How to Handle Errors of Regret

By Laurel Elders, PCC with contributions by Sandy Hogan, PCC

​​​​Your heart sinks.  You just realized you forgot to follow through on an important task.  Important to you and important to your colleague that is relying on you.
 
Immediately feelings of embarrassment, dismay, and aggravation kick in.  Not only that, you feel disheartened to have let someone else down.  
 
Ugh... sigh...  
 
Mistakes happen.  They are a normal part of being human.  No matter how much planning, preventing, structuring we do... they still happen.
 
Some mistakes may have bigger consequences to ourselves or an impact on other people.
 
In our coach training, we teach a truly powerful model called Compassionate Communication. Also known as Nonviolent Communication.  One wonderful aspect of this approach is that it applies to such a vast array of human dilemmas and has the ability to restore connection, peace, and flow.
 
Compassionate Communication has been found highly effective in everything from warring communities in the Middle East, to effective parenting, to coaching, to self-esteem.
 
It is no surprise then that applying this model to mistake-making helps us acknowledge and claim the results of our words (or lack of words) and/or actions (or inactions).
 
There are four ingredients: 

1. Observable facts (versus an evaluation or judgment of what happened or didn't happen).
   
2. Feelings that were stimulated by these facts.
3. Needs - The key ingredients needed to foster a successful outcome.
4. Requests - What would you like to invite next?

 
For example, with a mistake, we can own it and say:

1. Observation: "When I realized that I forgot to email you something that we agreed upon."
   
2. Feelings: "I felt so embarrassed and dismayed."
   
3. Needs: "This doesn't meet my own needs for professionalism - to do what I say I will do."
   
4. Request: "Would you be willing to give me a do-over, along with my pledge to slow down, focus, and finish?"

In Compassionate Communication, we are sharing compassion for ourselves with others, and for others.  We are using a language that doesn't attack, judge, or rile the ego.  We step into our humanity to connect with another.
 
We typically do not look through the lens of these four ingredients.  Humans often get stuck in the weeds of judgment and emotions. To be of best service, we can get to the heart of the issue by removing the judgment.  
 
Progress is made when we relinquish avoidance and get real.  Connection occurs when we relinquish minimizing and face the true.  Healing a hurting relationship transpires when we relinquish attack and instead invite a solution.  
 
Compassionate communication is powerful journey to take with ourselves and definitely with others when we make mistakes.  We truly can bring care into anything and everything we do.
 
To learn more, you may wish to check out the work by Dr. Marshall B. Rosenberg called Nonviolent Communication; A Language for Life >> CLICK HERE <<