The Power to Say “I Was Wrong”

What No One Tells You — #13 The Power to Say "I Was Wrong" YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P_bmIaYFPE —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Picture this. You're in a meeting defending a decision you made last week and halfway through your explanation, you realize you're wrong. Completely wrong. Everyone in that room can see it. You can feel it. And in that moment, you have a choice. Welcome to What No One Tells You, the podcast for managers who want the truth about leadership. My name is Claudia and this is episode 13. The power to say I was wrong. Today we're talking about three words that most managers are terrified to say. Three words that can completely change how your team sees you. Three words that might be the most powerful tool in your leadership arsenal. I was wrong. Here is what nobody tells you about being a manager. You're going to make mistakes. Not might, not probably. You absolutely will. And when you do, your team is going to be watching. They're not watching to see if you're perfect. They're watching to see if you're honest. Because here is the reality from my 18 years of leadership roles. Your team already knows when you've messed up. The only question is whether you're brave enough to admit it. Let me tell you what actually happens when managers cannot say they were wrong because I've seen this play out countless times. First, your team stops trusting you. Not all at once, not dramatically, but gradually conversation by conversation. Every time you deflect or make excuses or pretend something didn't happen, you're teaching them something important that protecting your ego matters more than getting things right. And once they learn that lesson, they start second-guessing everything. If you won't acknowledge the obvious mistakes, how can they trust your judgment on the complex decisions? They cannot. Second, you create a culture where mistakes get hidden. Think about it. If the boss cannot admit when they're wrong, why would anyone else? So, errors get buried, problems get pushed down, and by the time they finally surface because they have to, they're not small issues anymore. They're catastrophes. They're expensive. They're the kind of thing that could have been fixed in an afternoon if someone had just said something three months ago. Third, and this is the part that should bother you the most. You stop learning. When you can't admit you're wrong, you can't actually examine why you were wrong. You cannot figure out what you missed, what you misunderstood, what assumption you made that turned out to be incorrect. So you just keep making the same mistake over and over, dressed up in slightly different circumstances each time. Now, not every mistakes needs a public confession. If you scheduled the meeting for the wrong time and caught it quickly, you don't need to gather everyone for a formal apology. Use your judgment. But there are situations where you absolutely must say it. And here they are. When your decision directly affected your team's work, if you send them in the wrong direction, if you changed priorities at the last minute, if you made a call that created extra work or wasted their time, they need to hear you acknowledge it. They did the work. You owe them the honesty when you were wrong in a way everyone could see. If the whole team watched you make the decision and watch it fail, pretending nothing happened just makes everything awkward. They know. You know they know. Just say it. When someone else might get blamed for your mistake. This one is absolutely critical. If there's any chance that your error could reflect poorly on someone else, if someone else might take the fall for your decision, you need to step up immediately. This isn't optional. When it's a pattern you need to break. Sometimes admitting one specific mistakes is actually about acknowledging a bigger issue with how you've been approaching things. That's when saying, "I was wrong," becomes the first step toward actually changing how you lead. Here is the framework that works. It's simple, but I'm not going to lie to you. It's not easy. First, state that you got wrong clearly and specifically. Not mistakes were made or things didn't go as planned or any of that vague corporate language. Say exactly what you did and why it was wrong. I told you to prioritize the vendor analyszis, but I was wrong. The client presentation needed to come first. Clear, specific. No room for a misunderstanding. Second, explain briefly why you made that call. Not to excuse it, just to show you were actually thinking, even if you were thinking incorrectly. I thought we had the time before the client meeting, but I misread the timeline. This isn't about making yourself feel better. It's about showing your decision makingaking process so people understand where it broke down. Third, acknowledge the impact on them. I know this meant you rushed the presentation and had to work late to finish both. Don't minimize it. Don't try to make it smaller than it was. If it created real problems, say so. Fourth, say what you're doing differently. Going forward, I'm confirming all deadlines directly with clients before setting internal priorities. This shows it's not just empty words. You're actually learning from this. You're changing something. Then move forward. Don't grovel. Don't keep apologizing for the next three meetings. You acknowledged it. You're fixing the process. Now get back to work. That's what adults do. Let me tell you what doesn't work because I've seen managers try all of these approaches and they all backfired. Don't sandwich it between compliments. This isn't a performance review. You don't need to tell someone they're doing great work, then mention you were wrong, then tell them they are valuable again. Just say you were wrong. That's it. Don't blame circumstances entirely. I was wrong because the email system was confusing. It's just excuse making with better packaging. The email system might have been confusing, sure, but you still made the decision. Own it. Don't make it about your feelings. I feel terrible about this. Puts you at the center of the story when the impact was on them. They don't need to comfort you for your mistake. They need to hear you acknowledge what happened and how you're fixing it. Don't do it by email if it was significant. Textbased apologies for real mistakes feel like you're hiding. Have the conversation in person or at minimum on a call where they can hear your voice and you can hear theirs. This matters. Don't ask for forgiveness. You're not a child. You're acknowledging a professional error and moving forward. I was wrong is a statement of fact, not a plea for absolution. Say it and mean it, then do better. Here's what starts happening when you get good at admitting mistakes. And this is where it gets really interesting. Your team starts bringing you problems earlier. They know you can handle bad news because they've watched you handle bad news with about yourself. Instead of hiding issues until they become catastrophic, they flag them when they're still manageable when you can actually do something about them. This alone is worth the discomfort of saying, "I was wrong." Your credibility actually increases. I know this sounds backwards, but it's true. People respect leaders who are secure enough to be wrong. It makes your correct decisions carry more weight because everyone knows you're not just defending your ego. When you say you're confident about something, they believe you because they know you would tell them if you weren't. You create space for innovation. When mistakes aren't careerending events in your team, people try new approaches. Some of those approaches won't work. That's fine. That's actually how you learn what does work. But if admitting failure means professional death, nobody tries anything new, and you end up with a team that only does what's safe. Your team starts admitting their own mistakes more readily. They follow your model. Suddenly, you're getting honest assessments instead of creating excuses. Suddenly, people are saying, "I underestimated how long this would take." instead of the vendor was late when the vendor wasn't actually late. Truth becomes normal instead of dangerous. In a lot of companies, there is this persistent idea that managers need to project absolute certainty that admitting uncertainty or error is something unprofessional, that it undermines your authority. This is nonsense, but it's persistent nonsense that's baked into how a lot of organizations actually operate. The managers I've seen succeed long term in these environments, the one who actually build strong teams and deliver consistent results are the ones who can be honest about what they don't know on what they got wrong while still being decisive about the path forward. And here is the thing people miss. These aren't contradictory qual qualities. You can admit a past mistake while being completely clear and confident about the current direction. In fact, one strengthens the other. Some of your colleagues will never do this. They'll keep playing the always right game, defending every decision they've ever made, rewriting history to make themselves look better. Let them. Their team know the truth anyway. your team will know they work for someone who deals in reality and that's worth much more than any performance of infilibility. Here's what you can actually do this starting now this week. Think about a recent decision that didn't work out the way you expected. Not something that was someone else's fault, something that was genuinely your call and your mistake. Go to the person or people it affected and say clearly what you got wrong and what you're doing differently. Don't wait for the perfect moment. Just do it. The next time you're in a meeting and you realize you're defending a decision that's you're no longer sure about. Stop midsentence. Just stop and say, "Actually, I'm not sure I'm right about this. Let me think about it differently." Watch what happens in the energy in the room when you do that. Watch how the conversation shifts. When someone on your team admits a mistake to you, pay attention to how you respond. Are you making it safe for them? Are you asking good questions about what happened? Or are you accidentally punishing honesty by getting frustrated or disappointed? Because if you're punishing honesty, you're training them to hide things from you. And that's the last thing you want. Look, here is the bottom line. You're going to be wrong sometimes about timelines, about priorities, about people, about approaches, about strategies. The question was never whether you'll make mistakes. You will. The only question that matters is whether you'll be honest about them when you do. Being willing to say, "I was wrong," doesn't make you a weak manager. It makes you a real one. Your team doesn't need you to be perfect. They never did. What they need is for you to be honest, to learn from what doesn't work and to keep moving forward. And when you can do that, when you can look someone in the eye and say those three words without flinching, you're not losing their respect, you're earning it. This is episode 13 of What No One Tells You, the power to say, "I was wrong." And now you know, because I told you. See you next time.