Hot take: messing up a project in front of your boss isn't the end of the world

I was in the middle of a client presentation last Wednesday, right? We're in a conference room in Minneapolis, and I'm showing off the new workflow system I built for our team. About 5 minutes in, I realized I had imported the wrong dataset from the previous quarter, so all my charts showed old numbers that made no sense. My boss gave me this look like 'what are you doing up there,' and I felt my face go red. Instead of trying to fake it, I just stopped, said 'hold on, I grabbed the wrong file here,' and pulled up the correct one from my email. Took maybe 2 minutes to fix, and the rest of the presentation went smooth. Later my boss told me she was impressed I caught it and didn't panic. Has anyone else had that moment where admitting a mistake early actually earned you some respect?

2 comments

2 Comments

sageellis17d ago

oh come on, that boss said that to make you feel better. in most places messing up in front of a client gets you a talking to or worse. i've seen people get put on pip for less. one guy at my old job pulled the wrong pdf for a quarterly review and the client lost confidence in us for months. the boss never forgot and he was out the door within a year. you got lucky because your boss is chill or the mistake was small enough to shrug off. but in a lot of shops that's a black mark that sticks with you, not something you get respect for.

johnb9517d ago

Gotta point out that it wasn't Minneapolis though, since you mentioned the flight from Chicago to MSP was delayed lol. Otherwise solid recovery on your part, owning the mistake like that is a good look for sure.