Good Leaders - Part IV, Handle Peer Mistakes

Last week I talked about how leaders handle mistakes by their team. This time I’ll continue on this topic, but with a slight difference, which is how to handle mistakes by their peers.

All the things in the last article still apply here: help the mistake maker, and take the opportunity to improve the system. But there are significant differences which are worth a dedicated deep dive.

Mentality - Sense of Responsibility

This is the biggest difference between how most people treat mistakes made by their own team and mistakes made by their peers: the leader feels a different sense of responsibility.

When my team makes a mistake, I might be upset that the mistake was made, but I definitely also feel the responsibility that any mistake made by my team is my mistake too. If others question the mistake or the person who made the mistake, a good leader will step up, protect the team, and own up the mistake.

A similar analogy is in the sports world. Whenever a team player makes a mistake and costs their team a game, we almost never see the coach publicly blame the player. Instead, the coach will own up the mistake as their own mistake in public, even though inside the locker room, there might be stern messages from the coach to the player.

Good leaders don’t throw their team “in front of a bus”.

This mentality or sense of responsibility is drastically different when the mistake is made by a peer. For most people, the instinct is “that’s not my responsibility”.

Coming from this “not my responsibility” mentality, actions can be:

• When others are asking, point to the peer who made the mistake, and say “go talk to <them>”.

• Or be silent and don’t say anything.

Both of these are bad behaviors; which is worse is case by case. Normally pointing out who made the mistake is worse, but there are also cases where silence is actually worse.

Empathy and Shared Responsibility

Good leaders take shared responsibility for such mistakes.

In fact, this is not different from how good leaders treat mistakes by their own team. It’s a shared responsibility in both situations. It’s just that most people instinctively feel the shared responsibility for mistakes made by their team, but need extra mental power to feel the shared responsibility for mistakes made by their peers.

What extra mental power is needed? Empathy.

I’ll share a personal story about how I learned about this the hard way.

I used to be part of this peer group where one specific person (I’ll refer to him as “Bob” here) who’s always slightly out of sync with the rest of us. We would have a scheduled meeting to discuss a predetermined topic, and during the meeting, Bob would make out-of-context comments. Everyone was frustrated: Bob felt not being heard, and the rest of us felt we were slowed down by Bob.

Eventually I decided to own up the shared responsibility and talk to Bob in 1:1. Despite my effort trying to understand Bob, it didn’t go well, and eventually I told Bob “you are slowing down everyone, and I’m trying to help here; if you don’t think I’m helping, I’ll stop here, and we can leave it at that”.

Our relationship became polite from there. We were in good terms on personal front, just not on the project front. Rest of the peer group together ignored Bob for the most part and continued to push forward. This lasted for another year. In my mind, I did a great job of managing the tough situation: the “low performer” in the peer group was no longer affecting the rest of the peer group.

Then my perspective changed completely one day.

Post COVID, Bob for the first time took a business trip to Bay Area, and we had lunch together. During lunch, he needed to figure out where to meet his next peer, and he pulled out his phone. He pulled the phone no more than 3 inches away from his left eye, and said “I can’t find it”. I offered to help, and he gave me his phone. I was surprised the font size on his phone was huge, and the room info was right in the center of the screen. I read it to him, and since he’s not familiar with the building, I also offered to take him to the conference room.

On the way walking there, I asked “I noticed the font on your phone was very big, and you were looking at your phone very close to your eyes, but still couldn’t find the room info?” Bob said, “yes, I’m completely blind on my right eye, and nearly blind on my left”. I was so shocked, and asked “I had no idea! Did anyone else know?” Bob said, “no, other than my manager and HR, I never told anyone in this company. Please keep it to yourself, and don’t share it with the rest of the team”.

Later we had a closer conversation about the situation. It turned out Bob grew up with this situation, and learned not to make it an excuse. He’s managed to handle this in his entire life. Everywhere he went, it’s very obvious to see, so it became well-known very quickly. He spent extra hours reading context before meetings, and had a close friend sitting right next to him during meetings. Every time Bob is making off-the-topic comments and getting weird looks from other meeting attendees, his close friend would kick him under the table and then Bob would stop talking.

But joining a new company during COVID made it much harder. He didn’t want to share with anyone else he works with, because that might be perceived as finding excuses. With everything being remote and in front of computers, for years no one knew, and no one was serving as his social cue buddy.

Bob still preferred not to tell others, so he and I developed a “kick under the table” protocol. During meetings, he’d always keep his chat with me on screen, and every time he started to make out-of-context comments, I’d message him “your comment is off topic”, and then he’d stop. He and I would also have a 15-min daily call, where I’d give him the latest context verbally.

As I was doing this to help Bob, I also started to realize once Bob had the right context, he offered tremendous wisdom on his domain expertise. Previously his being out of context, and our stopping listening made him sidelined. Once I started filling him in on context and listening to his suggestions, it completely changed my view on his contribution. I started seeking his input during our daily calls.

I did keep my promise to Bob not to tell anyone in the team. This was kept between him and me; eventually Bob decided to leave the company. In fact I haven’t told anyone until today I’m writing this article. (I did receive permission from Bob to publish this article.)

The reason I’m sharing this today is not trying to brag “see how I helped my peer Bob”. Instead, it’s a reminder for myself: “see how I was completely blind to my colleague’s situation?” I thought my colleague Bob was making a mistake, instead it was me making a mistake not to understand what led to Bob behaving that way.

Empathy to understand “what led to this person making this mistake” could change the perspective whether this is even a mistake in the first place.