Sep 08

Burning Bridges

You know, sometimes despite your best intentions, a professional relationship will not flourish. Have you had that experience? Have you ever found that a relationship keeps stumbling until someone burns a bridge to say “I’m done with you”?

I recently made a political mistake within a client company. The result of the gaff was being told by a man he would never refer me again to anyone in any company anywhere. What did I do? I didn’t keep him in the loop as to how a dialogue with a potential client was going.

I wish I had done it differently. I didn’t mean to cause a problem for anyone. I wish I had not made the error in judgment, and I said so. Yet, as I explained what I was trying to do, I noticed it was falling on deaf ears. Even after I said “I’m sorry” for the embarrassment I caused him, his ears were still firmly closed.

I went further and said how sorry I was that I did not achieve what I tried to achieve (to maintain confidentiality, for example.) It didn’t matter. It had no effect. Why? Because he entered the conversation with a preset perception of the situation and of me. Both were carved in stone. His was a firm conclusion and nothing I could say could break it down. And nothing did.

So, I found myself on one side of a burned bridge.

I made an immediate decision: Learn, Grow. Move on. See, sometimes the best thing to do in situations like that is to stop long enough to draw the crucial lessons, commit to growing and doing better the next time and move forward.

When someone writes you off, sometimes the best decision is to move on - right away. Don’t try to mend it. Don’t try to change their mind. Let them have their misconceptions. Let them have their conclusions. Move on and don’t look back.

In this case, nothing is more important than my client’s success. Nothing. And, if I suffer because of a communication mistake, so be it. There are consequences for every action. And, neither I nor you nor anyone else can or will get it right every time. So, when you get it wrong, make a mistake or execute a perfect 10.0 on the Olympic blunder scale - and you find someone burned a bridge to separate you from them as a result - draw the key lessons about what went wrong, why it went wrong, what your contribution to the problem was (remember to look at what the other participants contributed too…because it won’t have been completely your fault) and what should have been done, move on and don’t look back.

There will be plenty more chances to do it better. Go find those opportunities. At that time, use your newfound and hard-earned wisdom, do your best (which will be better than your previous best), take the results, move on, and don’t look back.

A burned bridge is not the end of the world. Some relationships aren’t going to work. Some conclusions are too rigid to be changed. You’ll make mistakes that some people will not forgive. The key thing is to learn, get wiser, use that wisdom, do it better next time. Move on. Don’t look back. You can’t cross new bridges when fixated on the burned ones.

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