I waited for a discrete moment, and mentioned to a colleague that we had made a mistake on a significant but not critical detail on the Conference. The agenda included two hours of "ethics"credit and only one of them had been submitted for accreditation. Likely I was the only one who noticed, I had designed the agenda and selected the sessions specifically to include two ethics sessions. My colleagues response was that "Pat must have thought that there was only one session eligible for ethics credit." - WRONG ANSWER, resorting to an excuse.
Why is the immediate reaction to my pointing out a mistake to look for an excuse, rather then to admit that someone made a mistake? I know we have a generation of "everyone gets a trophy" soccer players, but in the real world we all make mistakes. The best course of action is to say, oops, sorry, let me see if anything can be done to fix it. If it is your mistake, to take ownership of it. Doing so keeps me from going from Mr Nice Guy to Mr Asshole in 1 second or less. I like Mr Nice guy better.
I have a co-irker who does that; I always want to slap his face hard.
ReplyDeleteSome people just cannot accept fault
ReplyDeleteKick their ass
Been there, done that, eaten the crow. Ugh.
ReplyDeletePeace <3
Jay
I think one of the characteristics of a proper gentleman is the ability to man up to say one made a mistake.
ReplyDelete