Rubber Balls and Glass Balls

I mess up all the time. I think that we need to talk about setbacks and failures way more. What I will say is I had to learn there’s a difference between rubber balls and glass balls. You drop rubber balls, they’ll bounce and you can catch them. Some will bounce a couple of times, you can catch them later. A glass ball will shatter. When it shatters, you have to decide, is it gone and is it lost? Or do you have to pick the pieces up and put them back together? But you know, you’re going to get cut, and you’re going to bleed, and it’s going to be painful.
I have dropped glass balls in my career, the biggest glass ball that I dropped was, I was at an organization where we were trying to shift a toxic culture. And we had decided that we needed to identify the most toxic folks within the organization. Because there wasn’t a consensus on who those were. So, I asked the executive team to say who they think the most toxic folks are. And then we need to have a conversation to say where we need to focus our energy to see if they’re lost, or if we need to remove them. The executive team did that. I consolidated that information. And I put it in a place that the entire company could see it, by accident. Someone saw it and screenshotted it, and it went like wildfire in instant messages. I owned it. But that was hard, and that was hard to recover from, but we had to.

So, the glass ball shattered in that instance, how did you pick up the pieces and get over that?

I immediately ran outside and called a mentor. I immediately ran outside and called someone that I worked with, that and trusted who is a Chief HR officer at a well-known large organization. And I said, “Headline, this is what I did. What are the next three steps that I do?” I had two, we were aligned on two, there was one that I was missing. And I said, “I will call you back later.” And I ran back into the building and started to execute and execute in a way that I wanted to… I was more concerned about the employees that were on that list versus my feelings and my credibility.
I know that this is where building up and putting things in the bank of your credibility, your rapport, and your trust go a long way. I did a lot for the employees at this company. This was totally out of line and out of character. It doesn’t align with how I lead. It was not intentional. But I was more concerned about the employees on that list. And I had individual one-on-one conversations. Was it uncomfortable? Absolutely. Did that make me better? Yes, it did, but it was hard.