Dakota Beerman

In your business, when someone makes a mistake, how do they respond?

Let’s say we had a measurer mis measure something.

1. Do they say, “It wasn’t my fault!”? (Combatively)
2. Do they say, “It’s all my fault!!”? (Downcast)
3. Do they say, “That’s NOT a mistake!”

After leading people for 10 years, I always prefer option 2. A downcast person is easier to talk to than a combative person. You sweat a little less when someone is fighting themselves rather than you.

1. This person cries when confronted.
2. This person says sorry multiple times.
3. This person says how important their job is and their fear of being fired.

You would think the downcast person is taking responsibility and they are showing you they will try harder!

What I have learned about people who appeal too much to the leaders empathy:

1. You will naturally feel bad for the person even thought they made a mistake
2. It’s actually genuine even though they are using emotion to manipulate you
3. This is a reinforced behavior.
   • You learn to get what you want through over apologizing
   • OR, you learn to avoid change by saying sorry

Here is what I have learned to do about it:

1. Call it out
   • You are making me feel bad for you by saying your sorry.
2. Ask for ownership over feeling bad
   • “I messed up in ____ way, by doing ____ action. I’ve learned that I need to do ____ action and I will make sure I do it in ____ way.”
3. Rep it out
   • This person needs reps at the new behavior. You become a coach by helping practice the behavior again and again. This is more effective than getting the person to “Care more”.

Principle

Behavior > Motivation (dependent on the maturity and experience of the person you’re leading).

The younger and lesser experienced a persons skills are the more you need to do reps of the right behavior. The more skilled and experienced a person is the more you just need to incentivize them and encourage them.

A note to the leader

When someone takes all the blame to avoid the pain of failure, they actually avoid behavior change. They nod their head, say they will do better next time but don’t make a behavior change. They made you feel bad for them, convinced you the issue was a motivation or heart issue, instead of behavior issue, and you moved on. For this type of person you have to dig a little bit past the emotion into the behavior and ask, “what will you do different this time?”