Admit Your Mistakes

 

None of us are perfect.  

We all make mistakes.

In my entire leadership journey, I have yet to meet someone who would verbally argue with these two statements.  Everyone would agree, these statements are true.  None of us are perfect and we all make mistakes!

And yet, how many of us have worked with people in positions of leadership who either did not have the capacity, or just flat out refused to admit their mistakes?  Indeed, we have all been there, and it is incredibly frustrating.  While these so called leaders will give lip service to being an imperfect human, they just will not admit when they are wrong or when they have made a mistake.  Why is that?

I would argue that, in their minds, there may be a couple of reasons:

1) Admitting mistakes is a sign of weakness and undermines their position of authority.

The faulty thinking here should be obvious.  The inability and/or unwillingness to admit mistakes and take responsibilities for errors is what will ultimately undermine a person's standing as a leader.  Frankly, it is a character issue.  If you cannot be honest with your team, and with yourself, about your mistakes, than you cannot be an effective leader.

2) Deep seeded self doubt that is over compensated for by a sense of superiority and perfection.  Far too many people in positions of leadership either consciously or unconsciously suffer from what in known as the 'imposter syndrome'.  These people feel inadequate and inferior to their peers and others in positions of leadership and feel like they really don't belong in the position that they hold so they MUST prove themselves by always being right.  The sad reality is that most members of a team will be much more forgiving and compassionate to someone who is upfront and honest over someone who is obstinate about never being wrong.

Effective leaders have the ability to say, "You know what?  I was wrong."  or "Hey, I blew that one."  People will give a lot of grace and support to the leader who is transparent and 'real' with them and will admit their mistakes.