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.