We’re all human. And humans make mistakes. Which means you make mistakes.
Talking about mistakes is even a popular Salesforce interview question. It’s usually phrased as, “tell me about a mistake you made and how you learned from it”.
Taking the time to understand and analyze your mistakes is an important step to learn from them. Since we are bound to make them, the least we can do is learn from them and try to not make the same mistakes again.
As a Salesforce consultant, here are a few key considerations to help make better mistakes.
When you discover you made a mistake, take a moment to assess the impact. If the mistake only impacts you, then you should quickly forgive yourself and carry on. When the mistake impacts others, you need to step up and own it.
Depending on the context, you should tell people about it verbally. Writing it down in an email makes it more permanent. The goal here is to openly communicate the mistake and its impact, not record it for historical purposes.
The next step is to apologize. Excuses shouldn’t really be considered, as they are cheap and easy. To really own the mistake you need to just say sorry and pause for a moment.
After that, you should communicate what steps you’ll take to mitigate or minimize the impact. These should be actionable steps, even if it means just apologizing to more people. If you don’t know what are the next steps, share that too.
The takeaway
People respect people that own their mistakes. Don’t shy away from an opportunity to build a deeper connection with your client. You’ll be pleasantly surprised that most likely they will have a newfound appreciation for you.