Dealing with mistakes: Office English episode 5

What happens when something goes wrong at work? What do we say?

Sometimes there'll be a message from somebody that says 'Hi',  

and I almost think, 'Oh no,  what's coming? What have I done?'

It's that guilty feeling that is maybe left over from being told off at school or something like that.

So, I think, you know,  you just have to accept that things can't  

be perfect all the time and it's okay to make  mistakes just as long as you learn from them.

In this episode of Office English, we'll talk  about the language we can use when mistakes happen at work.

Welcome to Office English from BBC learning English. In this podcast, we help you with business English

for difficult situations. I'm Phil,

and I'm Pippa, and today we're talking about mistakes at work. We try to avoid them, but sometimes mistakes happen.

We've already heard from colleagues at the BBC that finding the language to deal with mistakes is complicated. But what about you, Phil? What do you think?

No, I think it can be complicated.  Whenever you're talking about mistakes,  

you're dealing with how people feel, and often  you're dealing with how you feel yourself.

Yes, I get really stressed if I make  a mistake at work, and that can make  

talking about it difficult. You're also  sometimes worried about making a mistake -  

you might feel like you'll be blamed,  or that it'll be bad for your career,  

so I think it's a really stressful time,  and so it's difficult to know what to say.

Yes, and in this episode, we're going to talk  through language for admitting you've made a  

mistake, apologising, and fixing the problem.

Let's start with owning up to a mistake or telling somebody something has gone wrong. Do you have any suggestions for that, Phil?

Okay, so here's a phrase: 'There's an issue I need to draw your attention to.' What do you think about that one?

Yes, I think that's a really, really good idea. So it's good to be clear that there's a problem,

so saying "there's an issue I need  to draw your attention to" straight away,  

we know there's a problem. So if you were saying that to your boss,  

they know there's a problem, and you're being  really clear about it.

And I think it's quite interesting that here we're focusing on the  issue, not - at this point anyway - not who did it  

or why they did it or anything. He's saying,  'Look, here's a problem. Let's sort it out.'

Yeah, because if you need to fix a problem,  you can worry later about how that happened,  

what went wrong - just saying, 'There's a problem,  

we need to sort it out,' is probably the  best way to start. Any other phrases, Phil?

Um okay, we've got this one: 'I've realised that my  team made an error in the report.'

I like that because it's quite factual. We know immediately  what the problem is, so you've explained the  

problem quite clearly - there's an error in the  report. There is a bit of blame going on here,  

so it's 'my team made an error,' but we're not  saying someone specifically. We didn't say,  

'Oh, I've realised that Phil made a mistake  on this.' It's just somebody in the team,  

something's gone wrong.

I guess ideally, you'll also be thinking about how you can make things better. So we've got this one - you could say something like,  

'I've accidentally sent the email out early,  but I have a plan to fix the problem.'

Yes, so if you're worried about looking bad  to your boss if you've made a mistake,  

maybe if you have time, if you're able to  think of a solution straight away, you can  

go to your boss with the solution rather than  just the problem. So, 'I've made this mistake,  

but I already know what we can do to sort it  out,' is probably a good way of thinking about it -  

especially if you know it's just you that  made the mistake and it's a simple thing,  

Right, so we have some phrases for when we notice  a mistake and need to own up - admit that we made  

the mistake. But what about if somebody else  notices? So this might happen, say, if you  

work with customers or clients and they notice a  mistake or a problem, so we might need to start  

by apologising. You could say something like,  'I'm really sorry about that. Let me investigate  

the problem and get to the bottom of how that  happened, so that it doesn't happen again.'

That's really good for clients and  customers.

There's a lovely phrase in there, "get to the bottom of something." If  you get to the bottom of something,  

it means you kind of understand why it happens,  

you're looking deep down into the bottom of the  problem and working out what made it happen.

Yeah, and that's a good way to apologise as well.  So not only are you saying sorry, you're saying,  

'I need to work out what's gone wrong here,  and I'm going to sort it out for you.' It's  

reassuring for a client or a customer or a  colleague. Another thing we might want to  

think about when we're apologising is trying  not to say 'if', so don't say, 'I'm sorry if  

you are upset,' because that might make the  other person think that you don't take their  

complaints seriously. Instead, you could say,  'I'm sorry that you are upset by this mistake.'

'I'm sorry that you are upset,' instead of 'I'm sorry if you are upset'.

I mean, if someone's talking to you about the  problem, it's probably quite clear that they  

are upset, so um saying, 'I'm sorry if you are  upset,' yeah, I don't think it would help the  

situation. It's suggesting that you kind of are  saying, 'I don't think you should be upset,' or  

something like that, or it leaves that open. And  I think that's probably a dangerous place to go.

Yeah, when someone's complaining, they usually just  feel like they want somebody to listen to them,  

and somebody to say that they've heard  their complaint - that they understand  

why they're upset or why there's a problem.  So, trying to kind of say "if" and get out  

of um kind of admitting blame or a problem probably won't  help the situation if someone's upset or angry.

Okay, so we've acknowledged our mistake,  we've apologised if we need to. Now we might  

need to think about fixing the mistake.  What phrases could we use here, Phil?

Ok, people will often talk about offering assurances,  and that means you're showing that you'll stop the  

same thing from happening again. And you  could do that by saying, 'Rest assured,  

we've taken steps to prevent mistakes  like these occurring again.' And using  

this 'rest assured,' it's like saying,  'Be certain, we're taking this seriously.'

Yeah, it's a little bit like our apology where  we said about getting to the bottom of a problem.  

This would be maybe the next thing you would say  to the client once you've actually got to the  

bottom of it - you can say, 'Rest assured...'  So it's really reassuring to somebody who  

might have a problem with your company.

Okay, and then for customers or clients, you could give them an offer or a discount to make up for the mistake,

if you've got the authority to do that. So, 'Can I offer you a discount on future orders to make up for the inconvenience?' In that classic offer  

structure there, "Can I offer you...?" "Can I give  you...?"

Yeah, people generally feel a lot better if they feel like they've got something out of it.

As you say, you need to be sure that you are authorised, that you are allowed to offer a discount, but that might just make up for it.

And sometimes apologising is enough, sometimes the mistake is  just an honest mistake, it's just a small thing,  

and you don't need to do a huge investigation  to get to the bottom of what went wrong, and you  

don't need to offer a discount. It will depend  on how big the mistake is I would say, Phil.

What things do you think are  important to include in an apology?

I think you need to be really genuine, so you  need to show that you understand why the person is  

annoyed or upset. Explaining potentially what  the problem was, so it might just be a computer  

problem or an error that's really outside  of your control. So if you explain that,  

people can be more reasonable with you  about why something's gone wrong. But yeah,  

you really just want to be really genuine  and don't deny that there's a problem if  

you can because usually that makes  things worse later down the line.

So, dealing with mistakes is stressful,  

but using clear language helps us sort out the  mess. Let's listen to our BBC colleagues again.

Sometimes there'll be a message from somebody  that says 'Hi,' and I almost think, 'Oh no,  

what's coming? What have I done?'

So I think, you know, you just have to accept that things can't be perfect all the time, and it's okay to make mistakes, just as long as you learn from them.

So Andrew said there that learning from mistakes  is important, as well as showing that you've  

learned. So showing somebody, maybe your boss,  that you took on feedback, that you realised there  

was a mistake, and you've made sure it won't  happen again. So how could we do that, Phil?

Well, quite often, it might be explaining why  the mistake happened and then, yeah, just saying  

how you're going to do things differently in the  future to make sure that that doesn't happen. All  

of these, of course, depend on what the mistake  was. It might be there was something you didn't  

know, it might be that there was something you  needed to find out, or you hadn't been told.  

All of these things could be there, but  finding the root of it and showing that  

you understand the root of it is important, I  think, and that helps stop it happen again.

Yeah, and some companies will  do something called a debrief,  

which is basically organising a formal  meeting to talk about what went wrong,  

to come up with an action plan to stop it  happening again. Sometimes people do that  

even if something hasn't gone wrong. So say  you have a big project or an event at work,  

people might have a debrief just to talk about how  could we make that better. So if you're always  

showing that you can learn, that you  can make things better, that you can do the same  

thing again but even better, even if you haven't  made a mistake, that's always a good thing to do.

That's it for this episode of Office English.  Next time, we'll be heading to a work event  

and working on our small talk and networking.  In the meantime, you can find more activities  

to help you with your English at work at bbclearningenglish.com.

- Bye for now. - Bye.