How many mistakes do you want to make today? – Find out the secret to making zero mistakes this week, month and year. Read on….
In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skills Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, we cover real-life professional dilemmas such as the below.
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On Tuesday afternoon, I opened an email regarding a radio broadcast of some interest to me. Unfortunately, the radio show was set for Tuesday (today) at 11:00am. My initial thought was: “Darn I wonder when this originally was sent. It looked rather interesting. It was about smart women – and I’d like to think of myself as a smart person who happens to be a woman.”
I checked the timestamp of the email, and it was originally sent Tuesday (today) at 9:00am. Having a project manager background, my next thought was: “Darn. That was poor planning. These smart people weren’t really setting themselves up for success on this particular event. Oh well….maybe they will have a replay available that I can take advantage of later.”
Wednesday, I received another email stating that the broadcast would be rescheduled. When I opened the email the note said that it was going to be rescheduled for late Sept/Oct. There was no other news on the topic.
This led me to wonder:
- Since this message was send 24 hours after the event was supposed to take place, were people left hanging? Or did they just broadcast another program instead?
- Was this rescheduled because of lack of attendance? No one called in because of the late notice?
- Did the guest speaker get confused? Was he being taped today – but the actual broadcast would be later?
- Was this rescheduled because of technical difficulties?
- Was this rescheduled because the guest did not show up?
- Was there a mix-up on the studio reservation?
- Will I even want to tune in late Sept/Oct? I can’t really set aside a date/time in my calendar.
Then my mind continued with other possibilities and conspiracies.
Things certainly pop-up and take us off-course. Since we know this up-front, how should we professionally approach them? Is there a creative way to turn these events into our favor? How can we use these mishaps to actually strength our resolve and integrity of purpose?
In this small example, should we:
- Be a little more transparent on what happened? Telling our audience (or email contacts) some of the details – avoids them imagining their own answers. It also shows our integrity in taking responsibility for fixing the issue.
- Actually provide the rescheduled date/time? This allows people to make note and mark it in their calendar for the future tune-in.
- If the future date is unknown, publish the date that the air-date will be known? Then assure your viewers that you will update them at that time with more information.
- Publish this new date/time in your upcoming newsletters and scheduled promotions (now)?
- Provide everyone a link to the sample taped/mp3 version? This could be a quick summary of what was going to be said on the program, which might help keep people’s interest ignited. We could also provide an registration page that allows us to notify these particular people of additional news and offers associated with this broadcast.
Conclusion:
Do you know why SNAFU’s and missteps happen all the time? It’s because they are not actually missteps. Things naturally just happen. It was our unrealistic expectations that deems the event as a mishap (not the event itself). Once again, the event is merely the event. It is our expectations that defined it a mishap or mistake. Therefore, it’s not the ‘mistakes’ that slow us down, but how we interpret and respond to the ‘happened events’.
Homework assignment: Think of some recent mishaps at the office. What follow-up steps can you do ‘right now’ to turn that into an advantage?
99.98% of all mistakes are actually imagined. What’s to say that your mistake isn’t one of those imagined? What’s to say that this event isn’t actually an opportunity for bigger and better?
We talk more about how to incorporate this philosophy into the real-world professional environment in my on-line coaching academy series. <check out our GoTo Academy: Soft Skills Tools for the GoTo Professional>Feel free to share this newsletter with your family, friends and colleagues. My business relies on satisfied clients as the primary source of new business, and your referrals are both welcome and most sincerely appreciated!