Earlier this year, I made a mistake on the job. A fairly significant one. It was an error in judgment which led to me doing something I really shouldn't have done. It wasn't the sort of thing that would have got me sacked or arrested had it come to light, but it would certainly have earned me a telling off and probably put me under a bit of a cloud for a few weeks.

As soon as I did it, I realised what I had done and I got quite angry with myself for being so stupid. I tried my best to subtly fix it, and I think I did a pretty good job. I then spent a difficult few hours wondering what more I could do to fix it and wondering how likely it was that I would get into trouble for it. A few weeks passed and it dawned on me, with the proverbial sigh of relief, that I had been lucky and got away with it!

I feel quite comfortable telling this story (even though I haven't really told you that much) because I think there is an important point to learn from it.

Where mistakes are concerned, I always tell people that there are four types: the everyday, the stupid, the massive, and the criminal.

Everyday mistakes are the sort of thing we all do a few times a week. Things like forgetting to attach a document to an E-mail or not having some information to hand. 

Stupid mistakes are the next level up. The things that represent real carelessness. I guess most of us manage a handful of these a year. They probably ruin your day, and I guess if you make a lot of them, you'll probably not last very long. Forgetting something vital, missing an appointment or saying something really inappropriate might fit into this category. When I was supervising trainees I used to tell them that in their first few months they were allowed one of these a week, and then one a month for the rest of their first year!

Massive mistakes are things which can damage your career or even end it for good. I'd like to say that most of us won't make these but the truth is that there are probably more around than we think. Just take a moment to think over your biggest errors. Are there any that could have got you sacked had the wrong person decided to make a big deal out of it? Yeah, me too! The fact that so many politicians and public figures have to resign because of scandals and errors doesn't necessarily tell us that they are bad people. It just tells us that they are under a massive microscope and that they can't get away with the sort of things the rest of us can. I'm sure we've all got a few massive ones in our past if we're honest!

My final category, Criminal mistakes, is one that really is exclusive, and happily so. This is the sort of thing which isn't so much a mistake as a deliberate and evil act. An act that would definitely get you sacked on the spot and probably in trouble with the law too! There are probably some people here and there carrying around one of these, but hopefully not too many.

My mistake, in case you're wondering, was probably somewhere between silly and massive. Definitely not criminal, but definitely not everyday! I got away with it, and that gave me the space and freedom to reflect.

A few years ago I was away on a pilgrimage with a young adult who got in a lot of trouble for giving alcohol to teenagers. He came to me and apologised. I accepted his apology, of course. 'It's okay to have made mistakes,' I told him. After what I hoped was a sufficiently dramatic pause, I then added 'as long as you learn from them!' 

And that's really my point. We're not defined by whether or not we make mistakes, because we all will. We're defined by how well we learn from them.

The fact is that we probably get away with most of our mistakes. It's rare that the [insert naughty word here] actually hits the fan. A few weeks ago I received a letter in the post from my local police force telling me that they had caught me speeding. Initially I was annoyed, but then remembered the (literally) thousands of times I had gotten away with speeding, and I realised that being caught this once was actually more than fair.

When I've made significant mistakes in my career and gotten away with them I have always been filled with three feelings. Firstly, there is relief and gratitude. Relief, for obvious reasons, and gratitude because getting away with something you had no right to get away with is a real gift. I then tend to feel like repaying this gift, and that's where the third feeling comes in: a sense of being called to learn from the mistake and to make sure it doesn't happen again.

I can't tell you what my big mistake was. I can't tell you where it was, when it was, or what project it was with. But I can tell you that I won't be doing it again. I reflected on it, I drew conclusions, and I gave myself parameters to ensure that I don't repeat it. In short, I learned from it.

Mistakes, you see, aren't something to be feared. Well, okay some are! Some will pretty much kill your career stone dead, but most won't. Most are part of how we learn and grow, and if we are humble enough to let them, they can be some of our best teachers.

One thing I am particularly good at in youth ministry, for instance, is recruitment. I can spot a bad candidate before most people can, and I can pick up the 'tells' in interview which betray those who are applying for the wrong reasons and those who, despite their outward appearances, would actually be a disaster! I don't feel arrogant saying that I'm good at this because I know full well that I got good by making mistake after mistake after mistake. And, in fact, most of what I've learned in my career hasn't been from a sherlock-like intuition or from a wise teacher as much as from getting it wrong. Sometimes, badly wrong!

As we go through life, and through careers, we make mistakes. If we can spot them, realise what we did wrong, and realise how not to get it wrong again, we can grow a little more each day. As Kolb reminds us, that's really what informal education is all about anyway.

When I used to manage youth workers, I never really minded them making mistakes early on. I didn't mind if they came in with no confidence, no qualifications or no experience. If they were open to learning and humble enough to recognise that they made mistakes, then they would be okay. They would turn into decent team members, and then often progress to being very good team members.

The ones I couldn't get on with though, were the ones who after a certain point felt that they had nothing more to learn. They were the finished article. They wouldn't make any more mistakes. Or, even worse, the ones who turned up thinking that they knew it all on day one. They were dangerous because they didn't think that they could make mistakes. 

I once had a gap year volunteer who, from the moment he walked in, thought that he knew it all. With about three weeks experience - at the age of eighteen - some staff from a partner organisation complained about him and he refused to acknowledge that the complaint had any merit whatsoever. The staff - whose experience totalled about thirty years - were wrong, and our teenage volunteer was right. He simply wasn't capable of making mistakes!

There is something of an irony here inasmuch as the more capable you think you are, the less capable you are able to become. Leaving less room to admit you can make mistakes, means leaving less room for growth. And you can imagine what happens if you leave not room at all. The person in question, needless to say, is now no longer employed in Catholic youth ministry. He lasted less than a year, in contrast to the humble, amazing girl who started with him, who lasted much longer in youth ministry and was utterly brilliant.

When I started in youth ministry, I was partly trained by a priest called Fr. Greg Tobin. I started later than the rest of my team and so he devised a training schedule for me. A few weeks in, I asked him when I would no longer be considered 'in training.' His reply? 'Never... We are all training, all the time!'

I am still training. I make mistakes all the time. From time to time, I make big ones. But it's okay, because I let myself learn from them and each one makes me a little bit better. Part of me didn't want to write this article because it leaves me wide open to all sorts of criticism, but I think it's worth the risk to make a valuable point. They say the first step is admitting that you have a problem. And I'm happy to do so...

Hello everybody, my name is Jack. And I make mistakes!

[image Flickr.com/ Marshall Astor - Food Fetishist]