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Just do it. Everything takes practice. You can't change the way some people react to a mistake. But once you've made your life's share of making them you will have enough practice admitting mistakes and weathering peoples' uncomfortable reactions that you can learn how to not let it bother you.
You have to go through the problem to learn this, not around. Good luck.
If I were sitting in a psychiatrist's chair I'd ask you, "Really, who was it in your childhood who reacted poorly to your mistakes?"
And you could work through it from there. The threat isn't as big as your childhood Boogeyman.
I am looking for another job but keeping my expectations low because I'm very picky about what I want. My reasons include, but are not limited to, certain people that I work under.
The two people who were most directly involved in this week's incident are my manager and one of the owners. The owner can be very hot-headed and many people are borderline afraid to deal with her, especially when any type of problems occur. My manager is an extreme perfectionist who has been known to go into "stern lecture" mode when something goes wrong, and who has occasionally scolded me for something she perceived as a mistake but which really wasn't. My teammate, who also reports to her, has also become very unsettled about making her aware of specific problems, fearing it will escalate into a bigger deal than it needs to be. (I have a secret suspicion that both of us will be gone from the company eventually.)
The fact is, this is the second time in my career that I've worked under people who make life more difficult than it needs to be. Which is why my instincts tend to be bad when I mess up and have to deal with the consequences. As I stated upthread, when I'm in a stable work environment, admitting my mistakes to anyone is not an issue whatsoever.
Okay. Thank you for elaborating. My new manager was similar. All I did was keep quiet the entire time and if asked to respond, I pretty much agreed and reworded what was said to me. Now my manager has backed off after losing some people.
I didn't mean to imply that I make the same mistakes over and over. I'm referring to the way I handle mistakes on the rare occasion when they happen. If I know that there's a chance someone will give me lots of grief over what happened, it will cause me to panic and perhaps respond to the situation irrationally.
Of course I expect management to address the specific issues so they don't happen again. It's just that some managers work with you to make things right and others make you feel horrible about it. Not knowing which kind of reaction I'll get scares me to death.
I also didn't mean to suggest that I make tons of mistakes on a regular basis. The problem I describe here goes back many years and only tends to apply to jobs where I worked for unreasonable managers, who tended to make problems worse rather than better. Any time I've been in a job where I liked my boss, this problem did not occur at all.
So, it's more a matter of being too thin skinned? Once you realize there's a problem it may help to have a solution to the error in mind (rehearse what you'll say) before you inform your manager. If you at least feel you know how to fix things less likely you allow the manager's feedback to upset you. Remind yourself that the error wasn't intentional. Do some roleplaying with a trusted co-worker to help you handle these sorts of conversations more easily. Practice makes perfect, right? No one can ever guarantee that you'll always end up with a nice boss or pleasant coworkers. Just the way of the working world.
If I were sitting in a psychiatrist's chair I'd ask you, "Really, who was it in your childhood who reacted poorly to your mistakes?"
My answer to that would be, it wasn't my childhood but an earlier job. The company was a total nuthouse where virtually nobody was happy and management treated everything like a crisis that was somehow the employees' fault. I was in a state of panic all the time that somebody, for some reason, was going to be angry and somehow blame me. Countless people left this place, and eventually I did too.
My current workplace is nowhere near that level of crazy, but the fact remains I put in a ton of effort to escape a work environment where I felt very unsettled all the time, only to be laid off from my next job and end up in another place where I'm not happy. (Or at least I was fairly happy until my previous manager quit -- and guess why she quit...)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Parnassia
So, it's more a matter of being too thin skinned?
I can be thin skinned at times, yes. Especially when being repeatedly exposed to negativity. My current manager has gotten on my case countless times over things that were trivial at best, or in some cases, weren't real issues at all. That wears a person down. If it were just a matter of once in a while I made a mistake, this wouldn't be the issue that it feels like. But when you're treated frequently like everything you do is wrong, that's another matter entirely. And it can't really be all my fault -- I've always gotten high marks from virtually everybody I've previously worked for.
I tend to be very tolerant of mistakes, the first time. Won't happen again should be the expected response. Where I do get very frustrated is when the same people keep making the same mistake and/or trying to cover it up rather than:
a. Report/admit the mistake.
b. Take steps to fix the mistake.
c. Learn from the mistake.
I've run into many in the workplace who for some reason think that if they quickly fix or hide the mistake, or not admit there was a mistake but blame it on "something else." They never improve and cannot accept training/retraining.
Only having minimal details to work with, it is difficult to give sound advice.
Navigating through stressful things can be rewarding, like going through white water rapids in a canoe. When stress turns to anxiety, it lends itself to overreaction.
If your boss is projecting stress and anxiety on you, maybe the best attitude when dealing with problems and mistakes is with a calm confidence, and hopefully that will take precedence over the stress and anxiety and be a calming influence for your boss. Projecting fear can also be detrimental to a mutually respectable solution.
Listening to what your boss says in how mistakes are to be handled, those directions should be followed and respected. And if doing that gets you fired, then it seems like a no win situation. Because doing a job while living in some gray area is not a desirable place to be. And having the ability to know when you have made a mistake and owning it, is much better than the alternative.
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