I Broke the Internet

I destroyed our website, but I still have a job: how leadership responds to failure can prevent burnout

I started this week on a roll. I was knocking out my to-do list, anticipating needs, making content, checking boxes, and taking care of business. I was THRIVING. Then, today happened…

Amidst the laundry list of checkboxes I filed through today, I received an email reminding me to update our website’s PHP. Another easy win.

PHP updated and confirmation message received. Then, the little orange error symbol pops up…

“There Has Been a Critical Error on Your Website”

“Ctrl+Z” was not going to cut it to fix this CRITICAL ERROR!

I spent about 45 minutes troubleshooting, testing plug-ins, and researching login information for back-end user portals before I realized I needed to reach out to my manager for help.

“Looks like we are going to have to call in Stephen - he’s the only one who can fix this at this point.”

Shit.

About that time, the upper level alerts started popping into my Teams chat:

*ping* “The website is down. Do you guys see this?”

*ping* “VERY BROKEN WEBSITE!!!!”

Stephen was already at work to repair the damage. So he worked. And worked. For the next 4 and a half hours, Stephen picked and prodded, logged in and out, restored and revised, trying to undo the one simple click that shut down our entire website.

All the while, *pings* popping back and forth in different Teams groups with panic, ALL CAPS, and retrospective advice.

I went from feeling on top of the world- successful, ambitious, knowledgeable, to hearing that I was negligent, destructive, and incompetent.

Thankfully, Steven was able to undo the update and get the website back up and running. Praise be. Crisis averted. But my body was still holding all the anxiety from today’s blunder. I felt like a failure and was fearful for the new lens through which my leadership viewed my skills and competence.

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WRITE IT OUT

“You need to write it all out,” a friend and coworker told me “that will help you process everything from today.”

My first thought was “I do not want to relive every negative thing that I experienced today” but I knew she was right, and the external processing on paper would be helpful if I wanted to get any sleep.

So I started writing through the mis-steps and commentary from today and noticed something: my version of what happened and the reality of the day were two different things. When I heard “WHO DID THIS IDIOTIC THING!?”, they said “Who ran the update?” When I heard “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS?!”, they said “Let’s make sure we get Greg’s input before we make any changes outside of content and design. That shouldn’t be something you’re responsible for.”

In the aftermath of a flight-or-flight filled day, I realized that my leadership didn’t tear me down, like I thought, but instead, subtly came to my rescue.

When they could easily have been yelling or reprimanding, instead they came to champion and encourage. They came to me with a spirit of support so I might not find myself in this position again. I felt seen and empowered to succeed in the future.

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BRAVE BIRD

We have an emerging initiative in our company called #BraveBird. The idea is that we encourage employees to try new things and step outside of their comfort zone with the safety net of grace if things go south. We encourage critical thinking and exploring new ways to do things and we want people to feel brave enough to “leave the nest” to try something, even if it fails.

Even though this experience felt more like I was drop-kicked out of the nest rather than bravely taking flight, the lesson was the same. When you take a step outside of your comfort zone towards growth, mistakes, big or small, will be met with grace and teaching rather than criticism and anger.

The way leadership walks with you through failures and pain points speaks loudly. In the moments of reflection back on a difficult day, I could either feel abandoned or blamed, but instead, I see now that my leadership walked WITH me, not against me.

This kind of support pushes me back towards my organization rather than away from them. And I now know that, in the future, when I feel burnout creeping in or pressure mounting, that I have a team of people ready to keep walking forward, slow down and breathe, or provide whatever it is that I might need to keep me grounded and healthy.

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How does your leadership encourage you to be a Brave Bird? How have you created space for healthy failure in your workplace?