Mistakes are part of being human
Whomever thinks different are doomed to find itself lying, hiding and blaming other for their own mistakes.
Every human being wants to be right. All the time and, most of the times, we act thinking we’re doing our best and doing what we think is the right thing to do but, often, our decisions are skewed, our variables were wrong or even, sometimes, our attention escaped the “perfection” and BAM! A mistake happened.
I have a limited amount of experience with people and not being a psychologist, what I am saying here is not science, expert opinion or should be taken as fact but only the result of my experiences and the experiences of people around me. Disclaimer done, I would like to introduce subject A. Raised with siblings and a caring father and mother.
Subject A had an amazing life but fail to learn as infant that mistakes are intrinsic from the human condition and was shielded from the consequences of its mistakes, creating an impression of shame around them. Today has deep problems dealing with failure, has a hard time accepting when its wrong and often fail to learn from things that went wrong.
While ago, when I was working on a big multinational in Brazil, I've met a nice manager, recent promoted, eager to get its team respect and to show its talent to the superiors but it had a despise for mistakes. Once, when committing my code to TFS, I got the ticket numbers incorrect. It was my first week on the team, my first week dealing with an entire different system and programming language. I was nervous as tuck. Suddenly, ticket #2745 became #2475 in my head. Added to the commit, committed and, ouch! A mistake.
I went forward, seeked out the developer taking care of the ticket #2475 (not mine) and asked him to help me fix the problem. The manager hearing the conversation leashed out: "What a hell!? Are you not paying attention? This things cannot happen, what were you thinking?"… In his defense, it was not my first mistake that week, and It wouldn't be the last one either … I was really anxious. Then, as my mother — when she wasn't angry or furious — taught me, I told him: "Yeah, I know. But the "cheat" is done and to scream fixes nothing. Can you skip the tantrum and help us fix it?". He politely apologised and helped us fix the problem.
During my professional career I've met managers with this same eagerness for perfection and resilient and understanding managers. I've also met a couple of managers that just "let the party go" a bit too much, allowing incompetent and even unqualified people keep their job just because they didn't really care. But that's another topic.
Managers are expected to diagnose the mistake cause and address the cause, not the mistake. Sometimes it was just a mistake. Sometimes is lack of commitment, sometimes is anxiety or personal issues. To ignore those factors will only make the problem grow. In the situation above, the manager often pressured me for better results and it was common to hear him scream or to do some acid comments on other team-member's perfomance during coffee.
Sensibility to deal with the origin of the mistakes is a requirement to be a manager. To understand that people are flawed and be understanding about someones else's situation is the pavement to build the relationship a manager should have with it's team.
