How you admit your mistakes matters
Last month, Morey Stettner from Investor’s Business Daily reached out to me as an expert source for a story he was writing for their “Leaders and Success” page. He was interested in the best way for leaders to admit their mistakes, whether it was to their peers, their employees, their Board of Directors, or others. This is the article that was published in their print edition last week on May 28:
Admit mistakes clearly to reassure others, not make matters worse
In addition to yours truly, Morey interviewed three other individuals, all of who provided excellent advice.
What have been your experiences?
But I’d like to know what you think? Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you’ve either had to admit an error in judgment or report a problem and you handled it appropriately? What about the opposite, when the outcome wasn’t what you’d hoped? Or have you observed a senior leader in your organization admit mistakes well or poorly? Please share by adding your comments below.
P.S. Morey found me as a result of this column I wrote for The Globe & Mail a year ago in May 2018: Why good leaders make grave mistakes − and still thrive. If you haven’t seen it before, you may find this helpful as well.
If you’re a leader, then you’re responsible for decision-making. Which is why it we have
The sorites paradox: if individual grains of sand are removed one at a time from a hypothetical heap of sand, what is the point at which the heap can no longer be considered a heap? At first glance, you may think that this is merely a philosophical question, but the metaphor has great applicability if you carry it into the workplace. Consider this: if minor seemingly harmless problems or changes go unnoticed and do not individually attract attention, is there a possibility that eventually the sum total of these issues over time will result in a major setback? And what if the significant outcome is one that, if it would have happened all at once, would have been regarded as negative, undesirable or objectionable?
The self-serving bias is a concept that has been extensively studied in social psychology. Essentially, it is people’s tendency to attribute positive events to their own character but attribute negative events to external factors. It’s a common type of cognitive bias that exists in all aspects of life, including in the workplace.
“Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere”
“We need to wait until we have all the facts …” is something I hear many managers and supervisors say. It’s often in response to an issue that needs to be dealt with or an unexpected problem that has occurred. Usually the situation is a difficult one and because the manager has no prior experience with making decisions in an identical or similar scenario, s/he is stalling for time. The unfortunate reality of course is that if you wait for all the facts, you might be waiting for a really (really) long time; perhaps even an eternity.
In 1626, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden ordered the building of the Vasa, a new warship that was intended to become, for that era, the most powerful marine vessel in the Baltic Sea. As was common in warships then, the Vasa was to have a rank of cannons on each side of the boat so that soldiers could easily fire at their attackers, no matter what direction the assault came from.