You Were Doing the Best That You Could

Last week, I had the opportunity to hear Michael Bungay Stanier (MBS) speak live at the WBECS summit. If you are not familiar, MBS is one of the leading coaching experts and the author of several books including The Coaching Habit and The Advise Trap. Needless to say, as a coach, it was a real Fangirl moment for me 🙂

In addition, though, there was one powerful comment from his talk that is very applicable to leaders (and parents, partners, friends, etc.) that I felt inspired to share.

It Starts at a Dark Place…….

The content of the session was focused on how to build a working relationship with (almost) anyone. At one point, MBS indicated that he had a visualization exercise that he wanted us to participate in. He then said he hesitated to do this exercise because it had the potential to take some folks to a dark place. Gulp!

He proceeded to ask the attendees to consider a toxic work relationship that they have been involved in, and to further consider their own role in the relationship. Like many of you, I have one distinct and psychologically distressing work relationship come crashing back to mind.

Prior to debriefing the exercise (which went well beyond the scope of this article) he said something to the effect of: Some of you will now be ruminating on this past experience, and focused on all the things you could have done differently. You can let go of that guilt. “You were doing the best that you could at the time, with the resources that you had.”

I stopped and wrote that down: “You were doing the best that you could at the time, with the resources that you had.” What a beautiful phrase to help someone who is overthinking a past mistake or mired in guilt over a prior situation. In addition to the element of self-compassion, I love that this phrase also captures the learning from the situation. So many of our current ‘resources’ are the social, emotional and intellectual knowledge we gained from our failures or missteps.

In Practice……

In my experience as a coach, it’s not uncommon for clients to come into a session still beating themselves up over something they said or did. Many times, they are focusing on the shame, guilt or embarrassment of a failure, and it’s impacting their mindset going forward. This phrase is a powerful way to help change the internal monologue.

Leadership Application…..

Beyond the implication for coaches though, this is a great phrase for leaders to use with their direct reports who’ve had a miss or a letdown. Most workplaces can do a better job of helping individuals process after

an error. There are any number of employees out there who could benefit from hearing that their mistake is not a character flaw, but rather they may not have been equipped with the knowledge, insight, experience or resources at the time. With support, they can learn from and let go of mistakes so that they can move forward powerfully and be better ‘resourced’ the next time.

I’m Curious: Has anyone ever said something very helpful or meaningful to you after a failure or mistake?