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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!
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