Suggestions
Noel Andrews
Owner And Chief Executive Officer at Jobrack
Highlights
They messed up, but they refused to own their mistake. This isn’t the behaviour you want in your team members.
I recently hosted a conference in London for 110 people.
Overall, it went really well, but there were a couple of hiccups and near misses.
One, in particular, involved a mistake made by our venue that we only discovered a week before the event.
The venue had assured us we had exclusive use of an entire floor for our opening night mixer.
But when we sat down to plan everything out, they suddenly informed us that members of the public would be present.
We were confused—hadn’t we booked this space exclusively?
When we pressed them, they simply said that wasn’t the case.
This was a big deal for us because we needed significant space for the conversations and activities we had planned.
We worked with them to secure the space exclusively, for an extra charge, which fortunately was still within our budget.
However, when I went back to our records, it was clear that they had indeed suggested the space was exclusive.
What struck me most was how they handled this mistake.
They didn’t acknowledge their error, apologise, or even attempt to make it right.
They just let it slide, letting us think it was our fault, even when I showed them what they’d said.
This got me thinking about how I want my own team to handle mistakes.
When a mistake happens—and it will— I want my team to own it.
I want them to say, "Yes, I made a mistake, and here’s what I’m doing to ensure it doesn’t happen again."
It reminds me of the concept of apology languages.
For me, the most important aspect of an apology is hearing what’s going to be done to prevent the mistake from happening again.
That’s what I expect from my team.
We avoided any major issues, but it cost us more money and left me realising how many people see admitting a mistake as a sign of weakness.
In reality, it’s a strength.
Acknowledging a mistake gives you or your team the opportunity to learn from it.
But if they pretend it didn’t happen or wasn’t their fault, it’s unlikely they’ll learn the lesson and prevent it from happening again.
Creating a culture where team members feel safe to admit mistakes is crucial.
It’s about fostering an environment where feedback is welcomed, and growth is encouraged.
In my team, we emphasise that acknowledging mistakes is not a sign of failure, but a strength and a step toward improvement.
So, how do you handle mistakes yourself and within your team?
Do you own them, and encourage others to do the same? Or do you ignore them and hope no one notices?
Please do this one simple step to make scheduling interviews so much easier
I use my calendar a lot.
I block time for specific tasks.
I have team meetings in there.
My team have links they can use to book in 1:1 time.
I also have a bunch of different booking links that people can book time into my diary for different lengths and for different reasons.
It makes things so simple.
Want to book some time to chat?
No worries, you simply head to my scheduling link and you can find time that works for you.
So it blows my mind when I speak to someone that doesn’t use scheduling links.
We sometimes have clients that say they’ll just liaise with candidates by email to find a convenient time for an interview.
Please no.
This hurts my brain.
It’s so inefficient.
It causes a ton of emails.
And it often results in very inefficient booking of you time.
One of my team Teodora recently put together this simple guide on how to create a calendar scheduling link.
If you’re on Google then it now has this feature built in.
On Microsoft or another provider? Calendly is our go to.
So if you don’t have a calendar scheduling link then you can check out the link below to get yours setup, and you too can have easy interview scheduling from now on.
https://lnkd.in/e96t_Xd5
