Leadership Turn

How to Ease the Pain of Embarrassment

by Mary Jo Manzanares on October 11th, 2006

It is inevitable.  At some point in your career, you will have to deal with the embarrassment of a blooper, public gaffe, or oafish moment.

Although you may think that you’re going to die, there are no recorded deaths from embarrassment.  However, embarrassment can undermine your confidence, ruin a prospective career, and destroy relationships. 

There are four conditions required for a true red-faced, full-fledged blushing moment:

There must be some event or failure for which you feel responsible.

The event or failure occurs leaving you no time to prepare or correct.

The event or failure takes place in public.

People whose opinions you value witness the event or failure.

If one of these four conditions is missing, the situation will generally cause no more than a slight blip on your personal radar screen.  When all four conditions exist, however, it may send you running for cover.

Embarrassment is not something that we can completely eliminate from our life, but we can learn to deal with it without resorting to putting our hands over our faces or burying our heads on a nearby shoulder. 

Here are some suggestions and examples:

Avoidance.  Do all that you personally can to eliminate the potential for mishaps.  Prepare for speeches and presentations in a way that covers things that could go wrong.  If you’re attending a meeting, review the names of people who will be attending and their job responsibilities.  Preparation can help prevention.

Ignore it.  If it’s a minor slip up, just ignore it, and act as if it never happened.  This may take a bit of acting, but moving on and keeping attention from being drawn to the mishap is effective.  The key to this technique is moving on quickly.  For example, if someone mentions to you that you have a zipper undone, say thank you, zip up, and continue on.

Use it.  If there’s a way to work the mishap into the event, minimize its impact, and get a chuckle as well, by incorporating it into the situation.  For example, if you happen to stumble when getting ready to give a speech or presentation, you can quip, “I’ve been practicing making that entrance for weeks.” 

Humor.  This is one time when having a few snappy comebacks in your pocket can really help.  The humor should be addressed at yourself, however, and never at others.  For example, if you spill something over dinner, you can quip, “Whew, glad the first spill is out of the way.” 

Empathy:  Sometimes the embarrassment won’t be your own, but someone else.  If you see a co-worker with a spill on their shirt, quietly let them know so they can deal with it.  Help them to discreetly fix the problem, rather than calling attention to it to embarrass them.  Be a part of the solution, not a part of the embarrassment.

We’re not going to eliminate all the embarrassments from our life.  As Mark Twain said,   “Mankind is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”

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