Here’s My Simple Way To Handle When Your Team Members Make A Mistake

Dec 21

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I know how hard it is to admit when you've made a mistake. Especially in your own business, when you have a team, and when it affects your client. I've definitely been the one stressing behind my laptop because I forgot to send a report on time. Or I didn't reconcile a bank account before month-end close.

It's not realistic to think that mistakes won't happen. And when you have a team looking to you for guidance, it's SO crucial that you handle them well.

In this blog, we're talking all about how to gracefully handle mistakes! But we're also covering how to figure out when you can take mistakes and actually turn them into opportunities for growth - or maybe even a shift in the structure of your team.

We're covering these topics to help you overcome and repair when mistakes come up in your business (and trust me, they WILL).

How to handle mistakes made by team members
Keeping track of mistakes made in the company
How to learn from mistakes and prevent them in the future

I've used these methods and developed this process through my many years of running different businesses, leading multiple teams, and making a few mistakes of my own along the way! Let's dive in!

What To Do When Team Members Make Mistakes

It's SUPER important to handle mistakes made by team members with the right mindset. You can't call them out and put them down, or at least, I wouldn't recommend it.

But you also can't ignore that they happen and sweep it under the rug. No one’s going to learn from their mistakes if they're never brought to light. There's a difference between addressing a mistake as a learning experience and shaming someone for making one in the first place.

Whenever business owners in our community are struggling with managing their team members, they say things like:

“I feel like my team keeps messing up.”

“Why isn't this getting done exactly how I want it to?”

“This person isn't taking initiative.”

“They aren't following the process I have in place.”

And I always ask them these questions in return:

Have you given them proper training on YOUR process?

Do they have the confidence to execute this task?

Are there any resources that could support them?

Did you provide an SOP for the task?

Because when you ask yourself these questions, it's more about what you could have done differently as a leader. Not just what the team member did wrong.

Sometimes, our team members just need a refresher on the process or clarity on your expectations to be successful.

How To Address Mistakes Without Being Aggressive

One thing I HIGHLY recommend you implement in your bookkeeping firm is weekly 1:1 coaching meetings with your team members. This is in addition to a weekly team meeting with your whole team!

The benefit of having each team member get individual access to you (or a manager) is that you have a private place to address mistakes and uncomfortable situations. This way, you can give them space to explain what happened or ask questions without feeling embarrassed.

Another option is to have a private channel in Slack for each of your team members. You can use this space to let them chat with you without letting the whole team in on the conversation.

Here's a quick script of what you might say when you need to address a mistake with a team member:

"Hey [NAME]! I noticed the bank account for [CLIENT] wasn't reconciled this month. Do you know what happened with that?"

Or in a different scenario...

"Hey [NAME]! I was looking at the report for [CLIENT] before sending it off to them but it's missing a few things that we need to include. Here's the SOP on creating the monthly client reports for a refresher on how we put that together: [SOP LINK]! If you could just update the report for me that would be AMAZING! Let me know if you need any support with this."

When we approach these situations from a place of curiosity rather than assumption, it's soooo much easier to fix.

But it's also important to pay attention to how your team member responds to this feedback — and if this mistake keeps happening over and over.

How To Record and Document Mistakes (and Why You Should)

It's super important to keep track of mistakes made by anyone on your team, YES, even you! This could be in a spreadsheet, Notion page, a Google Doc, or whatever works for you and your business.

Just make sure you're recording these 6 things when you're making your notes:

What was the mistake?
How was it addressed?
How did the team member react when it was addressed?
What was the outcome of the mistake?
Do we need to provide/create more resources as a result?
How can we prevent this from happening in the future?

Obviously, you can add as many other notes to the document as you need! I've noticed that these specific points are helpful in learning more about the mistake and how we can actually grow from it (typically).

Sometimes we just need to create a new SOP.

Sometimes we need to include an extra lesson in our team member onboarding process.

Sometimes we need to update our process so it's more user-friendly.

And sometimes we need to make a more dramatic change.

There might come a time when you need to reference these documented mistakes as supporting evidence when you need to let someone go. That's usually the last resort because we always like to try and shift someone into a different role or change their responsibilities before deciding they’re simply not a good fit.

Ultimately, it's going to be up to you when it's time to take action or make changes to someone's role. When it's a serious mistake, everything falls back on you as the business owner. So using this simple process is SUPER effective when it comes down to deciding how to handle the mistake.

Hiring and team management is one of the MANY things we cover in our group coaching program: Breakthrough for Bookkeepers & Accountants. Want to see if you're ready to join?

Preventing Future Mistakes By Learning From Them

One of the BIGGEST tips I have for making sure nothing falls through the cracks is to use a project management system. This is one of the first things you need to set up when you start a business of any kind, but especially a bookkeeping firm where there are a ton of moving parts. Create detailed tasks for each of your processes and train your team on how to use them.

Then, use the notes you take every time there's a mistake in the firm and use them to create a game plan for avoiding the same mistake again.

Just to recap, here's a few actions you can take when you or someone on your team makes a mistake:

Document everything you can when a mistake is made
Create SOPs for as many tasks as possible
When someone makes a mistake, approach them as supportive, not aggressive
Use a project management system for EVERYTHING
Take the time to train team members before fully delegating tasks
Remember that we're all human and mistakes will happen 💕

If you're able to follow these helpful steps when someone makes a mistake, you AND your team can be more productive as a whole (and see fewer mistakes over time)!