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Failure to Communicate

Everyone has had the experience of being certain that another person has ignored their instructions. What’s the right way to bring success out of this obvious failure?

The temptation is to prove that you’re right. In this modern age, it’s likely your initial request was probably documented in an email or a voicemail. If someone discards a direct instruction and tries to ask you a question that you’ve already answered, who wouldn’t want to rake them over the coals with the truth?

Doing so, however, will likely be a disaster. Failure may be the secret to success, but piling failure on top of failure is probably a bad move. No one likes to be shown exactly how they were wrong.

Instead, a helpful approach may be attribute the problem to something other than the person you want to accuse. Maybe the voicemail message was garbled or lost. Maybe your email went to spam. Perhaps someone else inadvertently provided conflicting information at the same time, which clouded the facts.

It’s also possible that you weren’t totally crystal clear. After all, the person dispensing the instructions probably doesn’t need them. Isn’t the individual who gives directions most likely to inadvertently leave out those steps that seem most obvious?

If someone fails to follow instructions, don’t double the failure by jumping down their throat. Instead, give them the opportunity to gallantly recover. Success comes when we stop dwelling on mistakes and focus on where we can grow and achieve.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 13th, 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.