Christine Grimm, Master Coach at Aria Consulting International. Helping leaders, their teams, and organizations grow and change.
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As an executive coach, I often listen to leaders talk about their direct reports and what they wish individuals and teams would do differently. It’s not uncommon for my client to tell stories to support their current dissatisfaction, focusing on deficiencies that a direct report consistently displays. This kind of storytelling is essential in coaching because it helps the coach know how you, as a leader, experience your direct reports and how you interpret the information about progress and the results that are presented to you, including the complex metrics and the more subjective details about how the initiatives and meetings have unfolded.
This storytelling often uncovers one of the many “thinking traps” you can get stuck in; this is a cycle of witnessing and then predicting the mistakes your direct report will make, ultimately deciding this is a character flaw instead of a behavioral issue that can be corrected. We call this a trap because, most of the time, this knowledge remains in your head for too long while you ruminate about the possibility of making a genuine mistake instead of proactively intervening. This process usually leaves you frustrated and the employee feeling insecure. If it goes on too long, the employee will spiral into poor performance and eventual dismissal.
This process isn’t reserved for poor performers. I have seen rock star high-performing employees make one mistake, and then they are suddenly on the watch list. This is a common occurrence when a high performer is challenged with a high-stakes, high-visibility assignment, doing more difficult work than he or she is used to. As soon as the person doesn’t hit a deadline or stumbles during the process, there is a good chance their status as a high performer might be tarnished, and the thinking traps begin.
Below are four techniques you can use to break out of the thinking traps, help prevent mistakes and ensure that your employees can learn and recover when a misstep happens.
1. Post-Mortem
It’s critical that you, as a leader, make time for debriefing, often referred to as a "post-mortem," after projects, initiatives or essential actions have been completed. Make sure that successes and failures are shared one-on-one or in a group setting. Be religious about it. Create an environment where discussing what worked and didn’t work is expected. This practice is an opportunity for you to reward honesty, promote learning and simultaneously ensure that any mistakes—no matter how big or small—do not happen again.
2. There Is Always A Next Time
Adopt the philosophy that there is always a future opportunity to demonstrate new thinking; better behavior; more planning; increased accuracy in the collection, analysis and use of data; and higher quality of decisions. Always. This cements into your team members a continuous learning mindset and an awareness that no matter how great (or not) the results of this quarter, next quarter is a chance to beat our own best and improve on all metrics that are lagging.
3. Creating A Recovery Plan
The best way to help an employee recover from a mistake and ensure that the error isn’t repeated is to create an agreement or “recovery plan” with the person. This isn’t meant to be a performance improvement plan (a.k.a. a PIP), but rather a discussion and then a verbal mutual agreement on the action steps needed to address any lingering issues from the mistake and a clear transparent articulation of what behavior, timing or level of accuracy will need to be demonstrated going forward for you to regain trust in the person and their abilities.
4. Forgive And Move On
Yes, I'm using the F word. It’s time for you as a leader to practice forgiveness daily if you want your people to continue working hard and being loyal to you. The workplace is not getting easier to navigate, with AI and significantly larger amounts of data flowing through organizations at a pace not many humans will consistently keep up with. You and your people, no matter how smart, are bound to miss something. A commitment to identifying where and why a mistake or failure happened is critical for everyone to move on with a clean slate and allow future performance to speak for itself.
Because most leaders are busy and don’t love uncomfortable conversations, these techniques are not standard practice or "habitual." Many leaders and employees avoid talking openly about mistakes or failures and sometimes pretend the issue will fade if there is progress in the coming weeks or a significant win in the next set of priorities. This is short-sighted. The residue of problems past does not go away on its own, and we shouldn’t fool ourselves that resentment, anger and even judgments aren’t established and become the context of the relationship. The ultimate goal for any leader should be to have healthy, positive working relationships that allow people to be human while also setting the bar high for recovery and learning as a foundation for consistently high performance.
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