Mistakes I Made at Work: 25 Influential Women Reflect on What They Got Out of Getting It Wrong

by Jessica Bacal

Study after study showed that you in fact have to learn from mistakes and keep going in order to succeed.

“grit”—the ability to persevere through errors and setbacks—have led her to believe that it’s one of the main ingredients in achievement.

great leaders demonstrating “a thirst for constru...

Successful people are able to say to themselves, “While I may have screwed up, it doe...

Women are more likely to get flack for mistakes, especially in typically “male” roles—this phenomenon is called “the glass cliff”—and studies show that women of color are even more at risk for being perceived as incompetent.

If women are giving themselves tight margins for error, this could easily be seen as self-preservation.

The problem is that anyone who wants to innovate, gain recognition, or become a leader will need to take risks and rea...

“good enough leader”—one who screws up but stays in the game.

it’s not always wise to place your personal authenticity ahead of the hive mind. To be honest, it’s stupid if you want to survive in a big corporation.

Instead, you almost need to see yourself as a freelancer, building skills and capabilities to take with you to the next job and the next job and the next job.

When I devoted myself to what I genuinely cared about, when I let my heart guide me (as opposed to my need to accomplish) I found true success.

I’d learned that when you privilege how you appear to others over how you are to yourself—when you choose seeming over being—you drift away from the strongest parts of who you are.

The right to claim personal authority in your life is about claiming passion, and passion is what feeds our most important convictions and values.

Don’t be afraid to quit. Who cares what other people think? They’re not the ones living your life. You are. The people we are terrified of disappointing usually want us to be happy. Take the leap and trust that you will land on the other side.

I think that we all might be able to value our mess-ups and mistakes a little more if we saw them as part of the process of developing as people.

In any field, our resilience is tested. Sometimes it’s a sign that it’s time to move on—like when I left academia—and sometimes it’s just a bump on the road to achieving your dreams.

Sometimes it takes the wrong job to realize what’s a good fit for you.

Being part of a high-functioning team can make all the difference at work.

The opportunity to collaborate—and the valuable lessons that I learned from my peers—taught me that there was no way you could take on these battles by yourself and there were a lot of ways to fail.

I realized that for me, collegiality and emotional connection were like an energy supplement.

It’s liberating to free yourself from the assumption that the best way to succeed is to keep moving up a ladder, where you become more and more “important” and more and more powerful.

If you have to subdue or disregard your values, if you have to forgo your intellectual interests and lack the necessary evidence to be truly fair and just, then becoming important and powerful is just not worth it.

Sometimes being comfortable in a place isn’t a good enough reason to stay there. It’s okay to take risks.

Money and a high-status job title aren’t everything when they fail to produce a sense of genuine satisfaction at work.

“Don’t just ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

It’s life-changing to find a school where administrators and colleagues have faith in you and where you can develop a level of comfort that allows you to thrive as a professional and as a woman who can finally be self-actualized not only for herself but also for her students. And I think that’s important to find, regardless of your career—because

because only when you’re comfortable

with yourself will yo...

A lot of young people who want to do social justice work think, “I’m going to embark on this journey of changing the world by myself!” It took me some time to realize that the best work is done in collaboration.

In general, a lot of good can come from not needing to be in control of everything. I would encourage every young woman to find at least one beautifully mucky place in which you’re not the expert—and then to wade in.

When it comes to public speaking, the most important thing to remember is that people don’t come to watch you fail. Care more about the subject than your ego.

People are comfortable with others who are open about their flaws, who don’t try to pretend to be more than they are. It’s easier to go through life being honest and owning up to your less-than qualities than faking it.

I think what kept me going was this deep understanding that it wasn’t going to be perfect, and that it didn’t have to be.

Know that even if you start out with a certain idea of what you’re going to do in your life, almost no one ends up following that straight line.

It was helpful to set a timeline for obsessing, to allow myself the indulgence and then commit to moving forward.

being able to accurately talk about why you took the twists and turns is really important.

Find a way to work toward your goal, even if it’s not the way you thought you’d do it.

When you have major setbacks, you ironically begin to feel like you can do anything because the worst has already happened and you’re no longer paralyzed by the fear of something not working out. If I hadn’t run for office, I would never be where I am now, the founder of a successful nonprofit. That’s why I tell young people to fail fast, fail hard, and fail often.

Recognizing what was most important to me had helped to set me on a path that felt right.

When you don’t connect with the work that you’re doing, it can feel nearly impossible to get it done.

We all need to pay the bills—that’s part of life. But we also need to acknowledge that when a task feels so wrong it’s paralyzing, that’s important information to be aware of.

Feedback is scary, but it makes your

work better.

I’ve learned to trust that the people who are on my side are being honest for the very reason that they are on my side—not because they want to destroy me. There’s no question that my editor’s feedback made Wild a better book.

My advice is to be humble, to listen to those who have more experience than you do, to work hard—actually hard—and also to trust yourself. No one makes your life for you. You make it for yourself.

Spend time figuring out what is ideal for you, not what others expect of you. Whatever it is that’s your thing, pursue that with relentless passion.

You and your bad decision are two separate things.

If my attending physician at the time had let me know that errors do happen, and had said something like “An error doesn’t mean you’re a bad person—it means you’re a human being,” that would have meant a lot.

Guilt relates to an act you did, and you can remedy that act to resolve the guilt. But shame is internal; it’s the realization that you’re not who you thought you were. Guilt makes you want to fix things, but shame makes you want to run and hide.

Errors should be corrected, but humiliating someone doesn’t do anything.