Her Mistake Cost The Company $250K In Repairs. Her Boss’ Response? Utterly Flabbergasting

This is a story that we read recently and we just had to share it with you. You’ll see what I mean.

“My old boss, the CEO of a small hospital, told me a story from back when she was a lab technician (for simplicity, let’s call her Sarah). Sarah had forgotten to check some sort of mechanism on a piece of equipment she used, it malfunctioned and broke the equipment which ended up having around a $250,000 repair bill. The next day Sarah’s boss called her in to talk about it, and she was dead sure she was going to be fired. Her boss asked her why she didn’t do a proper check, made sure she understood what happened and sent her back to work.

Sarah asked her “Am I not getting fired? I was almost sure that’s what this was about.” Her boss said “No way, I just spent $250,000 teaching you a lesson you’ll never forget. Why would I fire you now?”

It seems silly, but that attitude always resonated with me. Don’t make professional decisions based on emotional responses. Always know what your goal is when dealing with someone, and what exact problem you are trying to solve.

Everyone makes mistakes, and yelling at them just makes them resent you and become defensive. Being calm and understanding will make people look up to you.”

These words ring so true to me. As they say, only people who don’t try make no mistakes. If there’s something you want to get done but you’re afraid of failure, be afraid. Then go and do it anyway!

If you agree with the message in this story, please pass this on to your friends and family.