Everyone makes mistakes. We’re all guilty of making bad decisions in business and in life. The question is, how do you deal with mistakes—your own and those of others? In this edition of By Your Life, we’ll talk about how to turn mistakes into lessons learned, forgiveness, and growth for the future.
Mass Readings Audio
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/2019/19_03_31.mp3
Fourth Sunday of Lent – March 31, 2019
Welcome to the fifty-third episode of By Your Life. Thank you for joining me as we celebrate our first birthday. If you haven’t already, please subscribe via iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or on the right side of this page so I can send you notifications when each new episode is posted. And please forward to a friend, if you think they would benefit from By Your Life.
One year ago this weekend, we launched By Your Life to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. Each week, it is my goal to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.
In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Fourth Sunday of Lent for Year C. This week, our readings focus on the renewal of a relationship that comes from repentance and forgiveness. The Parable of the Lost Son in Luke’s Gospel is filled with life lessons. There is, of course, the son who not only walks away from his loving father but squanders his inheritance on a sinful life. He decides that he’s better off living on his own and that he doesn’t need his father, although he has no problem taking “his share” of his father’s property as if he’s entitled to it. We all have been this son at some point in our lives, and unfortunately, likely will be again. It is painful to identify with this son.
Then, there is the new-and-improved version of the lost son, who after “coming to his senses” (Lk 15:17), realizes that he’s been chasing a lie and everything he ever needed in life and more was with his father. So, he humbled himself, returned and asked forgiveness. Identifying with this version of the son generates feelings of overwhelming gratitude, humility, and joy. These are the feelings we get every time we seek reconciliation with the Father in the Sacrament of Penance.
And then, there is the forgiving father who accepts the son when he returns. It made me think about the person who works for a company for a period of time, is a hard-worker and performs well. Then, he gets a call from a headhunter who offers him a bigger job, more money, and more perks. So, he jumps ship. It never crosses his mind that the reason he can get the new job is because his former employer invested a lot of time and money training him and giving him opportunities to grow. No, he feels he’s entitled to take all the investment that was made in him and chase a bigger paycheck for himself.
But then, after a while working for the new company, he realizes that the grass isn’t greener on the other side. He may have a few more dollars in his pocket, but the culture and working conditions are awful and he hates getting up and going to work every day. He thinks about the people he worked with at his old company and how much he liked working with them and pursuing their common vision. So, he calls his former employer to ask if he can have his old job back.
If you’re the employer, what would you do? Do you take him back or not?
Certainly, there are a lot of details I left out of this story, but in general, when a person humbles themselves, says they made a mistake and asks for another chance, I’d give it to them. This employee is now more valuable than before because of the lessons learned through their poor decision. And, isn’t that what you’d want someone to do for you if the roles were reversed?
We all make mistakes. The question is, do we learn from them? It depends. It depends on whether pride or humility responds. When our pride gets in the way, we make excuses, blame others, and try to avoid responsibility. Pride never learns a lesson. However, when humility responds to the mistake, the opportunity for personal growth and development is ripe. There is nothing more valuable than a mistake that becomes a lesson learned.
There is nothing more valuable than a mistake that becomes a lesson learned.Unfortunately, many bosses focus on the mistake that was made and don’t create the environment for lessons to be learned, instead they create a culture of fear. The interesting thing about lessons, they will keep presenting themselves to you until you learn them. How you deal with mistakes—your own and those of others—and whether you learn from them, is what separates winners from losers.
This week, I was listening to another podcast hosted by my friend Bruce Wawrzyniak, called Catholic Sports Radio, which Bruce says is located at the intersection of your faith life and your sports life. In episode 8, he interviewed Chris Ledyard, the athletic director at JSerra Catholic High School in San Juan Capistrano, California. I recommend you listen to this and other episodes of Catholic Sports Radio because there are valuable leadership lessons for the workplace to be gained from the sports world.
In episode 8, Chris Ledyard talks about a book by Joe Ehrmann called InSideOut Coaching: How Sports Can Transform Lives. I haven’t read the book, yet, but I’ve ordered my copy because Chris mentioned how it teaches the difference between transactional coaching and transformational coaching and I’m sure the difference just at applicable to leadership in the workplace. Chris talked about how the book taught him language that he and his coaches use when dealing with mistakes. He said, there is a difference between “where you live and where you visit.” We all make mistakes, but when you do, don’t stay there. Come back to where you live.
I think this message is reflected in the parable by the Lost Son who visited a distant country, but when he realized his mistake, came home to live with his father. Seeking reconciliation when we’ve made a mistake that has harmed a relationship and extending forgiveness when it is asked for, are just two of the important lessons from this parable.
Another can be gleaned from the perspective of the older son. We all have been this son at some point in our lives too when envy of another person’s blessings blind us from seeing our own. It is sad to identify with this son.
Envy of another person’s blessings can blind us from seeing our own.What is it about us that makes us go here? Why do we feel deprived in some way just because someone else has something we don’t have? Well, if you can believe the scientific research, it is ingrained in us.
There was a famous research study done with Capuchin monkeys called the “Fairness Study.” You can watch what the study revealed in an excerpt from Frans de Waal’s TED Talk. (Frans de Waal, is a Dutch primatologist, ethologist, and a professor of primate behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University.) Essentially, the research consisted of taking two Capuchin monkeys who live together in a community and putting them in separate, but adjacent cages where they can see each other. The monkeys are taught a task, which is to take a rock and hand it to the scientist. When they successfully complete the task, they are given a piece of cucumber. Over and over, each of the monkeys will successfully complete the task and be totally satisfied with the cucumber reward.
In the Fairness Study, the first monkey hands the researcher the rock, and receives a piece of cucumber and is content with her reward. Then, with the first monkey watching, the second monkey completes the task, but instead of cucumber, is given a grape, which she eats. The first monkey then completes the task and is once again given a piece of cucumber, which she immediately throws back at the researcher. The second monkey completes the task again and is given a grape. Then, the first monkey gives the researcher the rock and again is given a piece of cucumber, at which point she throws the cucumber back at the researcher and breaks into a tantrum. It’s hysterical to watch. (Click here for a link.)
It also sounds a lot like the older son, doesn’t it? When he heard that his father had slaughtered the fattened calf because his brother had returned safe and sound, he became angry and refused to enter the house. (Lk 15:27-28) Scientific research says the older son’s reaction is totally natural. If we evolved from primates, we are wired with a sense of fairness and we pitch a fit when it is violated. However, through the Parable of the Lost Son, Jesus is encouraging us to keep evolving beyond this natural tendency. He’s teaching us how we allow envy of another person’s blessings to create a sense of dissatisfaction with our own.
This problematic human tendency is why some reward and recognition systems backfire. For every “Employee of the Month,” there is a department full of employees who are discouraged, or worse. What do we do instead?
Everybody wants to be somebody.All people want to know they are important. Everybody wants to be somebody. And most businesses want their people to be somebody, but they treat them like nobody. If you want to increase satisfaction, treat people like somebody by involving them in the decisions that affect their work. Research shows that when involvement increases, so does an employee’s sense of satisfaction, sense of responsibility, level of commitment and the quality of their work improves.
However, the real power in the parable is the opportunity for us to learn the lesson that the father had for his older son. We are not harmed by someone else’s good fortune. We are only harmed when we allow envy to control our outlook. In his video series Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Lively Virtues, Bishop Robert Barron says we combat envy with appreciation. This is the message the father had for his son. “Now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.” (Lk 15:32)
You are not harmed by another person’s good fortune. You are harmed if you let envy control your outlook.One final thought: In the complete TED Talk, Frans de Waal shares other research using primates that show their capacity for empathy, cooperation, and encouragement. We are more evolved than primates and so in addition to these positive traits, we also have the capacity to overcome envy with appreciation and to fight pride with humility. Because unlike Frans de Waal, whose research is looking to see if they can “build morality from the bottom up, without God or religion involved”(see the complete TED Talk here), we have the ability to live moral lives in Jesus Christ. We don’t have to wait for these moral traits to evolve, because as St. Paul wrote in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. And all this is from God.” (2 Cor 5:17-18)
God has created in us the capacity for cooperation, encouragement, repentance, and forgiveness. These are gifts from God, and we can choose to use them at any time to counteract our natural tendencies, for our benefit and for the benefit of others.
Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us recognize when we have failed, give us the humility to ask forgiveness, the mercy to forgive others, and the strength to reject envy when others are blessed.
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them, the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.
May God bless you abundantly this week and may you glorify the Lord by your life. Amen.
Remember to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or the right side of this page and help us spread the word by forwarding to a friend, sharing on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Just click the icons at the top of the blog post. Also, check out the Resources page where you can find a link to the books and other resources mentioned in this and other episodes of By Your Life. I love to hear from you. Let me know how you’ve benefited from By Your Life by leaving a comment below.
