Avionics News October 2012 - 67

from a string of little ones that go uncorrected, Drake said. And, that’s a bad thing. By the time a colossal mistake occurs, recovery becomes questionable, especially if the errors break trust with other employees or customers. Or, they are foolish mistakes that occur repeatedly, which puts your competency into question. Both cause careers and companies to sputter, according to Kusy. In a perfect world, everyone would owe up early. Yet, in our imprecise one, supervisors tend to demand perfection and assign blame. “Everybody shuts up,” said Peggy Morrow, a customer-service consultant and author of Customer Service: How to do it Right. “You’re not going to get the best out of people, and they won’t volunteer and say, ‘Yeah, I think we need to take a look at this.’” Now, you have mistakes occurring you don’t know about. As a manager, admitting your own mistakes is top-down leadership, and it establishes the open environment you, your staff and your shop need. “Leaders need to model the way, and in this context, model the way about how I expose my vulnerabilities to others and share with them how I course correct,” Kusy said. “When leaders make a mistake, and it seriously affects other individuals, issuing an apology is a way for them, in the future, to receive feedback about mistakes they will make. But, it’s also a way for others to say, ‘You know, I have a model here; someone just modeled an apology and they’re open about the mistake, so I can be open about mine.’”

MEA CULPA Identifying a mistake is a gift, according to Morrow. But, the offender has to fess up early, apologize and reverse-engineer how to prevent it from happening again. “The best way to come out looking great after a mistake is to own it,” Drake said. “Rip the Band-Aid off, and then figure out how you fix the wound.” Train yourself and your people to

develop workable fixes whenever they mess up. “Showing how you can solve a problem when it happens is really the key to anything, especially in a technical environment,” Drake said. “You come out looking efficient, even though you make a mistake. You come out looking confident and competent, because you’ve already thought about what the solution is.”
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Avionics News October 2012

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