Great leaders admit their mistakes – leadership skills

How good are you at admitting your mistakes? It doesn’t come easy to do so, I know. However, great leaders do it, and do it routinely. Why?

Image credit: The30rule on Instagram

There is still the perception that admitting you were wrong will tarnish your reputation. That saying you’ve made a mistake will show you are a weak leader. And this couldn’t be more wrong (ironically).

What shows your integrity and consistency is the acceptance that no one makes all the right decisions all the time. This is either due to lack of sufficient data or information at the time, or time pressure, or insufficient experience, for example. We all mess up sometimes.

“I’ve made a mistake and here’s what I’ve learned”

When you admit a mistake as a (team) leader, you do a whole heap of other things.

• You give your team members permission to also admit their mistakes
• If you follow it up with “and I’ve learned from it…”, you show a growth mindset (you can read more about it in this article)
• You show humility – and this also means being approachable
• You don’t look for a scapegoat, or blame anyone else, for what has happened. This means you don’t leave your team confused (“But it wasn’t Amy who did this and that…?”)
• Admitting you were wrong leads to building trust within and outside your team.
• It also creates space for being kind to each other (we talked about Kindness in teams in an earlier post)

I remember the first time I admitted a mistake. It’s probably a weird thing to remember but I do. I remember it because my manager was quite surprised with my reaction at the time – I think they expected me to defend my action. And all I said was “Yes, that was a wrong thing to do, I can see it now”.

The other reason I remember it is because I recall how admitting a mistake lifted a whole load of weight off my shoulders. It was liberating. I liked that feeling. It was empowering – I controlled the narrative and the reaction to it. In this moment, I promised myself I would do it more often.

A word of caution: there is no expectation that you take the blame when it has nothing to do with you. Sometimes people will want you to admit a mistake when in fact you made the right call. Be careful for taking the hit for something that you are not responsible for.

So how do you feel about admitting a mistake? Have you seen a leader exhibiting this skill in your work experience? Curious about your experiences!

Feature image credit: Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash