Advice for content designers: own your mistakes

I made a mistake recently. A big one. I did something that really upset someone.

I was focused on what I wanted to do and didn’t spend enough time thinking about the impact on other people. Luckily for me, the person I’d upset let me know - so I had the chance to make it right.

What does ‘owning your mistakes’ mean?

Early in my career, a kind manager sat me down and gave me a piece of advice.

This was after I’d lost 80,000 online data records that couldn’t be recovered (as back-up systems were still in their infancy). The only way to retrieve this information was to manually rekey it into a computer from hardcopy print-outs. As you can imagine, I was devastated. And, being young and very inexperienced, I tried to hide this massive mistake from my manager.

Luckily for me, I didn’t succeed.

Because my manager taught me that I needed to take responsibility for my mistakes and let others know when I’ve made them. This is particularly important if your mistakes harm or hurt other people. According to my manager, trying to hide mistakes will only make a bad situation worse; but owning them will benefit you and others around you.

I didn’t understand what he meant - then. But now - much older and after a lifetime of mistakes - I do. Because owning your mistakes enables you to:

• Build trust: people respect honesty; they are more likely to trust you when you admit your mistakes and take responsibility for them

• Create opportunities to learn and improve: understanding and admitting your mistakes gives you the chance to fix things, learn from the experience and avoid repeating them

• Encourage a healthy work culture: owning up to mistakes sets a positive example and helps others feel safe to do the same - particularly more junior colleagues who may look to you for examples of how to behave

• Strengthen relationships: being accountable often leads to more constructive conversations and stronger collaboration, particularly where there is scope for improvements to be made

But what does ’owning your mistakes’ look like?

I think we, as content designers, sometimes put ourselves under pressure to always do the right thing - and to always know what that is. And I've seen a lot of fear around the possibility of getting things wrong. I've seen this particularly when we deal with stakeholders.

But this kind of pressure can lead to stress and anxiety - neither of which is going to help us do our jobs well.

This is what I recommend you do instead - something that took me a lot of time to learn. If you make a mistake, particularly where you affect someone else:

1. Acknowledge your mistake and don't make excuses

2. Apologise sincerely if your mistake affected someone else - and be specific, so they know that you understand what you did and the impact you had on them

3. Learn from your mistake by analysing what went wrong

4. Take action, so that you won't make that mistake again

5. Make a commitment to improve - and be accountable

6. Talk about your mistakes and share your learnings

I’m so grateful that I was given the opportunity to fix the mistake I started this blog writing about - because it gave me the chance to make that situation right and to apologise.

But I’m also grateful because my colleague gave me an important learning opportunity - both for me and for the way I run my business. It enabled me to draw a line in the sand and ensure that I don’t make that particular mistake again.

I'll make other ones, though! And lots of them. That's good, right?

What do you do when you make mistakes?