Don't hide things that didn't go perfectly

Ever had things at work that could’ve gone better?

Supposedly rock star vendor didn’t have the capability you thought… Ran into some technical challenges and had to scale back a project…

We’ve all experienced this, and it’s natural to want be worried about what others will think. You may even want to minimize these things and make it seem like everything went perfectly.

Resist this. You should talk openly about things at work that didn’t go according to plan. Being honest about challenges has several benefits

• Helps others learn - by not talking about issues you deny others the chance to avoid them in the first place and learn.

• Makes you more credible - people know that there are always challenges, and overly rosy discussions will definitely set off people’s BS detectors.

• Is just more interesting - a bit of drama and vulnerability is much more interesting than “everything went great and we did the stuff”. You don’t want to overdo it, but you can make discussions, reports, evaluations, etc., a little less mind-numbing.

Of course there are right and wrong ways to talk about challenges. Don’t make yourself or others look helpless or hapless. Focus on what you learned, how you still salvaged something good, and how you’ll do things differently next time.

But don’t shy away from acknowledging the things you faced.

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