Laurel Touby on Mistakes She's Made At Work

Still cringing about that mistake you made at work? We’ve all been there. In this clip from the panel discussion, Mistakes I Made at Work, Laurel Touby, founder of Mediabistro, shares a story about the very early days at Media Bistro:

"If I'm in a position of power where I'm managing someone, I've had to really learn how to be better at that. Because you have to realize that people on the other side of that desk take things that you say which way more weight…I learned that lesson the hard time in early 2000 when I started my company, Media Bistro. And I had a very small, intimate office of fresh out of college staffers—we had maybe six people there. Because that's all I could afford.

[…]

What happened was I was just driven to get a job done, and I just figured these are intelligent people…they should be able to figure it out. And within a few months, one of my favorite staffers came into my office and he sat down and he said, 'I have some news for you. Unless you change your behavior, we're all gonna quit. It's a mutiny.' And that's how I learned that I really didn’t know what I was doing, and I was making people feel unhappy and uncomfortable…"