if a customer has lot of, you know, it's called red lines or proposed changes to the agreement. And it can be a slog and it can be frustrating for a sales rep who's trying to meet the deadline of a quota for many obvious reasons that have to do with their own career and also their income. So in this one case that I'll use a rep, I'm going to call him Tom made an unapproved edit.

to the auto renewal language in the contract to get the deal signed for the quarter allowing termination for non -cause, which means they can cancel the contract for no reason after the first year. So the value of the contract is one year. It was discovered and ultimately the issue was with Tom's ability to solve problems and have challenging conversations and his inability to consider what's best for the company, or at least I thought.

Katie Bickford (26:41.43)
And the most memorable part of this for me was that Tom told me that he didn't think it was a big deal. And I realized it wasn't institutional knowledge, why term length matters. And there was lesson for me, but it was still a deception that had to be handled as such. Now, another rep had the same challenge and I'll call her Rachel. She worked with me to write a side letter as an addendum to the contract that would require us to send the customer

a 45 day notice before auto renewal of their contract. It wouldn't give them an out, but if we weren't meeting the terms of the agreement, they could terminate for cause. So no material changed the agreement, but it made the customer feel better. And, you know, it required some internal process tweaks because the customer success folks had to be aware of the communication that would be required. But in this particular case, the rep who made the mistake doubled down and emphasize that they didn't understand the big deal.

and missed a major opportunity to redeem themselves. And that mistake was due to several issues that would be possible to work on if Tom was willing to own his shortfalls.

Mary (27:54.692)
Interesting. I'm curious and you might not be able to share it in case it could be figured out, Katie, but I'm really fascinated by how sales professionals are dealt with knowing that they're the revenue generators and whether they're held in maybe a different light because of

I've seen examples where mistakes from sales leaders are overlooked or minimized because their value is so high in the organization.

Katie Bickford (28:32.81)
Ooh, you are going to open a can of worms for me. And it's something where it's going to seem like I'm a turncoat to my own profession. But I think that sales is one of the last bastions in companies where there is a convincing that it's some kind of like black magic and sort of sorcery when it's still very, it's very systematic, much like marketing became very data -driven. Sales is the same type of anatomy physiology where there's a process that's anatomical and like sort of very similar.

across all deals and there's a physiology of it moving, kind of everything moves differently in space. And I do, to your point, I think that sales folks have subconsciously yet also intentionally set things up so that they're beyond reproach because there's a lot of fear about holding us accountable and like what we could possibly do in a sense that it's in also.

The value of keeping things, sort of the power that we're exerting is vague and completely within our control and our understanding that makes the rest of the organization sort of, you know, have this sort of fearfulness of interrupting it. And I don't think that that's by accident. You know, I personally don't, I'm not that kind of leader. Like personally, I am, my values are like, you think the customer first and what their experience is going to be like. And

that drives the interaction. So working really closely with sales, with marketing rather, instead of fighting them and trying to turn it into this sort of power dynamic. But to your point, the thing is, that how those types of situations are handled also from organization to organization be very different depending on the politics of how Tom was viewed. So if Tom was a very high performing sales rep

there are organizations that would say, we can overlook this and actually not barely even address it. I've seen that happen. Or they just go, yeah, know, Tom, you know, listen, you know, you got to break a couple eggs to make an omelet kind of thing. And, you know, even in certain cases where Rachel would be almost dinged for having been too cautious and possibly risking a deal. Like this happens. This is part of the reality of how some organizations are.

Mary (30:31.174)
Wow.

Katie Bickford (30:50.208)
are crafted. So yeah, mean, so the whole thing about making mistakes within the sales organization and in any organization have, there's also the kind of the impact of politics and organizational dynamics.

Mary (31:02.162)
Well, I've been on the other side of your group. So as an outsider, one of my first jobs was running the B2B CRM program at Tiffany's. So we, our internal customers were all, it was the sales force. And we had a number of processes that they were required to follow. And I could not count how often I heard of how much of a burden that everything in my role was for them.

And those who refuse to follow them would always cite how much money they brought in. It was just like, you know, wait for it. It's like, do you know, it's like, you really need to make sure this is uploaded in the CR. And it's like, do you know what, do you know what, you know, it's like, so luckily for me, Tiffany saw the value in the compulsory processes because they were instilled for the greater good of the organization, as you just said. And so I was backed up there culturally and the sales force had to comply or risk losing their bonus. had a pretty aggressive.

Katie Bickford (31:37.56)
Yeah, that's

Mary (32:01.978)
at the time, this is some years ago, so I don't know what it is now, but you don't do this, you don't get a bonus. I mean, it was very, very black and white. But I have seen to your point other cultures where that wasn't the case and because I bring in the money that became the standard trope, which some folks pointed to whenever they messed up. Now, aside from creating a splintered culture and some organizational chaos, at least in my rigid operational view,

It also feels like people are cheating themselves out of an opportunity to learn and grow.

Katie Bickford (32:38.924)
Yeah, and I've seen that in my organizations. I've had performers of all different levels of capability and capacity begin to move into this entitlement. I've had a lot of very high performing organizations under me. And one of the things that just kind of naturally happens is they start to think like, look what we're doing. Because the business, as they start bringing in business, it changes the business.

impact in this is I'd put this in the podcast in terms of just advisement for anyone who is seeing this and is overseeing a revenue organization is being aware that it's like, you bring the money in, but the people who are making the product, the people are delivering it. These are the people that are making it possible for you to sell the way you're selling. The people are making it possible to have referrals. They're the people that are making it possible for you to hold your head up high when you're telling your customer about the level of quality of what their experience is going to be.

So this idea that just, you this one inflection point of being able to close a deal, it's like, try closing a deal with a low quality product, right? And so one of the things that I had introduced in one of my organizations, I've actually never done this again, but it was in one particular team. was a wonderful team, but there was this thing happening where folks were getting really like entitled, because they were watching the fact that they were completely transforming the company, the shape of it, everything about it.

And so I created something called like the team names award. And it was for folks outside of the revenue organization who were positively impacting our ability to deliver. So, you know, I think it was like once a month and people could nominate and explain why. And then for our team meeting, we would bring someone in, you know, it'd be from operations, from finance, from wherever.

we'd bring them in and we would present them an award and say, is because you're making it possible for us to succeed at the level that we are right now. And it was kind of a message to the team, you know, like honestly, like for me, the reason I did it, I was like, they like to bring some consciousness to the fact, it's like, you're not doing this alone. We're not doing this alone. And also to the organization to say thank you for making it possible for us to have such a great product to sell and to make so much money.

Katie Bickford (35:00.5)
and to be in such an awesome position. So

Mary (35:07.056)
And cut. Act three, scene one. Back over to you.

Katie Bickford (35:13.134)
Again, right back three, same one. Okay, got it. I think the most important point about making mistakes is one that you made earlier. Like remain open and curious and willing to learn about yourself and your motivations and vulnerabilities. Now keep in mind that highly political environments of people who will use your mistakes against you.

but I would counter that it's a power move to take an appropriate level of accountability without being overly apologetic and ashamed. If you can, in retrospect, process the emotions, as you've talked about, Mary, and become clear about the error, why it happened and why it won't happen again, you can claim ownership of the narrative. How you handle mistakes can improve your credibility.

Mary (36:13.622)
Okay, let's take a quick

Mary (36:25.552)
Making mistakes can either be the worst or best thing that happens to us. Our perception of the event is critical. I've spoken before about the drawbacks of being a perfectionist and it applies to making mistakes. There was a time when I put enormous pressure on myself. The quantity and quality of everything I did needed to be extraordinary all the time.

You can imagine then how devastating and shame -filled messing up was for me. Also, when I was coming up in my career, there was a greater separation between work and one's emotional life. Back in the day, workplaces didn't talk about EQ, emotional regulation, or self -development like we do today. I have three takeaways here. One, take some time to consider

how you've managed mistakes in the past and be curious as to whether or not there's some unaddressed stuff in there. For example, as a child, how are mistakes in your home handled? What is your emotional reaction to making a mistake? Two, think about the work environments and cultures where you have worked in your career. How are or were mistakes typically addressed? Is there an understanding that growth requires making mistakes?

Or have you worked in toxic and retaliatory cultures where mistakes are weaponized? Three, prepare yourself for when mistakes happen by practicing. I recommend using the STAR approach. S, soothe. All right, a mistake has happened. Give yourself some love and support. Mistakes are part of the human experience. They are going to happen if you're learning and growing. T, test.

assess the situation and the mistakes impact in an objective way. A, admire the lesson. Mistakes are surprises, which when revealed to us, give us valuable information. Be curious, not ashamed. And R, realize the opportunity. Penicillin, chocolate chip cookies, potato chips, the pacemaker, silly putty, microwaves, cornflakes.

Mary (38:43.588)
inkjet printers, Post -it notes, and x -rays were all inventions realized because of mistakes. Even if your mistake doesn't result in a new product, chances are the process of making them will teach you something important