In 1997, just after returning to Apple, Steve Jobs hosted a town hall where he answered questions from the audience. One of the questions was pointed and intended to be hurtful to both Jobs and his employees. After a pause, Jobs agreed that the company had shortcomings, owned that some of the failure was due to his poor decision making, and praised his people for working hard to create new technology. Quickly following this demonstration of leadership, he also said, “Some mistakes will be made … And that’s good. Because at least some decisions are being made along the way.”
While small businesses are unable to make mistakes or survive failures on the same scale as Apple, it should not be expected that employee performance will always remain flawless. If, as in the town hall answer, employees are working hard and applying learned skills to their job, they should be encouraged to find answers and continuously coached up to the expectations of their performance.