Rebounding from a mistake and repairing reputation?
I’ve been on this team for about 6 months and I feel like I’ve been absolutely crushing it. As a result, I’ve been picked for heavy deal flow, and have been getting kind of destroyed as a result. Meanwhile, there are analysts on my team who are not getting involved whatsoever besides for some internal / administrative / purely support roles. This motivates me more than anything as experience is so invaluable at this stage in our careers, and I don’t want to be sitting on the sidelines.
However, I was added to this high-profile deal that needed a lot of lift just to help with one report and I screwed up the formatting / content of something we sent to the client a few days back. It wasn’t disastrous or didn’t lead to any issues, but it was a public mistake (addressed on the call by the client - was clearly wrong and I just didn’t double check that information). I could blame this on a number of factors - I sent this to my MD / Director / VP to bless before I sent it, got no response, and had to send; dealing with heavy deal flow as mentioned; short turnarounds for these reports every morning (I basically get the data and have to format it in 20 minutes); but at the end of the day it was my screw up and I definitely did not indicate anything otherwise to the team (everything after but being BS aside).
They laughed about it and gave me some shit today, saying I was awesome except for this one thing, but I’ve been dwelling on it all day yesterday and today. This was a public blow up, and in front of the MD, who I don’t get a ton of exposure to. I had been on a team before where I was perceived to not be great, and this team so far has viewed me as super valuable, so I’m deathly afraid of losing that reputation I’ve built up.
Any seniors have perspective on how short memory is for something like this? Any general words of advice? Am I completely bugging out over nothing?
Focus on what you can control - you can't control whether people will remember it or not, but people will notice if you make a concerted effort to improve. Everybody makes these mistakes. In any case, in the near term, it's likely that people above you will take an extra pass when checking your work.
How can you be so nervous when they goofed on you? It’s not like you got chewed out. Take a deep breathe and relax.
Just do something to take the focus off of your work such as exposing yourself in the bullpen.
You are probably highly valued based on just this one post. All good even the best make mistakes. So refreshing to read vs the typical I hate everything post
Yea don't worry everybody from VP to MD knows you make mistakes - they made mistakes too as well.
Just don't do it twice, then it will actually impact your reputation.
i.e. I also made a public mistake where I put a wrong sector names in a slide because I was leveraging the slide from another deck, and the MD caught it while he was presenting to a client. The MD messaged me right away afterwards to fix it. Still got top bucket. It happens so don't get it to you but try not to make the same mistake twice.
Slam some brews and just a take breather man
Gonna get a stroke by the age of 30 if you keep stressing like this
Focus on your own work, what you can control, and whether or not you know you’re doing your best. What others think of you is not in your control; and therefore you should not focus on it. Work is stressful enough as is without having to focus on Office Politics.
If people publicly make fun of you, they like you (unless they're just being dicks). If people don't make fun of you in public, they're probably doing it in private.
It's on everyone above you who should have reviewed. By them joking, they're acknowledging they fucked it up.
Move past it, otherwise you'll get the yips. This won't even be a footnote in your career.
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