The only thing worse than making a mistake is keeping it bottled up inside. Learning from the mistakes of others could help you embark on the healing journey of sharing and working through a mistake of your own, with someone you trust.
If you scroll through LinkedIn, it will look like everyone is an executive coach. That's not entirely wrong, as mass layoffs have led many leaders to hang out a shingle as a coach, even if just temporarily, until they find their next role. But let's be real: not all executive coaches are created equal. Sorting true executive coaches from self-proclaimed leadership experts can be difficult, particularly since AI has made it easier than ever for practitioners to rapidly produce polished marketing content that doesn't always reflect genuine expertise.
To successfully repair after a mistake, you need to acknowledge and name the mistake, validate the other person's feelings and viewpoint, and create a plan for the specific actions you will take to prevent this mistake from occurring again.
I see this daily in veterinary medicine, where high burnout rates cost the sector upwards of $2 billion per year. It's a challenging environment with long hours, stressful workloads and patients that can't even tell you what's wrong. But I've found that the best way to boost performance and even increase capacity with maxed-out teams is to address the underlying operational issues.
