Answer this truthfully
As a parent, manager or leader in the workplace, what is your first response when a crisis hits? Telling your children or team what you want them to do, or stating what went wrong? Let’s be clear, post-mortems and analysis are a fundamental cog in the cycle of reflection and improvement, but they should only take place after steps have been taken to fix the current mistake.
First, tell your children or team what you want them to do! This is one of the main reasons why children and young employees fail to follow instructions – a lot of the time, they don’t actually know what they’re supposed to do. When we are unclear about our instructions (if we give them at all), we’re forcing them to guess what we want them to do. So, lead by example. Tell them clearly, what they have to do right now to fix the mistake. Most of the time, to your greatest and sweetest surprise, after they have remedied the error, you’ll find that you won’t even have to tell them what went wrong in the first place.
