We Should Learn to Laugh at Ourselves

Recently at work, I was pressed to get some deadlines met and completed. I manage and administer a college training fellowship program that receives hundreds of applications every year seeking to enter in this competitive program. One of my tasks and responsibilities is to be the bearer of unfortunate news that applicants were not selected or considered for this program. Basically I'm asked by the program director to send out a non-interview or rejection letter.

In my effort to make this process for myself and to the receiver be as personable and well intentioned about the message, I worked carefully to create a wonderful mail merge process on a Word document format. I simply would gather all the applicants' names, addresses, and emails and compile a list that will literally produce a "personal" letter. The letter would be specific to the individual from their first and last names, addresses, and salutation which only the applicant would be receiving.

It was already late in the day and I wanted to get these email letters out to them before my day ended and I would have had a sense of accomplishment for the day; one checked off my list. I viewed all of the letters carefully to make sure I had all applicants accounted for and was sure they were in fact the ones that should receive this letter.

Details. Details. Details. So I thought. Looking at this entire list, I moved it to submit mode. Each letter will go to each applicant's email and sent to their in box. It will be a letter they will receive as if it came from the program director (and actually it is; their name is at the end of the letter). The applicant will have read, digest, and hopefully accept the outcome of their initial application, they will move on. Feeling confident, I press submit, dozens of the emails are being processed. I wait to see all of the emails in my sent box. It's been a few minutes, no confirmation. Strange, I thought it was complete. I tested the process earlier and it worked smoothly. Impatient that I am, I submit again, and again, one last time. Finally it goes through, and slowly I realized, that by looking at my sent folder, I see more emails than I thought. For a moment of confusion and questioning, did I sent it correctly?

Yikes. Yikes. Yikes. I just sent a rejection letter to each of the applicants four times! I panic and for a moment freak-out. I started talking to myself, "What have I done?" In my process to conduct a so-called simple letter to applicants that they were denied further participation in this program they will now be clearly informed that they were definitely rejected! I tried to recover. I thought, let me recall all of these sent emails and hope that when I initiate this process none of them opened their email. Too late, I just received an email by one applicant already saying that he received my email multiple times. Mortified!

Switch gears, I elect not to recall and simply script a sincere apology letter due to my program mistake. Take ownership. I kept the email simple and hope it would suffice for my impatience of over sending emails instead of waiting for one simple confirmation. I made sure the simple apology was "short and simple but to the point", I messed up.

My apology email is sent. I begin to wonder what kind of response I would get. Surprisingly, not much, but only the best of intentions. A few responded and thanked me for processing their application and said, "no worries". No worries? Are you kidding me, I thought I ruined your career chances? After a somewhat overnight rest on this, the next day I continued to receive thanks and "no worries". Wow, it's funny how I did not expect this kind of response. I had to look at from their perspective. They get it; they did not get in, next. What a relief. I think in this one instance, I had to take a step back as well. I didn't kill anyone, it wasn't intentional. It was simply an honest mistake.

I had to laugh out loud on this I was really expecting the worse, but as we are constantly faced with work stress, deadlines, and high expectations, we have to really take in a laugh on all this as it's not as a bad as you would think. I informed the program director and she noted, that it was alright, but I had to be aware that they (the applicants) were going through a sensitive time, especially when it's during the holidays on top of that. But overall, we should learn to laugh at ourselves because it gives us pause to take on the next challenge with the best support system around you; which is a good work environment, and challenging work that constantly evolves. I'll take that anytime as life does hurl some fast balls to deal with many outcomes we all don't always expect.

Learn. Laugh. Lead.