Reset – Making genuine, meaningful, effective amends

In the workplace and with the family, we have all made mistakes that we wish we could take back and start over.  Well, at least I have. This is not a one-occasion event.  There are lots of times I have said or done things that later on cause me to cringe. How could I have ever done or said this? I guess it is good that we are born with a conscience that causes us to reconsider and hopefully even learn from our mistakes. 

But we need to pay attention to and act on that still, small voice that speaks to us from the inside and makes us cringe. Ok, then what? Recently, my wife and I had a disagreement that left us both at odds and uncomfortable. And a thought crossed our minds about how we might do a reset and go back to the time just before we came to odds with one another. So where is the human reset button? She pushed my nose and said, “Reset!” As I did the same, we smiled, backtracked and discussed the troubling interaction issue correctly.

Safety pros are especially at risk because, from the beginning, we have been trained to confront others on all that is wrong. Believe it or not, people don’t really look forward to another safety cop ticket.  I know that on many occasions, I have not handled the giving of discipline/correction as expertly as I should have. This, in turn, has led to some broken relationships on and off the job. 

Yep, you can’t really go around doing a “push-some-body-part-reset” in our workplaces. However, we can go up to the other party and ask for a reset that allows us to start over, discuss the issues in a rational, adult manner and get to a workable solution. In turn, this would have us improving our communications culture and living this culture in which speaking up in an adult manner is just what we do – at work and off the job, no matter how uncomfortable the situation we are in.

The Doc