Episode 38 – When Things Go Horribly Wrong

Shit happens at work, but what matters most is how well you handle situations that go horribly wrong. Work Mom shares her step-by-step approach for effectively addressing and solving workplace mishaps.

Themes discussed in this episode

• Get the facts straight first (without emotion)
• Throw yourself at their mercy
• How one store failed to problem-solve and lost a customer in the process
• Collaboration is key when problem-solving
• Conduct a post-mortem

Episode Highlights

Timestamped inflection points from the show

1:00: Facts ONLY: First, do a factual audit of what happened, and calmly get all the facts without blaming anyone or being overly dramatic. During this stage, you’ll also identify the right person to manage the situation, whether that’s you, your boss, or a coworker.

2:00: Honestly is always the best policy: Once you have all the facts, admit what happened to the impacted party as soon as possible. Express your regret and move to a solution mindset.

4:00: Making good: Whenever you mess up, always work with the impacted party to figure out how to make it right.

5:30: Post-mortem: Once the situation has been resolved and everyone is calm, get the group together and go over what happened. Ask what happened, how we solved it, what we can do in the future to avoid a repeat, etc.

Top Quotes

2:00: In my experience, the best possible thing you can do is throw yourself at someone’s mercy. Own up to what happened as soon as you possibly can. Tell the truth in all of its gory detail.

4:30: You have to come up with a way to make good. When you mess something up, it’s best to work with the person on the receiving end of that problem, the one that was impacted, and work together to figure out what to do to fix it.

5:40: It will serve you on a personal level to follow those steps. It will serve you on a business level to follow those steps. You can be the leader in solving problems by being an honest, authentic, open, and apologetic person.

6:00: So when something really horrible happens, tell yourself right away, well, here’s my opportunity to practice how to handle difficult situations because you will experience many difficult situations in your career.

6:30: You go at it with a collaborative approach. armed with your intention to solve the problem and to prevent it from happening again, and you will be better off.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Connect with me on LinkedIn. Order my book!

Transcript

00:00
Hello, everyone. I’m Lori Jo Vest. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Work Mom Says, Don’t Be an Idiot. Today, we are going to talk about what to do when things go horribly wrong, and they will.

They may go horribly wrong in the context of you making a horrible mistake and having to own up to it and figure out how to solve it. They may go wrong in the context of one of your coworkers doing something that they made a big mistake and you’re the one that gets to deal with it with the customer.

A delivery that was supposed to get to the company didn’t make it on time. Something got broken, somebody, you know, something got broadcast that maybe was inappropriate.

Basically, shit happens, and you may get stuck in the firestorm of that shit. It happens at the office. It will happen to you. It happens to everybody. So accept that. And if it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will. So go ahead and accept the fact that it will happen and get to solving it.

01:00
So when something goes horribly wrong, one of the first things I advise people to do is to take a serious review of what the current situation is with no emotions. What are the facts? What happened?

And in a work environment, sometimes there are cultures where people like to blame each other. We don’t blame. What you want to do is you want to figure out what happened and maybe why. But quickly, when it first happens, you have to get about solving it as well. So you get everybody together. You figure out what the facts are, what happened and why.

And then you figure out who the right person is to manage the challenge. If it’s just you and you made a mistake and you’re talking to your boss, that’s going to be a different type of response than if it’s your whole team that made a mistake or you’ve got a whole team that’s responsible for something. And maybe your boss is the right person to manage that, or maybe you are. So, if it’s just you, you have to own up to something that happened.

02:00
In my experience, the best possible thing you can do is throw yourself at someone’s mercy. Own up to what happened as soon as you possibly can. Tell the truth in all of its gory detail. Express your feelings and emotions. Usually that means you’re regretful. I am so sorry. Here’s what happened and why.

And then ask, how can we make this right? What would you like to do to help solve this problem? How can we fix this for you? How can I make good on this thing that I did that may not have been suited to the company or the mistake that I made? And you want to avoid accusing or blaming anybody.

One of the most important things to do is do again, a factual audit of what happened. And then you’re going to move to solutions pretty quickly. So you move to solution mindset and go, okay, what can we do to fix this?

03:00
And I’ll give you an example here. My husband is a regular customer of a particular store brand. And they give him points based on how much he buys. And then he can take those points and turn them into dollars off of a future purchase. And he got to the point with this particular brand where he was so excited that he was almost up to $100 in his points. And he was like super excited about it.

So he went online this morning to shop. And he saw that, oh, guess what? We got bought by another company. And now we’ve changed our rewards, our point system, our customer rewards program. And now you only have less than $50 in your rewards account. no notice, nothing.

So he calls the store, the retail store, and they say, Oh, we got bought. There’s nothing we can do, but here’s who you can call and get in touch with her email. So he sends an email to the, you know, the company that bought the smaller organization and they got back to him with an email that said, Oh, Well, here’s our new customer rewards program. In case you don’t understand it, please contact somebody at the retail store.

04:00
Well, the person at the retail store, all they could say was that company, you know, the ownership said this was our new program. And all the ownership said was go to the retailer and they’ll tell you about our new program. So he was completely frustrated and mad and ready to take all of his, you know, sizable purchases moving forward to a different store.

And that makes sense. They don’t know how to handle an angry customer. They don’t know how to handle a mistake. It was a mistake to change the rewards program. So every loyal customer lost. And not announce it ahead of time. Now, they made that mistake worse by not owning it and making good.

You have to come up with a way to make good. When you mess something up, it’s best to work with the person on the receiving end of that problem, the one that was impacted, and work together to figure out what to do to fix it. Well, what would you like me to do to make this right? And that’s going to vary by situation.

05:00
So when things go horribly wrong, honesty is the best policy, always. Keeping your cool and talking specifically in facts is number two. Not blaming anyone is number three. That means you look for the facts, you find out what worked and what didn’t work. You don’t go, whose fault was this? Number four, you get to solving the problem, preferably collaboratively with the person that was most impacted by the problem.

And then number five, it’s always good to do what they call a post-mortem, which is when you look at what happened, everybody’s calm. You don’t wait too long because you don’t want people’s memories to fail. But you give it a couple of days and then you get the whole group together and go, all right, that’s behind us now. What happened? How can we solve it? Is everybody okay? What can we do better next time?

And it will serve you on a personal level to follow those steps. It will serve you on a business level to follow those steps. And you can be the leader in solving problems by being that honest, authentic, open, apologetic person. There are a lot of people that don’t know how to do that or they don’t understand the importance of it. The only way you get better at it, at dealing with problems, being authentic, being truthful, going into problem solving mode is through practice.

06:00
So when something really horrible happens, tell yourself right away, well, here’s my opportunity to practice how to handle difficult situations because you will experience many difficult situations in your career.

So this is a real short episode, but I just wanted to get that out there. When things go horribly wrong, there are specific steps you can take. You go at it with a collaborative approach. armed with your intention to solve the problem and to prevent it from happening again, and you will be better off.

And the more it happens, the better off you’ll be, the more you’ll know about how to be that creative problem solver that can go into challenging situations when things go horribly wrong. make it come out on the other side in a way that’s positive and everyone learns from it. So that’s what I’ve got for you today.

07:00
If you are listening on one of the podcast platforms, please drop me some stars. I’d love to hear from you there as well. So drop me some stars, and some comments, and also visit my website at workmomsays.com. We have blogs there. We have the entire catalog of all of our episodes, even the first silly ones where all we did was laugh. Then we got a little bit more serious and we hope to give you some really solid advice.

So go to workmomsays.com. I have a contact form there. I would love to hear from you. Tell me who you’d like to have on the show, what topics you’d like me to cover, what questions you have, and reach out to me.

I’m also on LinkedIn as an open networker. So Lori Jo Vest on LinkedIn, I would love to hear from you. Just make mention that you are a listener to the podcast.

08:00
And I also have a YouTube channel where I’m going through right now, 38 days of work mom. And so it’s every chapter in my work mom says, don’t be an idiot book. here available on Amazon. There’s videos on each of the chapters on YouTube. I’m kind of right in the middle of creating that series.

So look for it there, subscribe on YouTube, like my videos, comment, give me some love there as well. And I’ll be back with more helpful, useful information for young professionals very soon. Take care.

Who is our ideal listener?

This podcast is for young professionals, so they can learn to play the emotional context sport of business and experience less drama and more success.

How can you be more logical and less emotional? Be strategic, and Work Mom Says can help you.

“I tell people to back up, put down the magnifying glass, and look at the big picture when you’re responding to something,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom. “In doing this, you will understand that what’s really upsetting you right now will be something you don’t even remember next week.”

What value can people get from listening to this podcast?

Listening to Work Mom Says can help you grow your mood management skills, grow your ability to reframe situations, and look at things from a strategic point of view. This makes it easier to go into a work situation and get the most positive results.

On Work Mom Says, we also offer tips and tricks for creating connected positive relationships that last over time. People will want you on the team if you can create connected positive relationships and work environments. You become an asset, and you will be more successful when you’re an asset.

“I also like to talk about developing traits like optimism, persistence, tenacity, stick-to-itiveness, sticking with things, and approaching every project with a curious mind instead of a fearful mind,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom

Why do I do this? A few more words from Work Mom

I do this because I naturally fell into the Work Mom role when I worked in the ad agency business and had so much fun with it. I also realized I had made just about every mistake there was to make. I don’t hold myself as a stellar example of truth and how you should be. I hold myself out there as someone who has been bruised, battered, and beaten up and learned some important lessons. I’d love to share these lessons with young people, so they don’t have to make those same mistakes or be the idiot I was.

I also want to help young professionals realize that many things our culture prioritizes aren’t really important. We talk a lot about what should be important and how to present your best face at the office so that you can succeed.

I’ve learned so much throughout my career, and it’s gratifying to share that with young professionals and help them avoid some of those mistakes and get to that success sooner.

Episode 26 – “The Origin of Work Mom Says (Plus a Sneak Peek at My Upcoming Book)” appeared first on Work Mom Says.

The post Episode 38 – When Things Go Horribly Wrong appeared first on Work Mom Says®.