Vicki Anderson

What happens after a mistake differentiates the people developers from the people limiters. I have always learned that after an accident, a mistake, or a failure of any kind, you ask three questions: 1) What happened? 2) Why did it happen? and 3) How can we keep it from happening again?

There is no “Who did it?” in those three questions. Of course, “who did it” is part of the “what happened” but the focus is on the situation, issue, or behavior, not the person. The assumption is that people don’t make mistakes on purpose. They more likely make mistakes because they were distracted, in a hurry, didn’t think a certain step in a process was necessary, or because they have always done it that way and no mistake ever happened before.

As humans, we all make mistakes, but the higher the cost of the mistake, the more we have a tendency to blame. However, as leaders we have the capability to help people learn from them so they don’t repeat those mistakes. The more that you talk about the three questions above, the less likely people are going to hide mistakes and the more likely you will get to the root cause of the problem to solve it.

Make sure that blame doesn’t come through in your voice tone even though you may be measuring your words. Your body language and voice tone convey much more than the words you use. If you tend to be one who gets emotional easily, perhaps you can learn to do a “slow blink” as a former colleague used to say. Stop and think before you react to the information just presented. It might keep you from having to go back and apologize later for overreacting.

If you are going to lead, you must learn to really solve problems because blaming is only surface problem solving. It does not keep it from happening again. It only tends to make the person hide problems until caught, which exacerbates the issue. If you are going to be a people developer you must make it safe for people to report problems so they can be fixed. Involve them in the process and help them learn for themselves.