How to Handle Your Mistakes

It happens to all of us. As careful as we try to be, occasionally we make a mistake. Of course, different mistakes have different consequences. But I’ve found that if they are handled with thoughtfulness and sensitivity, mistakes can strengthen our client relationships. In this episode of The RocketGirl Show, I'll share how I handled a mistake I recently made with one of my clients.

TRANSCRIPT 

My name is Belinda Wasser, also known as Rocket Girl. And today we're going to talk about how to handle your mistakes.

Mistakes absolutely happen. I've been a virtual assistant for almost 11 years, and I still make mistakes. I try not to make the same mistake multiple times, but I definitely make mistakes.

What I found, though, is how you handle those mistakes can really impact your relationship. If you handle them properly, your clients and you will actually be closer and have a more trusting relationship as a result of handling your mistakes. So let's talk about what that looks like.

Okay, the very first thing, don't panic. When you panic, it's possible to make the mistake worse. I have done this. Panicking is not the thing you want to do. You want to just try to take a deep breath and say, "Okay, stop, stop. What just happened and think about it." But panicking, not your friend. And if you can try to keep your breathing regular, because what happens when we panic is we block our brain and we're not able to have any good thoughts or solutions. So you definitely want to avoid panicking.

Then you want to take ownership. You really want to say, "Okay, I just did this." "I need to figure it out, but this is not outside of me." "I need to figure out what my part in this was, even if it wasn't completely my fault."

Here's a big one. You want to acknowledge how the client feels. So can you imagine? Let's say you're sending a newsletter out for a client, and you sent it, and you sent it out with a typo.

Even if everyone that knows the client knows that you did that, first of all, that would be impossible here. She would have to send a whole other one saying, "I didn't do that," but it still reflects on them, whatever the mistake is. And even if the mistake is no big deal to them, or to you, it could be a huge deal to them. A really big deal, because a lot of times our mistakes can be public. And so you have to keep that in mind and not take a no big deal approach. I would take I really understand that this is impacting you, and I want to fix that approach.

Okay? So acknowledge how the client feels, really important. You need to figure out what happened, and the reason we need to figure out what happened is so the same thing doesn't happen again. Really, really important. So stop and realize, "Okay, when I did this, this is what occurred."

I know one time I made a mistake in someone's newsletter. I didn't update the link to his podcast in the newsletter, and he found it. And I was horrified. And I thought, "Oh, I know why that happened." And it was because I was interrupted and I didn't start again at the top I just. I made an assumption. "Oh, I already did that." And I didn't check it, which now I never, never, never do that. So you want to figure out what happened, and it's generally the system. I didn't go through the system again, and you want to fix the system.

So in my case, I make sure that after I update everything on his newsletter, I send myself a test, and I check the link. Even if I'm sure I did it right, you got to really check the system.

The next time you're performing the work where the mistake was made, you want to check in with your clients. So, for example, I have one client. I forgot to schedule the resend of her newsletter. And so now she's a little anxious about it, which I totally understand because I totally forgot. So what I'll say to her now is when I send her newsletter, I'll say, "It's also scheduled to go out again on Friday." And so that way she can just cross it off of her list and know that it's handled. So you want to check in with your clients the next time, and maybe the next few times, depending on how big the mistake was, and just let them know you got it.

If you handle your mistakes like this, you're going to have clients for life. So make sure you own it, acknowledge how they feel, fix the system, and your mistakes will be minimized. But just know you're going to make mistakes and handle them. Handle them the best that you can.

So before we go, I just want to invite everyone over to my free online classroom on Facebook. It's called The Virtual Assistant Connection. We are a community with almost 15000 new and aspiring and established virtual assistants. I'd love to have you come join us. Just type The Virtual Assistant Connection in the search bar at the top of Facebook and click the join button. I will happily welcome you in. If you're watching on YouTube, please click the subscribe button so you'll know when I'm going live.

So have a great rest of your day. Until next time. I'm Belinda Wasser, RocketGirl, signing off. Bye-bye.