Alisa Cohn - Screwing Up at Work

When you screw something up at work, it's awful. It's really rough. And people do not talk enough about the big feelings that we all have when we screw something up at work. Maybe you blew a presentation. Maybe you had a meeting that didn't go so well. You had an interaction that didn't go so well. Maybe you turned in an assignment and it was just completely off the mark. And it's upsetting to you and to everybody when that happens. So let me help you by, first of all, normalizing that having setbacks at work, feeling bad about things that didn't go well is normal. So kind of just recognize that you're not the only one. The second thing is to remind yourself of all the things that you did do right in that single day, in that presentation, and even in that work assignment. If you don't have a cheerleader around you, you need to be your own cheerleader. You need to remind yourself that actually a lot of the things that you did do either around that assignment or for that assignment did go well. And then the third thing is to debrief with yourself and ask yourself, what happened? Did I not ask enough questions about the assignment? Did I not practice the presentation enough? Did I just have a bad day? Did I not eat breakfast? And that way you can troubleshoot so that you can, over time, prevent those difficult things from happening again. So step 1, remind yourself it's normal. Step 2, remind yourself what did go well. And step 3, debrief so that you can do better next time.