Navigating Leadership Mistakes with Confidence

I am always surprised by this question: How do leaders get over embarrassing mistakes and still succeed?

The use of the word “still” is telling. The implication is that mistakes are somehow abnormal if you aspire to exceptional leadership. And that they intrinsically carry the risk of damaging your career.

The reality is that the most successful people in the world have failed far more times (and often more dramatically) than the "average" person. The problem is a perceived stigma around failure often prevents leaders from taking ownership of embarrassing mistakes, which have the potential to be golden learning opportunities.

You only tend to hear about the “overnight success” part rather than the litany of mistakes that led to the extraordinary success. You usually must go digging for that deeper information.

Whether a mistake has negative career consequences or not: the ball is in your court. Your mindset and how you deal with it defines the outcome.

You’ll note how some people seem to bounce back from anything – for example, Steve Job’s mistakes as a leader led to him being fired from Apple, going to Pixar, making that company a success, and coming back to Apple again having learned lessons and stronger than ever.

The Wrong Way to Deal with an Embarrassing Mistake

There's far too much of a tendency to "bravado" your way through embarrassing mistakes as a leader. 

Before I go into what you can do to move through embarrassing situations successfully, I’ll talk about what commonly happens if you handle it badly.

A mistake can be damaging to your success because if you, as the leader, do not take responsibility for a sub-optimal situation, then, the likelihood of the situation being rectified quickly reduces (even more so if everyone instead turns their attention to attributing blame) and if you're stuck in the emotion of embarrassment, you won't have the clear head that you need to fix and learn from the situation so that it does not happen again in future.

If situations are not nipped in the bud quickly, they are likely to snowball into something much bigger and ultimately, more challenging to deal with quickly.

How to deal positively with an Embarrassing Mistake

To move on gracefully from an embarrassing situation:

Firstly, process your own emotions around the situation. When you are carrying emotions such as shame, fear, or embarrassment, and you don't process them, you are in your emotional mind (the "limbic system"). This limits your prefrontal cortex's cognitive abilities. As this part of the brain is largely responsible for rational thought and analysis, you don't want that to be impaired.

A very simple first step to start to process an emotion is to acknowledge the emotion that is going on and name it without judgement, as this starts to reduce the amygdala's emotional reactivity.

Once you’re calmer, you can also provide specific evidence to your brain, from your experience and observations, that mistakes make you stronger, smarter and more resilient. The truth is they do! We learn more from failure to success, so find evidence of that.

Secondly, take responsibility for the situation from an emotionally neutral place. We're all human. We all make mistakes. People have respect for others that admit to their mistakes and calmly and quickly take action to resolve them.

Do you want a leader that is unflappable or one that lets panic spiral outwards?

Thirdly, create a plan of action to resolve the issue. Remember, you will shine if you’re one of the few people that finds solutions rather than just problems.

Fourthly conduct a review afterwards. Reflect on learnings from the situation, without going down the blame game route. This will mean you’re less likely to make the same mistake in future. You can share these learnings with your team and use the situation as a coaching opportunity for everyone concerned. Ask your team what they learned! 

About Sara Sabin

Sara Sabin is a qualified accountant, former start-up founder, global thought leader and an executive leadership & intuition coach. She writes regularly for Entrepreneur Magazine and Fast Company and is an internationally sought- after commentator for her industry. 

Sara guides clients through the intersection between neuroscience, strategy and intuition - how they work together to create extraordinary results.

Sara is a master at turning abstract concepts into real-world, relatable insights and powerful action steps.