Mike Robbins

Infusing Life and Business with Authenticity and Appreciation

company culture

It’s Okay to Make Mistakes

21 Comments

Do you ever make mistakes that in the moment seem like a huge deal? Like forgetting your passport at home before an international flight, accidentally sending an email to the wrong recipient, saying something to someone important that you regret?

We’ve all made these types of mistakes.

In the big scheme of things, though, most of these mistakes really aren’t a big deal.  In fact, they’re actually great learning lessons that can help us learn, grow, and evolve on many different levels.

Why It’s Okay to Make Mistakes

A lot of us are too hard on ourselves. We don’t give ourselves or those close to us much permission to make mistakes.

We actually spend and waste a lot of time worrying about making mistakes. And in turn, many of us can be unnecessarily critical of those around us when they make mistakes.

When someone is compassionate and supportive towards us when we make a mistake, it reminds us that having compassion for ourselves when we make a mistake – instead of judgment and criticism – is a much healthier and more positive way to respond.  This is also true for how we engage with others when they make mistakes.

How do you relate to yourself and others when mistakes are made?  

While it often depends on the nature of the mistake (some are bigger than others, of course), many of us tend to be hyper-critical of ourselves and those around us when it comes to errors.  And the stress, criticism, and negativity we associate with mistakes can actually cause unnecessary harm, fear, and anguish – in essence, making a difficult situation even worse.

What if we had more freedom to make mistakes and gave the people around us permission to mess things up as well?  It’s not that we’d start rooting for or expecting things to go wrong, we’d simply have more compassion and understanding when they did (which at some level is inevitable in life and business).

By granting more permission for mistakes, we actually create an environment within ourselves, as well as our key relationships and teams, that is conducive to trust, connection, risk-taking, forgiveness, creativity, and genuine success.

While it can seem a bit uncomfortable, and even counter-intuitive, allowing more freedom for mistakes to be made, ironically creates the conditions for less errors to occur, and more fun and productivity to take place.

How to Expand Your Capacity for Mistakes

Here are a few things to think about and focus on to expand your capacity for mistakes in a positive way:

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

At the end of the day, the vast majority of mistakes we make in life really aren’t all that big of a deal.  The bigger issue when it comes to mistakes is either our fear of making them or our reaction to them once they have been made (by us or other people).  As we lighten up and practice letting things go, we find that most things we stress or worry about are really small things.  Living life with this awareness allows us to have more peace and a lot less stress.

Forgive

When someone makes a mistake, especially a big one, forgiveness is an essential aspect of moving through it.  Most of the time there is no malicious intent by the person who made the mistake.

Sadly, we tend to spend and waste a lot of time and energy either with blame or resentment, instead of focusing our attention in a more productive, positive, and healthy direction – forgiveness.  It’s often quite difficult, but most important, for us to forgive ourselves when we make a mistake.  However, if we can remember that most of the time we’re doing the best we can (as are others), we can hopefully get off our own backs and allow ourselves to be human (which means we aren’t perfect, nor is anyone else).

One of the main reasons a lot of us don’t trust ourselves as much as we could is that we haven’t forgiven ourselves for our past mistakes. When we do this, it creates so much freedom and peace – both for us and for others.

Look For the Lesson

There are often many lessons for us to learn when a mistake is made.  While it’s not always the easiest or most enjoyable way to grow, it’s often quite effective as it gets our attention.

Mistakes are how we learn in life. Most of the time when we make a mistake, even a really big one, we gain a great deal of knowledge, experience, and insight that is invaluable.

Remember: it’s okay to make mistakes. By accepting this, you expand your capacity for imperfection in a positive way and gain even more self-trust.

How can you give yourself and others more permission to make mistakes?  Feel free to leave a comment or question below.

Liked this article? Here are three more!

4 Things You Can Do to Dramatically Enhance Your Career
The Challenge and Importance of Inclusion at Work
The Important Benefits of Being Grateful at Work

Four Keys to Creating a Team Culture of High Performance, Trust and Belonging

4 Comments

Creating a strong team culture of high performance, trust, and belonging is essential to success, although it can be incredibly challenging to do, especially these days.

When I was working on my latest book a few years ago, We’re All in This Together (which is just about to come out in paperback), I had no idea about the devastating global pandemic that would change the way we live and work in just about every way.

Now more than ever, for our teams to navigate these continual uncertain times successfully, we must come together, connect authentically, and lean on each other in an ongoing, healthy, and sustainable way.

For the past two decades, I’ve been studying, researching, speaking, and writing about the qualities of great teams. I’ve been honored to partner with organizations like Google, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Schwab, eBay, Genentech, Gap, the NBA, the Oakland A’s, and so many others—helping them enhance the culture and performance of their teams.

In addition to these large, well-known brands, I’ve also worked with small businesses, government agencies, educational institutions, nonprofits, local school districts, and more.

And while each team and organization have their own unique challenges, goals, and dynamics, there are some universal qualities that allow teams to effectively collaborate, trust each other, and perform at the highest level—even and especially amid change, challenge, and uncertainty.

4 Keys to Creating a Team Culture of High Performance

Here are the four key traits of high performing teams that I’ve learned through my research and experience:

1. Create psychological safety

Psychological safety is a shared belief that the team is safe for risk-taking. People on teams with psychological safety have a sense of confidence that their team will not embarrass, reject, or punish them for speaking up or taking risks.

The team climate is characterized by an atmosphere of interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves without fear of negative consequences to their self-image, status, or career. 

Essentially, psychological safety is trust at a group level.

Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson has researched and written extensively about psychological safety over the past 20 years. “It’s not enough for organizations to simply hire talent,” she says. “If leaders want to unleash individual and collective talent, they must foster a psychologically safe climate where employees feel free to contribute ideas, share information, and report mistakes.”

A 2017 Gallup study found that only three in ten employees strongly agree with the statement that their opinions count at work. Gallup calculated that by “moving the ratio to six in ten employees, organizations could realize a 27 percent reduction in turnover, a 40 percent reduction in safety incidents, and a 12 percent increase in productivity.”

2. Focus on inclusion and belonging

An essential element of creating a safe environment that allows people to trust each other, collaborate with one another and perform at their highest level as a team is inclusion and belonging.

There are countless studies linking inclusion to higher profits, increased engagement scores, and enhanced business results.

For example, according to a study of 140 U.S. companies by Accenture alongside the American Association of People with Disabilities, those that offered the most inclusive working environment for employees with disabilities achieved an average 28 percent higher revenue, 30 percent greater economic profit margins, and twice the net income of their industry peers between 2015 and 2018.

Inclusion means “having respect for and appreciation of differences in ethnicity, gender, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, education, and religion.” It also means “actively involving everyone’s ideas, knowledge, perspectives, approaches, and styles to maximize business success.”

And, as important as it is for us to focus on both diversity and inclusion, the ultimate goal is to create an environment on the team and in the company where everyone feels as though they belong, regardless of who they are, the role they have, and their background.

3. Embrace sweaty-palmed conversations

Great teams embrace conflict and feedback as natural and important aspects of growth, collaboration, and success. This means they must be willing to have those awkward, uncomfortable, sweaty-palmed conversations with each other. 

The problem is that because conflict and feedback can be hard, most teams aren’t very good at it.

However, when team members create an environment conducive to having healthy and productive conflict, they can connect more deeply, navigate challenges effectively, give each other feedback in a way that makes everyone better, and innovate in ways that allow them to thrive.

Research conducted by CPP Inc., publisher of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, has shown that in the U.S., workplace conflict costs companies more than $350 billion a year. And that figure reflects just the time people spend dealing with conflict; it doesn’t include the emotional, psychological, and physical toll it takes on people personally.

Nate Regier, author of Conflict Without Casualties, whom I had a chance to interview on my podcast, says, “The purpose of conflict is to create, not destroy.”

4. Care about and challenge each other

What I’ve seen, experienced, and learned about high-performing teams over the years is that they understand and have a balance of two important things at the same time: Caring About Each Other and Challenging Each Other.

Both of these are essential and must be focused on with the same level of intensity for the team and all of its members to perform at the highest level.

For a team to thrive, there must be a deep level of trust that everyone has each other’s backs, has good intentions, and is moving in the same direction together.

In a piece published in the Harvard Business Review in 2017, neuroeconomist Paul Zak writes, “Compared with people at low-trust companies, people at high-trust companies report 74 percent less stress, 50 percent higher productivity, and 76 percent more engagement.”

In other words, creating a strong culture of trust, as well as an environment where people know they’re cared about and supported by their teammates, leads to significantly greater engagement and performance.

In addition to building and maintaining this level of trust and care for one another, great teams commit to challenging each other respectfully and passionately to be their absolute best, both personally and collectively.

The Importance of Embodying These Teamwork Traits Right Now

When teams understand, practice, and embody these four key traits, they can create a team culture of high performance, trust, and belonging. Doing this allows them to thrive, even and especially when facing significant uncertainty and challenges as we are these days.

 

This is an adapted excerpt from the book We’re All in This Together by Mike Robbins, published by Hay House Business, March 2022 (paperback)

 

Liked this article? Here are three more…