Hugh Carnegy, a senior editor who oversees corrections at the Financial Times, and Sandra Sucher, a Harvard Business School professor, dive into the messy world of workplace mistakes. They analyze the recent CrowdStrike software outage and discuss strategies for owning up to errors. Hugh emphasizes the importance of transparency in journalism, while Sandra explores how organizations can rebuild trust after failures. Together, they unveil the financial repercussions of mistrust and how sincere apologies can rejuvenate relationships at work.
Acknowledging and addressing workplace mistakes openly is essential for rebuilding trust among colleagues and maintaining team morale.
Trust restoration involves understanding its dimensions, recognizing damage, and taking sincere actions to repair relationships after errors occur.
Deep dives
Understanding Mistakes in the Workplace
Making mistakes in the workplace is a common experience that many individuals encounter, yet not everyone knows how to effectively address them. The discussion highlights a significant recent mistake, specifically the CrowdStrike IT outage, which disrupted operations on a large scale. While not all mistakes can be as severe, everyone will inevitably make errors that could impact their work and relationships with colleagues. This reality prompts the need for strategies on how to regain trust after a mistake occurs and emphasizes the necessity for an organizational culture that encourages accountability.
The Importance of Acknowledging Mistakes
Acknowledging mistakes is crucial for rebuilding trust among colleagues and clients. When someone realizes they have made an error, the first response should be to openly admit it and seek to correct it promptly. Avoiding accountability can exacerbate the situation, leading to further mistrust and dissatisfaction among team members. Creating a supportive environment where individuals feel safe admitting their mistakes fosters psychological safety and ultimately benefits team dynamics and overall morale.
Building and Restoring Trust
Trust is a multifaceted relationship that can be impacted significantly by mistakes, and understanding its dimensions is key to restoring it. Trust involves competency, moral integrity, fairness, and the perceived impact of one’s actions. To repair trust, it is essential to first recognize which aspects have been compromised and how they can be addressed through sincere apologies and offers of redress. Research shows that organizations with higher trust levels experience better financial performance, reinforcing the importance of maintaining and restoring trust in professional relationships.
There’s plenty of finger pointing taking place following the CrowdStrike software outage that took down millions of computers all over the world earlier this month. So what’s the best way to deal with big mistakes in the workplace – and can you win back trust after a huge error? Senior editor Hugh Carnegy, who administers the FT’s corrections and complaints process, tells host Isabel Berwick how he handles mistakes by editors and correspondents, and Sandra Sucher, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, joins the conversation to talk about how trust is lost and regained in a corporate setting.
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Presented by Isabel Berwick, produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval, mixed by Simon Panayi. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s head of audio.