How Do I Recover from a Big Mistake at Work?

PRISKA NEELY: I actually had a dream two nights ago. I had a dream that we did this interview and I was doing it from my bed at home, and then I realized 30 minutes in that I wasn’t recording on my end. And then I was like, “Oh no, I’ve made a mistake.”

ELAINY MATA: Welcome to New Here – honest conversations and practical advice to help you play the game called work. I’m Elainy Mata. This week we’re talking about how to recover after making your first big mistake in a new job. That means everything from hitting Reply all on a private email to bigger mistakes that might threaten your job, like dropping the ball on a big deadline or accidentally offending a client. Either way, messing up at work is scary, especially when you’re new. I wanted to talk to someone who has been there, who has made mistakes that still wake them up in the middle of the night, but also someone who can give us the perspective of a manager and what’s going through their head when you mess up. So, we went to Priska Neely. She’s the voice you heard at the top of the show. Obviously, she’s somebody who still remembers the mistakes she made early in her career, and those mistakes can be really public in her industry. She’s been a radio producer and, later, a public radio reporter in California. Finally, a couple of years ago she became a manager. Now she leads a team of eight reporters and editors at public radio stations in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, and it’s her job to help her team get through all of their mistakes, big and small. The environment that Priska works in is fast-paced and high pressure. Mistakes are bound to happen and they can go viral, but she’s also somebody who thinks carefully about helping her team through those issues so they can move forward. Today we’ll hear some of the mistakes she and her team make. She’ll tell us how to acknowledge things and work with your manager to find a resolution, and she’ll answer some of your questions about messing up at work. Okay, here we go. Why does making a mistake at your first job feel more stressful? Why do you feel that the stakes are just so much higher?

PRISKA NEELY: I think that a lot of things with work are about perspective. And I remember when I was starting out as a reporter, I’d been a producer for a long time, so working on shows behind the scenes, but I hadn’t really had a byline, hadn’t really had my own voice on the radio. And so the first time I started doing that, and I had done a little radio spot, like a 45-second thing, but it was still so nerve-wracking and it was such a big deal to hear myself on the radio for the first time. And then a couple of years in, you’re like, whatever. I filed a spot without looking. I did it with my eyes closed. And then you have your first big story or your first big investigation and you’re really nervous about that, and then you move on from that. So it’s like everything shifts perspective and you brush things off, but when you’re doing something for the first time, you’re thinking so much about every detail because every detail is new. So then it feels like the stakes are a lot higher.

ELAINY MATA: Yeah, I remember when I first started in media, when I first started doing reporting live, and I didn’t want to mess up my script or anything at all, especially live because it’s live. But me also being a control freak, I want to know what are all possible outcomes that can happen and can I control any of them not happening? And I think that’s also really hard too. You want to protect yourself from making a mistake because it hurts to make a mistake, it hurts to fail in some way, but it’s also this misconception that a mistake means failure. Do you think making a mistake means failing?

PRISKA NEELY: No, I think you learn from things. I mean, how do you learn? You observe, you try, and then you’re either right or wrong, and if you get in a situation where you’re wrong, it’s how you handle that and how you move on from that, I think is what matters the most. When I think about my career as a manager, it was something that I’d been working toward for a long time, and I knew that I wanted to be in leadership from early in my career, so it felt like really a lot of pressure to finally get that job, the job that you’ve been working toward for your whole career. So, it’s like, “Oh my gosh, okay,” now I finally gotten this job and it was just, I felt like there were so many eyes on me because it was a new initiative, and I’m a young black woman in leadership, in public radio, in a field where there are not that many people who look like me in the position that I have. So I was putting a ton of pressure on myself. And so a lot of times I wonder is it a mistake or is it something that you’re making up that you were supposed to do that no one told you that you were actually supposed to do? So that’s what I had to realize a lot in the beginning, that separating these standards that I had in my head from what I was actually supposed to be doing.

ELAINY MATA: So, it was a mistake for you. You were like, “Ugh, I shouldn’t have done that.” Is that what you mean?

PRISKA NEELY: Yeah. I think when you’re starting a new job and you don’t necessarily have clear expectations and standards, and maybe you have very general ideas of what you are supposed to accomplish, but you don’t have that broken down incrementally, then you’re like, “Okay, in order to feel productive, I need to do X, Y, Z by certain time.” And then if things just aren’t happening, sometimes that can feel like a mistake or that can feel like failure. But then I started realizing, “Oh, who is saying that?” And it’s like, “Well, I am.” I’m the only person who thought that we had to get that story done by tomorrow, or thought that I was going to be hiring by this date. That was one thing that was really, when you talk about perspective and getting perspective when you move away from something, I started in September of 2020 and was supposed to be hiring a bunch of people, and I just felt like everything was taking so long. The interviews, the scheduling, anytime I lost a day, I needed to push something back. I was like, “Oh no, this is taking forever. It’s taking forever.” And then, when I looked back, I started in September and by February I had hired three people. And so that was doing something brand new over the pandemic and during the holidays, which was a very hard time to hire people. So then when I looked back and I mentioned it to one of my colleagues, she was like, “Oh, no, we thought you hired super fast.” And I was just like, “Oh, okay.” Well, I guess that was actually fine, but I was also learning and doing so many things for the first time. So yeah, I think that definitely feedback is key. And I think a lot of times when we don’t get feedback, it’s very easy to make up narratives that are sometimes false about what people may or may not be thinking about you, when probably no one is thinking about you.

ELAINY MATA: And that’s like when a mistake happens. I know, for me, I beat myself up, and my biggest enemy is me. I will always make myself feel worse than probably if I were to go to my higher up and say, “Hey, I did this.” And they’ll be like, “Oh, that’s okay.” I was like, “Really? Because I just put myself through this huge emotional turmoil.”

PRISKA NEELY: Well, you’re the main character of your own life. So of course whatever you’ve done, you’re going to be thinking about it. But your boss is the main character of their own life, and they may have other things, they may have other direct reports, they have got a family, they’ve got whatever, they’re not thinking about you.

ELAINY MATA: Okay. So then, you’re a manager. How much does your boss affect how you feel about making a mistake?

PRISKA NEELY: I think that it can be huge. And I think that, for me, everything is foundational. Everything is from the beginning. How can you create standards, expectations of how you will deal with future mistakes? So for my team, as part of my onboarding process, we have a very deep conversation on day two or three after I hire someone, where I ask them these questions about how they like to be supervised and what is the best way for me to come to you with an issue? How do you respond to stress? How do you respond when you’re frustrated? And another one of the guiding principles that we’ve established together is that do not needlessly toil alone, is one of them. It’s ask for help if you need it. Because I think one of the things that breeds mistakes is people trying to figure things out for themselves. And they should have just asked somebody.  And I know that those things can feel really scary to ask your boss. And so, on the one hand, I would try to get really clear on expectations from the beginning, what are you looking for from me? What do you want me to do? So that you’re not making those things up in your head of like, “I should have done this, I should have done this.” And no one was expecting you to do those things. But then on the flip side of that, if you aren’t comfortable having those conversations with your boss, get a buddy, ask somebody else. And so, I always try to provide that with people on my team to say, “I am here. Let me know if you have any questions. I will be happy to answer them.” But I also know because of people’s previous jobs and work trauma and stuff, people may not be comfortable with that. They may not believe me when I say that I’m not going to hold it against them. So, I usually give them a buddy and say, “If you don’t ask me, ask this person on the team. They will answer all of your questions. Ask them any dumb questions that you are not comfortable asking me.”

ELAINY MATA: I’m curious for you, as a manager, and you said you had a team of eight, have any of them made mistakes?

PRISKA NEELY: I think the moments that I would consider mistakes are those moments where they just didn’t ask for help. We just could have just avoided the situation if you just told me what was going on.

ELAINY MATA: If you just asked me. Yeah, that’s really funny because we did an episode on bad bosses and we interviewed my former boss and she had said, so there’s an ongoing joke about the printer. The printer was probably one of the hardest things that we could figure out because we needed it to fax, we needed to make [inaudible 00:11:04]. It’s simple, it’s a printer, but we always messed up. And she said it all the time, and she said it in our interview, “I would rather you ask me the same question 50 times and me help you than you doing it incorrectly because we spend more time correcting your mistake when you could have just asked me, Hey, how do I do this?” But she gave us this, and I think it’s hard because not all managers do this, she gave us this safe environment that it’s okay to ask for help, and it’s okay to say, “Hey, I made a mistake, what do I do?” And not all managers are like that. Not all managers are so thoughtful about planning ahead for mistakes the way that you are. So it’s hard.

PRISKA NEELY: I would say probably most. The way that I lead my team is basically doing the opposite of what was done for me in many of my previous positions. So this environment is not what a lot of people are going to be dealing with when you’re honest about it. But I think there are ways to reverse engineer things to say, “I would really like to have one-on-one check ins every week or every other week. That’s something that would really help me, especially as I’m starting out. I’d really like that, just touchpoint for feedback.” So asking for that I think is something that people can do. But when something is a mistake that you made, whether it’s an error in a story that’s just been published, or one time I went and did an interview with someone and I just wasn’t recording the entire time.

ELAINY MATA: Oh, I’ve done that. Oh my gosh.

PRISKA NEELY: So what are you going to do? Are you going to-

ELAINY MATA: Cry?

PRISKA NEELY: Are you going to go and secretly redo it? I don’t know. There’s so many different ways that you could do, but I would think that going to a manager and saying, “Hey, I messed up.” Trying to get ahead of it to a certain extent so that they don’t hear about it from someone else. I was talking to a friend who felt like they messed up during a presentation and that everyone was grumbling about it. But I’m like, “Would you not feel better if you just went to your boss and said, ‘Hey, we had this presentation earlier. I feel like it didn’t really go that great. I just wanted to let you know I’m aware, and these are the things that I wouldn’t do differently next time.’“

ELAINY MATA: So when somebody you manage makes a mistake, does it affect your trust in them?

PRISKA NEELY: I think the most important thing is just, really, are they coming to me? Are they letting me know about it? I think that that’s big to just be upfront about it, own the mistake, and then how do things proceed? If they’re in a situation like that in the future, are they making the same mistake? Are they bringing that up? Are they even looking to get ahead of it? I know at one time I didn’t record, so this time I’m looking to do X to make sure that I do.

ELAINY MATA: Me looking at my Zoom recorder to make sure I’m recording.

PRISKA NEELY: Yeah, I’m thinking about the ownership and then the learning from it. Does it feel like they’ve learned a lesson or does it feel like they are just like, “Ugh, whatever.”

ELAINY MATA: Coming up after the break, we’ll take your questions about mistakes at work, like what to do when your boss catches you talking about them behind their back. Be right back. So we have some questions from listeners that I would love to throw your way. And the first one is an anonymous one, and they submitted it through text, so I’m going to read it. They said, “I often struggle to understand which mistake is okay to make and part of being human, and which mistakes are too bad. My coworkers often tell me that I stress over minor things. I check my work multiple times and I still feel concerned about its quality despite having done my best. Sometimes I struggle to maintain focus as well, how do I tackle this issue?” That sounds like I wrote it. I didn’t though.

PRISKA NEELY: Yeah, I guess that’s where I would think that having either that internal work buddy who you can say, “Should I be freaking out about this? And they would be like, “What? No, no one cares about that.” I don’t know. I guess the other thing is just really realizing what people care about and what they don’t. I used to moderate a lot of events, when I was first starting out as a reporter we had to have two panel events per year, and I used to get so nervous before them, prepping the questions, what am I going to wear? How am I going to sit? [inaudible 00:16:11] of the people, what if there’s an awkward silence? What if I say someone’s name wrong? And then I realized that no one in the audience is actually grading you or paying attention in that way. I think that may be one of the things that coming out of school, you don’t get graded at work in the same way. It’s a different type of expectation landscape, and I’m moderating these events and then I realize one, people don’t really care. I’m a pretty good speaker. If I prepare, and then if I stay present in the conversation, it’s probably going to be fine. But if I do make a mistake, I usually laugh or make fun of myself or like, “Whoops, sorry, I got that wrong.” Just keep it moving, just keep it moving and not holding onto it so tightly as something to really be thinking about.

ELAINY MATA: Okay, so next this question is from Mimi and she submitted it through text, so I will read it. I just began my first job ever at a big bank. We use teams, and in shared chat I complained about my manager on accident. Everyone including him saw, I literally don’t know how to recover and I already apologized, but he’s not happy. Advice?

PRISKA NEELY: So that’s rough. That’s a rough situation. “Okay, yes, that is a mistake.” So one, it sounds like you owned it. So in the apologizing that’s owning it, I don’t know what the complaint was. I don’t know if it’s something that’s going to be evident in any interaction, but I think it’s important for you to realize that there will come a point where that is not always on your boss’ mind. Try to get to a place where you’re not cowering and apologetic every time, because then it’s going to be like, “Why are you acting like that? Oh, that’s right, because that one time you complained about me in teams.” So I think moving on and then never doing that again. You don’t complain about people in work platforms.

ELAINY MATA: I have one last question for you. I have a lighthearted one. What’s getting you through the week? It’s Thursday, it’s almost Friday. What is getting you through this week?

PRISKA NEELY: I have a lot of plants and my plants bring me a lot of joy.

ELAINY MATA: What’s your favorite plant?

PRISKA NEELY: Oh, no, I don’t have favorites. I have my 40 plant children, but I have a lot that are popping out new leaves right now. So I look forward to walking in and into different rooms. I usually do a walkthrough of my apartment and greet everyone in the morning, see what’s changed overnight, and so call it like an unfurl watch, seeing the leaves unfurl and be like, in the morning, “Look at you. Look at you.

ELAINY MATA: I love that.

PRISKA NEELY: So, every morning when I wake up, I’m like, “What have my plants done overnight?” I really do love my plants a lot. Really a lot.

ELAINY MATA: That alone just sounds very therapeutic.

PRISKA NEELY: Yeah. No, they’re really great.

ELAINY MATA: Well, thank you Priska so much for taking the time to want to talk to us and giving us your perspective on making mistakes.

PRISKA NEELY: Yeah, thanks for having me.

ELAINY MATA: Priska is the Managing Editor for NPR’s Gulf States Newsroom. Here are my biggest takeaways that I got from Priska. If you think you made a mistake, check and be sure it’s real. So find a work buddy or a mentor who you trust and talk about it with them. Next, if you are sure that you made a mistake, just own it. Talk to your boss and anyone else, and make a plan on moving forward. And then the last one that I really think is important, do think about ways to avoid that mistake in the future. But don’t dwell on your mistake, even if it is a big one. You’re here to do a job and, if you didn’t get fired, then just keep going. Next week we’ll be talking about office etiquette, all the little rules about how to behave at work that everyone seems to know but you. Some of these are just manners. But it actually goes a lot deeper than that.

SARAH COOPER: This idea that there’s this preparation that people have that you don’t have, invisible rules that you’re going to be breaking at any moment. Just do what you think you should do and once you get there, know that you belong there.

ELAINY MATA: That’s comedian Sarah Cooper. She used to work at places like Yahoo and Google. She’s going to tell us how she learned all of their rules and which ones she was able to break. So definitely check back next week for that conversation. Thank you to our listeners who shared their stories and questions about making mistakes at work. We want to hear from you, so please keep sending us your stories and email us at newhere@hbr.org. Bonus points if it’s an audio file; we might even use it in an episode. Again, our email is newhere@hbr.org. And if you liked what you heard, follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you’re there, leave us a review and tell us what you think of the show. Then send the episode to your group chat, Slack, or wherever you talk about work. Did you know that Harvard Business Review has more podcasts to help you manage your business and your career? You can find them at hbr.org/podcasts, or search HBR wherever you listen. This episode was produced by Hannah Bates, Anne Saini, and me, Elainy Mata. Special thanks to Magdelene Johnson. Our editor is Mary Dooe, and our engineer is Tina Tobey Mack. Supervising editors are Maureen Hoch and Paige Cohen. Ian Fox manages podcasts at HBR, and our theme song was composed by Graz de Oliviera. See you back here next week. Bye.