by Eddie Pipkin

I was watching a basketball game last week, a spirited back-and-forth between two evenly matched teams, and my team was ahead and had victory in their grasp.  That is, until one of our players made a mind-boggling mistake, being whistled for taking longer than five seconds to inbound the ball.  Disaster.  The other team would get the ball, and they would be left with time to make a game-ending basket and seal the victory.  Except, that shot turned out to be blocked by our guy! What???  We won!!!  The same guy who had been the dumbbell seconds earlier, turned the tables and saved the day with a move straight out of a highlights reel!  It was an exhilarating confirmation of the truth, “Don’t get caught up in the past.  Focus on what comes next.”

The quick recovery in question was made by University of Central Florida player Keyshawn Hall, and the comeback story was all the sweeter because the UCF team had been blown out by top-rated Kansas a few days earlier:

The margin between being a goat or a hero can be razor-thin in college basketball.

Just ask Keyshawn Hall.

One moment, the UCF forward stood on the sidelines looking stunned after being called for a 5-second violation on a critical inbounds play that allowed Colorado a final shot at beating the Knights. Four seconds later, Hall was blocking a shot by Buffaloes center Elijah Moore that sealed a hard-fought 75-74 win Wednesday night.

“He’s a winner,” said coach Johnny Dawkins. “The play didn’t go our way and he could have dwelled on that and stayed in the moment, but he moved on to the next play. This game favors guys who can quickly move on to the next thing.”

Ministry also favors guys and gals who can quickly move on to the next thing.

The problem of obsessing over a mistake is that it has the potential to deepen the negative effect of that mistake and send us on a trajectory of negativity and self-doubt that infects our decision making.  It’s toxic.

If we are prone to spiraling into negative thoughts, catastrophizing, or freezing up in fear of making another error, we can poison the momentum of the good things that are going on.

Even the American Medical Association recognizes this slide into defeatism as a real problem:

“Catastrophic thinking is a cognitive distortion that occurs when people have a hard time weighing the likelihood of certain outcomes and believe that terrible or catastrophic outcomes—which are highly unlikely—become, in one’s mind, salient and extremely likely,” Dr. [Tom] Zaubler [Morristown, New Jersey psychiatrist] explained, noting “it can lead to a lot of suffering.”

But “it is not an uncommon problem. On some level, we all do that,” he said. “We’ve all had these experiences where we say something to a loved one or in a meeting and suddenly, we think: Is that the end of my job, my relationship, whatever it may be. And that’s just part of the human condition.

It’s important to recognize this trait in ourselves and deal with it by acting decisively.  We should put the mistake into its proper perspective and move energetically to the next step we can take to put things right or move past the blunder.  Fix what we can fix; control what we can control; and humbly embrace the truth that we are not perfect, and mistakes will be made.

The results of panicking after a mistake is made can produce outsized results if we are responsible for leading teams:

  • Our negativity and panic can infect others on the team with an attitude of gloom and hopelessness.
  • We might be launched into an episode of “the blame game,” projecting our failure onto others.
  • Our lack of resolve in the face of a mistake may create an opening for others to challenge our leadership authority in unhealthy ways.
  • We might overreact because of the mistake, compounding it by flailing wildly to correct what has gone wrong.

In the case of the Keyshawn Hall’s basketball move, he calibrated his response with a brilliant defensive play – the kind of play he has expertly executed all season long.  He kept his cool, remembered his identity, and fell back on his core skills without overreacting.  A player who reacted too dramatically in this scenario would have committed a foul, maybe even a flagrant foul, which would have compounded the disaster.

We’ve all committed a flagrant foul or two in our careers, compounding a trivial mistake with a wild overreaction.

Such miscalculations are avoided by having regular practices for centering ourselves and staying calm in hectic times.

Such leadership is easier if we surround ourselves with solid teams.

UCF’s coach, Johnny Dawkins, attributed Hall’s recovery from his mistake to the positive impact of being surrounded by supporting players who don’t give up on each other.  In the huddle and on the court, the players stay focused and intense, even when things aren’t going their way.  It’s a combination of concentration and positivity (and those characteristics spring from ample preparation, skill building, and an effective game plan – all things we have the power to control as leaders, preparing our teams every time we’re together for the leadership decisions that must be made under pressure).  We can also model good leadership by being helpful to our team members when they make mistakes – which they will, since we all do.  We can set the template for learning from those mistakes and taking those lessons forward in a positive direction, or we can terrorize people by castigating them for their mistakes.  When people are constantly pummeled for making errors, they learn to never take a chance.  They live in fear.

I’m not arguing that we don’t take mistakes seriously.  We should also have processes to evaluate what has gone wrong and prevent such calamities from happening in the future.  But it’s all about balance, not blowing small mistakes out of proportion.

People who make mistakes and are encouraged to “get back on that horse” and try again, learn to be bold.  They are not afraid to try things.  They are not afraid to take risks.  They can deal with adversity.

Which kind of leader are you?  Make a mistake and doom-loop?  Or make a mistake and shrug it off, moving on to the next moment?  Often the energy of the institutions we lead can hinge on the attitudes we display when things don’t go as planned.

Forgive yourself.  Be bold.  Move ahead.