Hi, Dr. Annika here. Today I’m out as usual out on my daily morning walk and the weather is just so good.
I’m back home at my ordinary home and it’s kind of nice to get back in a regular schedule because for the last few weeks I’ve been staying in our summer house and we’ve had a lot of visitors which has been great but also a bit tiring. We’re here back home for a full year of new good work working with stressed management and helping you to deal with your daily stresses.
Today I want to talk about a small little word that is not used that much or enough at least, and that is the word “sorry”. To admit that you did something that was not correct, that you made a fault is a really positive thing. You should say I’m sorry because if you as a leader dare to admit your mistakes it’s going to open up for all your staff to do the same.
If they are allowed to make mistakes they will be more comfortable, and yes they will make mistakes but you can always sort that out, but they will also be more creative and try new things and that’s just going to be so much better for you.
I know this from my personal experience where I’ve had bosses that have been so-called perfect and I have usually hated them because who wants a perfect boss? Can anyone even be a perfect boss?
No I don’t think so.
You can be very good at being perfect with no faults but that’s not human!
So what I think is that if we dare to see the faults if we dare to say “I’m sorry it’s my fault. I didn’t do it on purpose.”.
“This happened to be this way we’re going to fix it. You are so good to tell me about it and I thank you so much for telling me that it was a fault because I didn’t see myself.”
Then you seem like a more genuine person.
As a leader, I hope you’ll want to be seen as a genuine person. That’s where I would like to be anyway.
I read this very interesting article on this subject the other day and that’s how I got to think of it. I know this is a problem in all industries and also in private lives.
Where I come from in the hospital world it is very common that people think that they are perfect or rather they are so insecure they don’t dare to admit that they have wronged and they try to keep up something that is not right. It just makes it ridiculous in the end because you are you, a normal human being no matter what job or position you have and all human beings make mistakes.
It’s okay to say you’re not perfect.
In my personal life I really learnt this early in my career when I had this very tragic thing in my private life with my baby who didn’t make it. People were so I would almost call them mean around me especially in the hospital world because they couldn’t admit that things were hard and tough, even in tragedy they were pretending that world was still perfect, and they didn’t want to talk about it. And me, well I really wanted to talk about it because that was my way of getting through the tragedy. So I use this as an example that you don’t have to pretend that everything is ok when it’s not ok or skate over the surface of someone else’s problems to pretend that the world is perfect and that everything is ok. It’s ok to say sorry, this situation sucks do you want to talk about it?
So I learnt very early to say I’m sorry and I have tried to use that all my career when I’ve done something that I couldn’t stand for I would say “I’m sorry I didn’t know” or “I’m sorry it didn’t work the way I thought” and then we were fine.
In this article that I saw, I found five tips and I want to give them to you:
- To make mistakes is not a shame, but to try to be seen as one with no fault that is kind of tiring because you don’t want to have stories with people that are too perfect.
- Real people that stand up for their mistakes, they seem more genuine and more trustworthy and I can sure agree on that one.
- If you dare to show your weakness it can give other people the courage to show their weakness too and that is a gift that you can give to them.
- Science shows that we will learn more effectively from other people’s mistakes so be generous with your mistakes and have other people learn from them because that is also a gift.
- If You dare to speak about a mistake directly you can even get a good perspective on it and you can see it’s not that bad, it’s not that dangerous. If we look back at old mistakes we can usually just laugh at them.
Who wants to be led by Mr. or Mrs Perfect? No One!
You want to be led by a genuine person who stands up for what she’s doing and if she makes mistakes that’s fine as long as she can say I’m sorry.
If you’d like to learn how you can let go or just need a little help just reach out for a free chat by clicking the link below.
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Til next time.
