Leadership Lesson - On Making Mistakes

Dan McCarthy, whose leadership blog I frequent, opined wisely in this article about leaders admitting their mistakes. I decided to put together a little leadership lesson of my own on the topic and I shared it with the managers at my place of business along with the article.

This leadership lesson can be difficult to grasp. Some will argue that for a leader to admit to any error or fallibility makes their career and perhaps themselves too vulnerable. When interviewing we always get the "tell me about a weakness you have" question in some form or another. We're supposed to be savvy when we try to make a weakness we don't have look like a strength. Here's a good and stupid and phony answer to that question: "Sometimes I just work too hard. I don't know when to stop." Right.

When I interview someone for a position, one of the questions I ask a candidate is "What is your Achilles heel? What is that one negative thing or trait about you that you couldn't change even if you wanted to?" I let them know that whatever they tell me, and if we hire them, we will have to live with it. There will be no "counseling" this trait out of them!

My point: everybody has weaknesses, everyone makes mistakes, and if we were to face ourselves squarely with more regular frequency, we would have to face that we all have things that we do and things we don't do that we are not proud (and most of the time, not willing) to admit.

Step 10 of any 12-Step Program says that "we continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it." It's a reminder to people to pay attention to themselves and their day and attempt to fix the wrong things we have done "ASAP." Promptly! Note that the step doesn't say "if" we were wrong, but rather "when." None of us is exempt from this, try as we might. It's called being human.

But have you noticed how little accountability has been taken by anybody who is a member of the current "powers that be" club. To me this includes, high government officials, high level Wall Street types, bankers, some CEOs, borrowers, lenders, brokers, and you can fill in some blanks. Trillions $$$ have somehow been "lost" and most of what I witness from club members is something like, "it wasn't me, it was those other guys over there."

Some fresh admission from leaders could perhaps restore some confidence in "the system" that so badly needs rebuilding. If mistakes are not acknowledged, how can anyone learn so that we can avoid future debacles like this?

The article from the Globe and Mail, published in that huge country to our immediate North covers this topic better than I can.

But I can summarize: Better leaders, dare I say strong leaders, will admit their mistakes when they make them. I would not recommend that the telling of your mistakes become a theme in your career, but denying them won't get you anywhere either.