Surviving that ‘Doh’ moment

By: Matt See
Online Career Tips Staff

We have all had one of those moments.

Your boss makes a few comments on a project and asks you to make the changes before sending it on. In the hustle and bustle of the day youaccidentally send it on without making their changes. You were not malicious just caught with a lack of attention to detail. Now what?

Well first things first. There are two types of on the job blunders, ones that hurt your pride and ones that affect you job security.

Blunders that affect your job security are usually committed with some sort of malicious intent. We will skip over those today. Today I want to focus on the ones that hurt your pride.

These blunders happen every day. They can range from walking out of the bathroom with toilet paper attached to your shoe or forgetting to bring a handout for a large meeting. These are times when our faces turn red and our pride takes a quick hit.

So what is the best solution when one of these on-the-job blunders comes knocking at your door when you least expect it?

Richard Wessler, head of the psychology department at Pace University advises to take a note from your computer. “Your computer will correct an error and move on. No self-recrimination,” Wessler notes.

Sometimes it is hard to tell yourself this is the right approach, especially for perfectionists such as me. But the best solution is to admit mistake and move forward. If it is an email that you were supposed to make changes to before sending out and you accidentally forwarded it on without making the changes, then admit you made a mistake and be sure not to make it again.

By not repeating the same mistake, you are showing your boss that you learned from your mistake. This is the best possible outcome and will actually show your boss that you learned something from your mistake.

Compare it to spilling something on your favorite shirt. You are really upset about screwing up your favorite shirt and you don’t want everyone to see it. So you try to rub it with a dab of water and a paper towel. The more you rub the worse it gets. When if you would have just left it the possibility of the majority of people seeing it is very low and it will be easier to fix when you get it home to the washing machine. After one wash and some good detergent that mistake is gone forever. The same can be true for your on-the-job blunder if you move on and try not to rub it!