How to deal with assistant's mistake, but partly caused by me

[Jodi1974]

I'm trying to work out how to deal with a member of staff that has made a big mistake at work, the problem is that it was partly caused by a smaller mistake that I made earlier on.

Part of her job is to look after the office diary, which we jointly have access to and both add to. A while ago I was trying to arrange a meeting with someone and sent them a long list of dates I could do at the time, mistakenly including the bank holiday (when we're closed). I didn't hear back I didn't think anything of it - the meeting was more for their benefit than mine.

Unbeknown to me, my assisant responded to his email selecting today as the date, obviously also failing to realise the bh. However, she didn't put it in the diary so I didn't know about it until today when I got a call from work - unfortunately too late for me to go in.

I'm pretty annoyed as this makes me look really bad, but feel it is my fault for suggesting the date to begin with. On the other hand, if it had been in the diary, as it should have been, I'd have spotted it last week and either cancelled or gone in.

I feel bad enough anyway for wasting this person's time, but unsure of how to deal with my assistant. It was sloppy of both of us to not realise about the bank holiday, but if I'd known the arranged date then at least I could have prevented it from happening. We are under a lot of pressure at the moment and I generally feel that she works hard, most of the time, but there are times when things like this happen and I'd like a bit more attention to the finer details. I'm just not sure if it is fair to use this as an example when I contributed to the mistake myself.

J

Actually I think the fact that today is a bank holiday is a bit of a red herring. The key problem is that someone booked a meeting, but didn't put in in the diary, and therefore failed to inform the person (you) who was supposed to attend the meeting. Even though today was a bank holiday, you could have attended had you known about it. This is no different from, say, the meeting being booked for later in the week, on a day when you would have been working but might have been in another meeting or otherwise have some other engagement that you booked because you didn't know about the meeting.

Not that I think there is any need to have a go at your assistant, but I do think you need to highlight the key importance of her following the agreed procedure of putting things in the diary.

Sit her down and have a discussion to work out how both of you can communication better and prevent any similar recurrences in future.

It doesn't sound like any sort of disciplinary action is appropriate, so I think you just need to find ways of making your working practices more efficient.

Agree that you need to focus on the process, not the people involved. Especially the process for a) ensuring all meetings are put in the diary; but also b) the process for blocking out bhs and other unavailable days.

Saying: 'we messed up; this happened and it was undesirable; how can we change the process to ensure it can't happen again?' will be likely to lead to a better outcome than if you appear to blame her, either entirely or mostly. allow her the opportunity to put forward her ideas and thoughts: she may surprise you!