Skip to main content

This week's thank you: The person who tells me I screwed up



I like to pretend I'm perfect. I'm actually quite good at hiding my unorganized, not-detail-oriented and spacey personality under layers of to-do lists, self-help articles and processes that double check me (watch for my forthcoming ode to spell check). I'm not sure where this perfectionism comes from. My boss understands when mistakes happen. My parents let me fail a few (hundred) times. I have found that I'm better at embracing my foibles now than I was even a few years ago. So maybe perfectionism erodes like my youthful glow and size 8 pants.

Despite my layers and processes and perfected wheels-turning-so-please-don't-ask-me-a-question facial expression, I sometimes let my alter ego show. A forgotten attachment here. A misremembered fact there. If I'm lucky, I can keep it internal and just chalk it up to another reason not to kick the caffeine addiction just yet. By the time I launch a new training course, I've spent dozens of hours staring at the same information, formatting and moving things around. So it's not unheard of for the brave people who take the course first to point out a broken link or a cryptic quiz question with a poorly constructed sentence.

Occasionally, I'll screw up in front of a client. Those are fewer and farther between because my processes are pretty good. But it happens. I'll send out codes to a school interested in trying a new platform and accidentally send a code with one number off. Or create a meeting invitation for a training session at 9pm instead of 9am. Even I'm not that much of a night owl.

It's when these flubs happen that I am so thankful I have a team of people who catch them, help me fix them and don't judge me too harshly when everything has been corrected. If I'm going to mess up in front a client, at least a co-worker can catch it before the client does so we can fix it before they even realize it's an issue.

Having a competent team around you makes it easier to hide your crazy, especially when it's in an environment where everyone understands that we all look better when we work together.

This week's thank you is for those people who pointed out when I got something wrong and helped me fix it. Thank you, Courtney, for auditing that course and helping me make it better before I launched it (I'm learning!). And thank you, Nathan, for pointing out the wrong information on the invitation before the school did so I could send an update and fix it immediately. I am lucky to have you on my team!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Infographic: Presentation Tools for Sharing an Idea

I put together this infographic as part of an internal training program I do for our account managers each month called "What in the EdTech". The account managers selected topics from a list of about 20 that they wanted to learn about. This is the fourth in the series, and after this one, we'll do another survey to see what else they want to learn about. Previous sessions included: Khan Academy ( and their results ), Gamification/Game-based Learning and 3D Printing .
Post a Comment
Read more

Unchosen: The Graduation Invite

Sometimes I'm really bad at predicting which design a customer is going to choose. And that leaves me with some of my favorite designs unclaimed. I'm going to start highlighting some unclaimed designs here in the blog, as well as some of my favorite designs that were chosen. I'm pretty proud of my concoctions, and I want to show them off! I've been doing a lot of invitations lately, and they are a lot of fun. I'm sticking to the small, intimate parties (no Bridezillas here, please) like bachelorette and graduation parties. My customers have great ideas for themed parties and you just can't find invitations at Target for the "She Got Knocked Up" baby shower. Okay, I haven't done that one yet, but I bet it would be a blast! This unchosen design came from a recent graduation party invitation. The soon-to-be alma mater's colors were green and gold, and the graduate is a big fan of pink. That's where the color scheme came from. Because it was a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Finding Out How Similar We All Really Are

Story by Rossyyume Flickr CC BY NC ND I love stories. Especially people's stories. The stories they've created. The stories that created them. Stories were a big part of why I majored in Journalism. It was an excuse to listen to people tell their stories. As a 19-year-old soon-to-be Journalism student, my goal was to live in a tiny apartment with five cats and interview interesting people all day. And while it's probably best for everyone -- including the cats -- that the career muses didn't send me down that path, I am still drawn to the experiences of others and how they share those memories and ideas. It's fascinating to me that we now have so many ways to tell stories -- ours and others. So many ways to document our lives, the lives of the people we know and the people we pretend to be. With each story comes a chance to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. In doing so, we get a little more understanding of how similar we all are. Here are a few ...
Post a Comment
Read more