Admitting Mistakes
Matt has a great post up at Only Once on Admitting Mistakes.
He says:
the ability to admit mistakes [is] a critical component of emotional intelligence, the cornerstone of solid leadership.
I could not agree more. I've made my share of mistakes. And when I was younger, I had a hard time admitting them. Now, I can deal with the fact that I am far from perfect. Admitting them, dissecting them, and moving past them, is a critical business skill. It is essential in terms of managing up. The people who are relying on you to make good decisions need to know that you can recognize the bad ones and learn from them. Otherwise, they'll lose confidence in you no matter how good your batting record is.
Matt goes on to talk about how this plays out in the politcal world. He implies that Bush cannot admit to the screwup he made in Iraq without losing the election. Maybe that's true, but Clinton was toast until he finally admitted to the people that he had lied about the Lewinsky affair and felt terribly about it. After that, it was all over for the impeachment effort.
I'd feel a lot better about Bush if he'd admit he was human and screwed up every once in a while.
perfectly stated. in bizness and politics, people should admit when they are wrong. We all have ideas, and we all like to be right. But we all can't be right all of the time. If we were, life would be pretty easy.
"To err is human.
To be human is to err."
or something like that.
Posted by: peter caputa | September 22, 2004 at 10:12 PM
" To err is human, to forgive, divine" I think that was how it went; as said by some poet.
Sadly, Bush is in quite a fix, if he admits to his mistakes, he is counting on a lot of folks to be divine enough to forgive him and move on.
Posted by: Jacob Pang | September 22, 2004 at 10:51 PM
Bush can't admit the mistake brecause his councelor was Jesus.
Posted by: jackson | September 23, 2004 at 10:04 AM
Maybe it wasn't a mistake? Allawi cetainly doesn't think so. He's a bit closer to the situation than all of us.
It's definitely a mistake to think Clinton admitted what he did wrong because of emotional intelligence. Confessing when you are caught, then in a corner of your own making, that doesn't qualify.
It's also a mistake to say the impeachment effort failed. It was successful. He was the first President impeached since Andrew Johnson. He was acquitted in the trial in the Senate (like Johnson), but that does not reverse the fact that he was impeached.
Posted by: Duncan Lamb | September 23, 2004 at 11:14 AM
If the impeachment effort didn't fail, then why did he complete his term? The impeachment job done on Clinton was a joke and a scam brough on by jerks like Starr who had an axe to grind and did everything they could for eight years to get the goods on a guy who happened to have done an excellent job. And what did they come up with, a blowjob, and that's what the whole thing was a big blow job.
Posted by: jackson | September 23, 2004 at 11:28 AM
Impeachment is a technical term. It's done by the House. If you rephrased what you mean with "effort to remove him from office," then yes, that failed. The effort to impeach was successful.
It wasn't a joke - it was very serious. And Starr didn't vote, in case you missed it. Directly elected Representatives did. And the blow job wasn't the issue. The issue was that he lied about it, on TV, and under oath. You're right, a blowjob is so minor, such a minor thing. Some people thought, if he'll lie about such a minor thing, how can we trust him with important issues? I hope that doesn't come as a revelation...
Posted by: Duncan Lamb | September 23, 2004 at 11:39 AM
I'd rather somebody lie about sex than war. It was, is, and always will be a joke. Of course Starr didn't vote, nobody would ever elect such a bottom feeder......er....well....strike that last bit.
Posted by: jackson | September 23, 2004 at 02:48 PM
In Washington, asking for forgiveness happens about as often as someone says "I don't know", which is a corrolary of Fred's post. Washington is full of lawyers and few lawyers ever admit they are wrong! In business, a sign of a great leader is one that can admit, or say "I don't know". In politics in America anyway, it's a sign of weakness that rarely goes unpunished. Washington politics is inherently dysfunctional in that it is a competition among players to be "right" (and therefore not be "wrong"), and unlike the private sector, where the concept of winning is much clearer, winning in politics often means there is a "loser" as well. E.g. GOP, therefore Dems lose, etc.
Separately, there's a huge need for politicians to take credit for things, whereas in the private sector credit is either shared or credit is given far away from where it is "deserved". For example, I think the Congress could get much more done if they eliminated "sponsors" of bills and just left proposed bills nameless, thereby allowing mnay people to take credit for the end result, and not just two Congressmen or Senators. Call it open source lawmaking or fantasy, whichever you prefer!
Posted by: Hector | September 23, 2004 at 06:20 PM
Leaving politics and bringing this back to business...
There was a really good article about this in the latest issue of Business 2.0. Here's the link:
http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,692567,00.html
Posted by: Bill Erickson | September 24, 2004 at 04:05 PM
Why do leaders go down the tubes refusing to admit error? Here's one idea:
http://unreasoning.blogspot.com/2005/06/evolution-and-leadership-ever-noticed.html
Posted by: Bill Mitchell | November 08, 2005 at 08:35 PM