How to handle your mistakes like a pro

I always make mistakes on the job, I’m human. When I do make a mistake I try not to repeat it for a second time. I’m a barista and when I first started I made many mistakes. My boss whould ask me what I did wrong or what I forgot to do and I would confess what I did, and that it will not happen again. Its simply easy to know you made a mistake take responsibility for it and keep learning.

I used to work at a fast-food restaurant where I made several mistakes specially when I started working there.  Not having the ingredients ready and messing up the order were the most common errors I had and every time I made a mistake I would be scared to tell my manager what had happened.  Facing the situation and explaining my manager with the truth what really happened and accepting the responsibility helped me becoming a responsible employee by not repeating any mistakes and later on be ascended to a supervisor position.  On every mistake I made I always told my boss the truth and admitted it was my fault, also I made my best to not repeat that error.  This made me learned from my mistakes and also made my boss to trust in  me.

People often say that we must face our mistakes, yet we overlook the fact that it can be one of the hardest things to do in our lives. Mustering up the courage to confront those who have been affected by our mistakes is something that many people struggle with and often avoid for various reasons. Despite the difficulty of it, we must all face our mistakes in order to be successful in life. Not only must we face our mistakes but also learn from them. Working in an office this past semester introduced me to many new situations. Once I accidentally lost some data on an important file and I was reluctant to tell my supervisor about it. I could have just closed it and no one would have known that there was data missing until later and also I feared that I could be looked down upon or even fired for making such a mistake. However, I decided to tell my supervisor and apologize for my carelessness. It turned out that the file was backed up on her external hard drive, but apart from that, through this situation, she was able to gain more trust in me. Also, I was able to become more comfortable around my own supervisor. Just by confronting my mistakes without any lies created a more positive working environment. There are many good things that will come from simply accepting your mistakes and dealing with them rather than trying to avoid them for as long as possible because they will eventually catch up to you.

This is totally common sense in all relationships including in employment.
Taking responsibility for mistakes may seem hard at first but when considering the cost of hiding and skating around lies, telling the truth makes it so much simpler.  There is the bonus of learning attached to it too! 

When you make a mistake, no matter how big or how small, you must own it. Try to fix it if possible, if not, do not hide and pretend nothing happened. Your boss might hear about your mistake from soeone else and might not like it. Be responsible and own up to your mistakes, We are only human and as such we make mistakes. The important thing is to earn from our mistakes and stop making the same one over and over again.

Shortly after turning 21, I landed a job at a small liqueur store in my hometown. Although there was a fair amount of walk in customers throughout the day, the companies main profit came from delivering alcohol to the bars around our area. So, while working there, my main job was to box up orders, and wait on customers whenever they came in (I was the only person that worked the night shift). 

One night things were really hectic, and I was way behind on my orders due to the amount of customers that came in. After it finally slowed down, I was flying around trying to catch up, and in my rush, I broke one of the most expensive bottles in the store! While cleaning up the mess, my mind flooded with ideas on how to get out of this without telling my boss what truly happened. Eventually, however, I knew that the only real solution was to tell the truth, and I did (he was happy I told the truth and I didn’t get into trouble)!

It doesn’t matter whether its work, family, or friends, good morals will get you a long way with people, and they will respect you for it!

I work in a biomedical research laboratory, and this has help me to learn from my mistakes. Sometimes, it is difficult to accept them because make you feel bad; however, we should have maturity to accept and learn from them.

I agree with what was stated above, I believe that if an individual can not accept responsibility for their actions when they make a mistake, they can not change. Accepting responsibility for your actions allows you to be able to improve. This  is something that affects not only your professional life but your personal life as well. I teach my daughter that in every action that you takes there is a reaction, and if you make a mistake accept responsibility, because if you dont you will never be able to improve.

 I know the impact of mistakes and costing the company money. In my position I set up corporations and estate plans for our client. Any kind of misspelling of a name or the wrong manger on the list can cost the company anywhere from $125 to $1,000. One day I set up the part of the Estate Plan with the wrong name. I could have easily went in and fixed it without telling my manager. (which is stealing) Although I felt stupid for making the mistake. I took it to my manager saying sorry for the mistake, gladly he told me everyone makes mistakes and to just watch my work a little bit better. It felt good knowing that I told him and that one day if it ever popped up with upper management, At least my manger knew about it.

Taking responsibility for your mistakes takes courage, but doing so shows that you are willing to learn from your mistakes and grow your knowledge.  Making a decision that is wrong is always better than making no decision at all.

Owning up to mistakes can be a difficult task to tackle.  Adults strive to be perfect and to not make mistakes when working, however change is inevitable and sometimes certain factors are overlooked.

I have worked as a business manager and often times policies would change without warning.  There are several occasions in which receipts were not documented correctly which would throw off the numbers for the entire day.  My general manager took ultimate responsibility for these errors and would spend hours trouble shooting trying to find the glitch in the system.  Had I not owned up to my actions I would have set myself up for failure.  The truth is bound to come out and because I was honest about the mistakes they were easily corrected.  I found out later in life after taking a few accounting classes that those “minor” mistakes that I made could have caused “major” issues for the owners of the company and the IRS.  Owning up to your mistakes is imperative in the workforce.

During the journey of our job experiences, we come across different situations that require our professionalism. As humans we are prone to make mistakes due to several reasons; stressful situations, last minute tasks, multitasking, pressure, dealing with other co-worker’s personalities, etc. However, it is our opportunity to demonstrate how we handle our mistakes. Personally, the times that I have made a mistake at work, I have decided to speak with my immediate superior and explain the situation. By explaining the situation, I discuss where I could have addressed the situation differently and how was to be handled. The main idea is to not perform the same mistake and find the root of the cause. In my opinion, this will show your immediate supervisor how responsibly we take our job and how we are finding the solution to the mistake. At the end of the day, our immediate supervisor only focuses on the interests of the company, and by acting professional on a mistake will demonstrate the value we have as an employee and as an important asset to the company. We should never argue with our immediate supervisors and learn to listen. In the professional world, each mistake helps us to improve and become better individuals. Finally, not forgetting how important is each employee.

We have to admit when we make a mistake or do something wrong in especially in the  work enviroment.  It is part of being human, the worst is when people try to hide or cover up there mistakes and comes back and bits them at some point.  Since i  work in customer service it is  bond to happen once in a while, the importance is learning from your mistakes.  This shows your employeer that you are reliable and dependable no matter how big the mistake was. It is always better to come clean before your boss find out by others. 

Taking Ownership of your mistakes is what makes you an adult. A lot of times we as humans make mistakes and don’t want to take ownership, therefore we don’t learn the lesson. but when we do take responsibility of the mistake we accept our flaws and learn the lesson.

In banking it is so easy to make mistakes.  My mistake would be to not always check what the customer gave me.  Computers mess up and won’t catch everything.  I’ve learned to always stay on top of what I’m doing.  When money and reputation is involved you cannot afford those mistakes.  I took the loss and learned very early during my career to check behind my customers but most importantly myself.

Accepting responsibility for mistakes shows growth. The important step is to ensure that mistakes are part of the learning process . Always place honesty first, never cover up, and apply all principles learned in the process. Recognizing mistakes and learning from them can create the path to success.

My biggest problem is not admitting to a mistake, but rather taking the full blame without making up excuses. There is a very fine line between explaining the cause of a mistake and sounding like you are trying to put the blame elsewhere. As human beings we all make mistakes but it can be very hard to admit that we did so, especially when they are careless. 

In making many mistakes in my life i think it becomes easier with age to admit that you are wrong. Years have passed since ive graduated High School and i have held down many jobs with many different responsibilites. More recently i have been working for a nursing agency in which i am responsible for pulling all of our employees professinal licenses two times per month, however after a mishap i learned that what i thought was my master list was not. Turns out that i had misfed the information into the system and forgotten almost 20 nurses on this monthly check for months. WIthout hesitation i pulled the missing nurses immediantly only to find out that one of thier licenses had been pulled, making them ineligible to work. After notifying my superiors i wrote a formal apology and read it aloud at our weekly meeting. Being wrong never feels good, but it sure feels alot better when you can admit it like an adult. Fessing up to this mistake gained me respect from alot of my coworkers and taught me to double and triple check my work in the future.

There’s one thing I believe in: if you never make mistakes, your simply not working! Everyone makes mistakes, goodness knows I’ve made my fair share in the past. The intriguing thing is, I am grateful for the learning experience each one has brought, without them I would not be the problem solver I am today, if I was afraid of making them, I would not have the confidence or courage to be an innovator. Even the greatest plans are usually a refined second attempt.  Employers do not want to hear you made a mistake, this was taught to me years ago. Employers want to hear “This is a mistake I have made, and THIS is what I am doing to correct it.” it’s the humility to admit responsibility and show your creative side when fixing the mistake, that oftern sets a good-experience apart from a bad one.

Accepting responsibility for mistakes has been a lesson I learned the hard way. No one wants to be embarrassed by lack of knowledge, but having made many mistakes I learned the only thing to be embarrassed about  was to keep making the same mistakes. I discovered that everyone makes mistakes and by sharing knowledge and teaching others how to avoid them helps both people become better employees. Shared knowledge and working together makes everyone more productive and successful. I have learned more skills from my mistakes and learning how to correct them, than I ever did from my successes.

Responsibility is not only what we are responsible in our life, profession or family.  The term responsibility means to me is the ability to response even though it may not fall under my area.  In our day today life,  we encounter situations where we have the ability to address the situation or support some one who is in desperate but most of the time we will wait for the responsible person to come and take care of it. Most people are fear about it’s after effect,  if something goes wrong if we do something unusual or go out of way and do something and blame come to us.  If we do anything for a right cause and we done our level best, still had a reverse effect, I will be proud of what I done rather no action. 

As many have noted a smart person learns from their mistakes. Well I feel a smart person also makes them as well. If you are making mistakes then you are trying. I would rather be the person that tried and failed rather then a person that failed to try. Failure to try is the real mistake.

My first job I was 17 and fresh out of high school and about to start college. So I was new to working and my boss was always on my case about everything I did. I was either to slow and not working fast enough but the only thing that he hated most was excuses. If I made a mistake I would take responsibility for it but I would alway throw in the ‘but’ something else. It wasn’t till the store manager took me into the office and told me to just stop all she wanted to hear was I made a mistake and thaI was going to fix it. Ever since that day I have always taken responsibility and always combated my mistake with a solution.

Making mistakes is common and human. We all make them everyday: as parents, as friends, as spouses and as employees. I just made the biggest blunder of my career and I’m quite proud of how I handled it this time around. I didn’t show up for a presentation without so much as a call to the agency that for which I was presenting; I actually hadn’t made any reminders for myself, but this was no excuse for my supervisor; however, because I was sincerely apologetic and let her know that I would make certain to keep all of my calendars updated with future events and commitments, it made the situation a little easier to handle. She was no longer in an offensive position, but a suggestive one instead.

You can only learn from a mistake after you admit you’ve made it. As soon as you start blaming other people (or the universe itself) you distance yourself from any possible lesson. But if you courageously stand up and honestly say “This is my mistake and I am responsible” the possibilities for learning will move towards you. Admission of a mistake, even if only privately to yourself, makes learning possible by moving the focus away from blame assignment and towards understanding. Wise people admit their mistakes easily. They know progress accelerates when they do.

This advice runs counter to the cultural assumptions we have about mistakes and failure, namely that they are shameful things. We’re taught in school, in our families, or at work to feel guilty about failure and to do whatever we can to avoid mistakes. This sense of shame combined with the inevitability of setbacks when attempting difficult things explains why many people give up on their goals: they’re not prepared for the mistakes and failures they’ll face on their way to what they want. What’s missing in many people’s beliefs about success is the fact that the more challenging the goal, the more frequent and difficult setbacks will be. The larger your ambitions, the more dependent you will be on your ability to overcome and learn from your mistakes.

But for many reasons admitting mistakes is difficult. An implied value in many cultures is that our work represents us: if you fail a test, then you are a failure. If you make a mistake then you are a mistake (You may never have felt this way, but many people do. It explains the behavior of some of your high school or college friends). Like eggs, steak and other tasty things we are given letter grades (A, B, C, D and F) organizing us for someone else’s consumption: universities and employers evaluate young candidates on their grades, numbers based on scores from tests unforgiving to mistakes.

For anyone than never discovers a deeper self-identity, based not on lack of mistakes but on courage, compassionate intelligence, commitment and creativity, life is a scary place made safe only by never getting into trouble, never breaking rules and never taking the risks that their hearts tell them they need to take.

I once made a mistake that cost me my job. I was working with a medical administration company constructing schedules for doctors and nurses. One afternoon, hours before his shift, a physician’s assistant (PA) called me to say he was suffering from kidney stones and could not make his shift.

I followed protocol like a professional. I contacted everyone on the roster in hopes of finding alternative coverage. I notified the physician that would be working without an assistant until I could locate one, and the medical director to alert him of the situation as well. The only person I did not tell was my boss.

She had told me previously in the week not to disturb her on this particular day as she would be in meetings and taking important calls. I remembered this and decided not to disturb her.

Unfortunately I could not find anyone to cover the PA. I called to tell him the bad news and that despite his pain he would have to go into work as there was no one available to work his shift. Since he was not answering his cellular phone I called his house and spoke to his son in hopes of reaching the PA. I was unable to reach him for the rest of the day and his shift went uncovered.

What I did not know was that there was an agreement between my company and the hospital administration that guaranteed PA coverage every day, no matter what. Because I was unable to locate a substitute, we were in violation of our contract.

Hospital administrators had contacted my boss and were very upset, and I was in a lot of trouble. My boss told me had I just interrupted her meeting she would have been able to alert her contacts in administration to the situation and perhaps smooth things over a bit. The next day I was fired. I am fairly certain it was a decision to save face with the hospital, but I’m still not sure how I could have handled it any better.