The key ideas

Mistakes I Made at Work

Jessica Bacal, 2014

From childhood we are taught that making mistakes is not allowed, and we take every misstep as a verdict on ourselves. Jessica Bacal asked twenty-five successful women — from the researcher Carol Dweck to a doctor and a restaurant critic — how they went wrong at work and what grew out of it. It turned out that those very missteps helped them find their calling, learn to ask, and get back up after a blow. The book shows how to stop confusing a mistake in an action with a mistake in yourself.

Who it is for

For anyone who is afraid of slipping up at work and takes every misstep to heart. And for everyone who, early on the path, is still looking for their place and learning to ask, to refuse, and to get back up after a failure.

We are all first drafts. If you live right, time after time you try to make the next version of yourself a little better.

A misstep is not yet a verdict

You send an email to the wrong person. You mix up the figures in a report. You say something off-key in a meeting and then replay it in your head all day. Sound familiar? From childhood we are taught that making mistakes is not allowed, and we take every misstep as a verdict on ourselves.

Jessica Bacal works with students at Smith College, and one day she noticed how many strong, successful women are afraid to slip up. So she asked twenty-five of them — researchers, doctors, writers, entrepreneurs — about the mistakes they made at work. And about what grew out of those mistakes.

It turned out that almost every success story began with a misstep: with a job they hated, a "no" left unsaid, a project that failed. A mistake does not brand you — it shows you where to go next.

Ahead are seven such stories. From them you will learn how to separate a mistake in an action from your worth, how to ask for more, how to say "no" in time, and how to get back up after a blow. And you are already doing the main thing — reading a book about something people usually find too shameful to say out loud.

A task that makes some give up and others come alive

The young researcher Carol Dweck gave fifth graders puzzles that could be made harder or easier. Some children, hitting an unsolvable puzzle, gave up: "I can't." Others rubbed their hands together: "Oh, my favorite kind of problem!" — and invented new moves of their own. Their abilities were the same. What differed was their belief in themselves.

Dweck realized that everything comes down to how a person thinks about their abilities. If you believe that intelligence is given once and for all, every mistake sounds like a verdict, and you want to pick the easier task. This is a fixed mindset. But if you believe that abilities can be grown, a mistake turns into a hint. This is a growth mindset.

Dweck herself clung for years to the image of being "the smartest," and out of fear of one day saying something less than brilliant she even avoided a professor she admired. So she deprived herself of a mentor.

Catch the voice of the fixed mindset in yourself — "this is too hard, I won't bother." Do you hear it? Answer the way those children did: "This is exactly what I want to try." Here a mistake is not a failure but material for growth.

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About the author

Jessica Bacal runs the Wurtele Center for Work and Life at Smith College, and before that she taught in an elementary school in New York. "Mistakes I Made at Work" is her book, a collection of conversations with successful women.

All books by this author: Jessica Bacal

Terms from the book

  • Dweck
  • Bellevue
  • Wells Fargo
  • fixed mindset: Dweck's concept, not a diagnosis: the belief that abilities are given once and for all. With it, a person fears mistakes and chooses the easier option so as not to spoil the image of being capable.
  • growth mindset: Dweck's concept: the belief that abilities can be developed. With it, a person takes on the hard thing and sees mistakes as material for learning.
  • Ofri: Danielle Ofri is a doctor and a teacher of medicine in New York, the author of books about the inner side of a doctor's work.
  • Reichl: Ruth Reichl is an American restaurant critic and writer who was for many years the editor in chief of Gourmet magazine.
  • Tugend: Alina Tugend is an American journalist who writes a column for the New York Times and wrote a book about the value of mistakes.
  • Mufleh: Luma Mufleh is the founder of the Fugees Family organization for refugee children; she is the coach, director, and teacher of the school she founded.
  • Fugees: The name of Mufleh's team and organization; from the English word refugees.
  • Duke: A gifted young soccer player on Mufleh's team, a refugee teenager from Liberia who lost his parents in the war.
  • Sen: Rinku Sen is an American activist and journalist who led a center and a publication on racial justice.
  • Colorlines: A publication on racial justice that Sen ran: first a print magazine, then a website.
  • Warner: Judith Warner is an American journalist and writer who wrote a column for the New York Times.

All terms

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