Absolutely! Everybody makes mistakes. Owning up to it and cleaning it up is much better than denying it, hiding it, and pretending the problem doesn’t exist.
If it’s fixable it can’t be that bad anyway. You can’t fix rape, and it’s pretty hard to “fix” a major corruption case (without spending a couple of years in prison, anyway).
Admitting a mistake and fixing it generally earns respect, whether you are a leader or not. But that mistake shouldn’t have led to something horrible, like someone’s death, and we must make sure that it was unintentional!
I already think more of leaders at my work that can take responsibility for mistakes.
The best places I’ve worked have had supervisors who are willing to take ownership of their mistakes and are open about how they work to improve. There are limits (no free passes for mowing down a dozen grandmothers running a soup kitchen, for example) and the improvement work has to be relevant and sincere but when it’s done right, this is a worthwhile example to set. Also shouldn’t come down like a ton of bricks if the new hire does something dumb and comes forward when they recognize their error. Can save a lot of time, money, and aggravation when the work environment prioritizes fixing the problem over assigning the blame.
There are 2 kinds of reaction to this- understanding that admitting a failure and owning up to it is a sign of character; and the other one, where any admission of failure is a sign of weakness and the leader is no longer to be trusted. I’m in the first camp but a lot of this country (US) is in the second
deleted by creator
