Team,

I had an assistant who made a mistake.

It cost us $20,000 (No, it was not Divina LOL - love you)

The moment she realized the mistake, she came to me and started crying and apologizing.

My response was: "It happens. So what are we going to do next time?"

That's all I said…which ofc caught her by surprise.

She asked "How are you not mad at me?"

The answer to that was simple:

"Me being mad at you doesn't accomplish anything. You are already mad at yourself."

But here's what most leaders don't understand:

When a teammate makes a mistake, your role as the leader is not to point out the mistake and explain why it was wrong. In the heat of the moment, they take it personally.

Instead, show your teammates where they are in terms of skill set and where they have to be to prevent these errors from happening.

Yelling at someone who already knows they fucked up is lazy leadership.

It's emotional masturbation. It makes YOU feel better while making them feel worse. And it changes absolutely nothing about what already happened.

So we sat down and worked through what I now call the Mistake Protocol:

Step 1: Acknowledge without emotion

"It happens." Not "It's fine" (because $20,000 isn't fine). Not "How could you?" (because that's not helpful). Just acknowledgment that mistakes are part of business.

Step 2: Skip the blame

She was already punishing herself. Adding my disappointment wouldn't un-spend the money. It would just make her more likely to hide the next mistake.

Step 3: Focus forward

"What's the plan for next time?" This is where the learning happens. Not in the shame spiral, but in the solution building.

Step 4: Document the learning

We turned her mistake into a system improvement. Now nobody else can make that same $20,000 mistake because we built a process to prevent it.

Here's what happened next:

That assistant became one of my most loyal teammates. She's caught three other potential costly mistakes before they happened. She's the first to admit when something's wrong because she knows I won't punish honesty.

And that $20,000 mistake? It saved us probably $200,000 in future mistakes because of the systems we built from it.

But here's what would have happened if I'd yelled:

She would have been looking for a new job within a month. She would have hidden future mistakes until they got worse. The rest of my team would have learned to cover things up. We would have lost the learning that prevented future losses.

Your job as a leader isn't to punish mistakes. It's to point out the gap between where they are and where they need to be.

When someone fucks up, they already know they're at Point A when they should be at Point B. Screaming at them doesn't move them to Point B. It just makes them hate being at Point A.

The real question is: Do you want to feel better, or do you want better results?

Because yelling gives you the first one. The Mistake Protocol gives you the second.

Try this the next time someone on your team makes a mistake:

Because here's the truth: The mistakes aren't the problem. It's what happens after the mistake that determines whether you're building a culture of excellence or a culture of fear.

Mistakes happen. What are we gonna do next time??

Have a great week 🙏🏼

-Leila