You're a great employee, but I wish you'd take more initiative

"You're a great employee, but I wish you'd take more initiative."

This has been the summary of every review I've gotten from a supervisor. Has anyone else had similar reviews?

I would take more initiative if I could be sure I would do everything 100% right. I have taken more initiative when I was positive I knew what I was doing. But I've made some pretty bad mistakes when I just trust my intuition. I used to ask to confirm, but of course, supervisors don't like that.

It also won't help in the future that at my last job I would get publicly humiliated for making a mistake or missing something because I was new and hadn't been doing the job for 30, 40 years.

How am I going to take initiative now?! There's no learning from mistakes unless it's you're stupid, you should quit.

Has this been said at your current job?

I don't think that it means you should quit if your emloyer wants you to take more initiative.

And I do believe in learning from mistakes.

Want to hear a good one? Friday, after planning on obtaining this parbaked pizza crust since April. The boxes came in, mid May. 1 out of the order was delayed a couple of days. While out of town at a conference, the site with the delay called to say it was round when it was supposed to be rectangle. Other sites said, rectangle. Maybe the box from the central site was mispicked, couldn't go see since out of town. Then Friday morning one site calls to state it's dough not parcooked, maybe she grabbed the wrong box the central site said it was the right one. Then about 15 minutes after it was internally shipped to satellite locations, the race to show it was a dough came through. Adjustments were made to cooking directions with a why didn't I say something sooner? Ummm. Because the vendor assured me it was a repeat order? Because I could have sworn it was the correct item based upon the specs on the outside of the boxes? Because upon initial assessment it looked the same? Because the paper trail showed verification? Because noone else picked up on it? Because until that day and time I didn't know all boxes were not correct? Lesson was that brand has multiple versions and all boxes look about the same. Still a decent product. Was a slight cost savings. At the same time, still a gross error. It happens. It's an environment of it's not 1 day, 1 moment that defines but the culmination of days and 1 slip isn't uncommon among any single one of us and there's more fiascos around the bend to come.

I do work with someone who needs extra step by step directive. It's frustrating because it's a busy environment. It's frustrating because independence and autonomy goes a long way.

I'm not sure if your errors are a matter of life or death? And why the employers require initiative? Sorry it's got you down.

It's been said of both jobs I've had. Some of the mistakes, while not necessarily life and death, someone could get injured (I know I have been) and/or sue.

I imagine that I lack confidence and that's the reason I don't show enough initiative. Most of my training is done by doing and someone telling me it's wrong later. Also, I'm given a whole set of instructions verbally and I can't remember/pay attention enough to catch more than half of it.

I imagine some of it is I just get bored and then start daydreaming so my reaction time is slower. The things I hesitated to do were things that if I did them wrong, I could hurt myself or someone else. And the embarrassment that I didn't have experience doing something that someone female should be an expert at because we live on a very sexist planet. I took the initiative dealing with technology because no one else knew how or wanted to deal with it. I imagine most things I took initiative with were in the background so people don't see it or don't care.

I also have the pressure of being an "expert" because of my education level and there's this pressure of having to know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING relevant. And I wasn't even technically working in my field. I don't know. People probably either think I'm dumb or I should know everything.