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Some huge, important, bajillionaire donors were paying a visit to the Indiana University School of Journalism one weekend during my senior year. The entire school had been warned to spruce the place up, and be on our best behavior. The donors were members of a family who owned a bunch of newspapers, gave a ton of money, and provided a lot of job offers to graduates of the school. Everyone knew this was a really, really big deal.
I had never seen the newsroom of our student newspaper clean like it was that Friday the donors flew in.
They arrived to much fanfare that afternoon, had a full day of university receptions and activities on Saturday, and were leaving early Sunday morning. I think they were being greased up for an enormous donation to the university.
The dean of the Journalism School needed a responsible student to drive the big wigs back to the Indianapolis airport on Sunday morning. My publisher at the student newspaper recommended me for the job because he regarded me as one of the most responsible students in the department. I guess he also knew that I was a huge ass-kisser and would do a good job charming the old donors. Lord knows I needed a job at the end of the year, and he thought I might charm my way into one.
So, it was all arranged. I was to go to the university motor pool on Sunday morning at 6 a.m., get a minivan, pick up the donors at the university hotel, and drive them the 45 minutes to the Indy airport in time for their 9:30 flight back to New York. Nice and simple.
Fast forward to Sunday afternoon. I get a call from the newspaper publisher, "Did you forget something this morning?"
I had completely and utterly forgotten the entire thing. I had woken up around 10 that Sunday morning, eaten breakfast with my friends, and did whatever it was that came normal on a Sunday. This was before cell phones, obviously. The dean had received a panicked call from the donors (his number was the only one they had). The dean had jumped in his own car to get them, and drove them to the airport barely in time for their flight. I can imagine him with bed head speeding through early morning Bloomington, cursing me.
It wasn't because my alarm failed to go off. It wasn't because I had been partying the night before. It wasn't because I was a generally irresponsible person (I had earned my positive reputation as a student leader in 10,000 ways, previously). I simply and completely forgot that I was supposed to do it. Looking back, 20 years later, I still don't have an excuse, and I have no one and nothing else to blame. I still feel terrible about it.
That Monday morning was one of the most dreadful of my life. The dean was pissed at me. The publisher was pissed at me. The entire Journalism School knew that I was a disgrace. I had made the School look incompetent to these important donors, and literally everyone was angry at me for the remainder of the year. No amount of apology seemed to be enough. I apologized to the dean, to my publisher, to every professor. Everyone just gave me the disappointed look that week, and I was never asked to do anything again. And that killed me.
With one mistake – one really big mistake – I had gone from department darling to village idiot.
So, this is the part of the story where I'm supposed to tell you how I redeemed myself. Cue the sad music... Well, it didn't happen. I graduated that year, still branded as the loser who screwed up. Two decades have passed, and I still internally cringe when I think about it.
I hold this experience close to me, though, and it has made me more sympathetic to anyone who makes a stupid mistake. They happen. When an employee of mine, or a student I advise does something incredibly dumb, I think back to the dean and try to act the way I so desperately wanted him to act. I try not to brand someone a lifetime screw up just because they made one royal error. If anything, I try to give them a chance to do something big and right soon after.
Good people screw up big time, without a good reason, and what they need the most at that moment in their life is a shot at redemption. As a leader in that situation, you have the opportunity to be big about it, or small about it. The choice you make can have a lasting impact on the person who made the mistake.
