A few days ago, I was scheduled to be on a local NPR radio show with one of my biggest and longstanding influencers, Bruce Tulgan.  For those of you who might not know, Bruce is internationally recognized as a leading expert on young people in the workplace and has his own consulting firm, Rainmaker Thinking, that has trained employees in hundreds of organizations.  He’s the author of widely-read books like Managing Generation X, Managing the Generation Mix, and the new It’s Okay to Be the Boss.

Though I do media appearances often, I was a little nervous about holding my own with Bruce.  And given that Murphy’s Law hadn’t struck me in a while, I wasn’t entirely surprised when on this particular show, I was the victim of the worst technological snafu I’d experienced to date.  I had just been introduced alongside Bruce and was answering my first question when a problem with the station’s phone line caused my voice to echo loudly in my ear a second behind real time.  It’s hard to explain the total sensory confusion that resulted, but suffice it to say that it prevented me from communicating a single coherent thought.  I was promptly whisked off the air, left alone in my office to ponder how truly embarrassing the whole encounter was.

I could have stopped there, forever wondering if Bruce Tulgan thought I was an idiot.  But instead, I decided to e-mail him, apologizing for disrupting his appearance and re-iterating how he has inspired me over the years.  Bruce responded very kindly, even going so far as to tell me he actually plugged my first book after I left the show.  We started a dialogue about potential ways we could collaborate, as there are a lot of natural synergies in the work we do.  In the end, if it leads to establishing a relationship with Bruce, I’ll consider my on-air mini-disaster worth it.

Sometimes things, whether your fault or not, will happen that make you look foolish. But you have the power to control the aftermath.  If you make a big mistake at work, for example, don’t withdraw and disappear until you’ve assumed the catastrophe has blown over.  Instead, own up to it and look for ways to rectify the situation that will make you look even better to your superiors.  The fact is, nothing shows people what you’re made of like a crisis, and your colleagues and managers will appreciate your maturity and professionalism in the face of difficult circumstances.