Historically, there was expectation that to be a good leader, you had to be bulletproof and show no weakness, make no mistakes and certainly show no negative emotion. This lead to leaders masking their true selves and not being authentic. Instead, fitting the corporate mould to ensure they met the expectations of the company they worked in.
One thing this lead to was mistakes being hidden and very little ownership and acceptance when anything was done wrong. All because of the unforgiving culture or being perceived as “the weak one” if mistakes were made.
I have certainly felt this and have worked in places where the culture meant that making mistakes was unforgivable and there was no room for error. Working in this actually meant more mistakes were made and people felt on edge at all times.
I’ve certainly seen mistakes play out for leaders around me over the years and more importantly, I’m now aware of some of the mistakes I made too. There are times where my own self awareness wasn’t as good as it is now and I didn’t think things through.
So What Mistakes Have I Made?
Some may think it’s a bad idea to post publicly about mistakes I’m willing to own up to as it could be something which puts people off working for me or wanting to hire me for future roles (if and when I ever need to look for work again) but my feeling is that if I can’t own up to mistakes and accept learning from them, then have I even grown as a leader?
I’ve made hiring mistakes over the year where I’ve felt I made the right decision at the time but very quickly realised I got it wrong and then frantically tried to cover over the mistake by pushing forward convincing myself that said hire would come good with support, where in fact I ended up spending far too much time hand holding and supporting which meant neglecting the rest of the team.
I’ve made planning and estimation mistakes where I have significantly undercooked project estimates then had to go cap in hand for more money later on. This has really helped me learn how to give more realistic estimates rather than trying to people please.
One mistake which really sticks out and still gives me panic attacks when thinking about it was actually around encouraging and pushing one of my star performers to follow their aspirations and move out of my team team to pursue a bigger role internally. I pushed and pushed for it to happen and misinterpreted a response from the hiring manager that it was all agreed. Then proceeded to announce the move to my team and stakeholders, only to then get a really grumpy email and follow up conversation over nothing had been finalised and that I had now put them in a very difficult position as they hadn’t decided whether to proceed or not. Thankfully it was able to be resolved and the person joined the team and their career has risen to the stars since but the fact I jumped the gun and caused pain elsewhere just because I wanted the best for my team member still haunts me. I’ve learned to be much more calculated in communications since then.
In my earlier years, I certainly struggled to know who I could and couldn’t communicate openly to and may have divulged information to people who didn’t need to know. Again, this is something I’ve learned to be more controlled about.
I’ve certainly showed frustration to my team when I’ve felt overwhelmed from the pressure put on me by others outside my team too. Whereas I should have protected them from the politics and helped keep them settled. This is one I am still trying to learn and grow from
Why Am I Telling You This?
I’m only human and learning that it’s ok to make mistakes as a leader, enables me to feel and be more authentic and hope that showing a little vulnerability can enable my teams to grow closer together too.
There is nothing wrong with making mistakes, it’s really about what you learn and how you respond that counts. Owning up to them is a good first step, “sorry, I got that one wrong” can go a long way to diffusing a tense situation, followed with “what I feel I can do to correct this is…”
So don’t hide your mistakes, let’s all be proud to be perfectly imperfect and accept we can’t get it right all the time
What mistakes have you made as a leader?
Simon Prior 