Posted by denised in 
Early on in the life of this site, I made an error that caused the site to go down for several hours. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) at the time I had only a handful of readers visiting the site on a daily basis. However, if you’re a blogger, you know that any amount of down time is bad. What made it worse was that I was the cause of the problem. My saving Grace? Admitting that I’d made a mistake – a huge one – and finding a friend to help me who knew exactly what he was doing.
There are some bosses who never, ever admit when they’ve made a mistake – Even when faced with indisputable evidence that they’ve messed up royally, a really bad boss will go to his grave before admitting to making a mistake. It’s one of the worst and most common mistakes bad bosses make. Why? Many bosses feel as though admitting to a mistake reduces their credibility and thereby their ability to manage effectively. In fact, the opposite is often the case. A boss’ ability to admit to making a mistake says to his employees, “I’m not perfect, I know I’m not perfect, and now I’m going to show you how someone who’s really in control handles a crisis.”
Pretending you’re infallible, even as everyone around you recognizes there’s a problem, says “I’m unstable and probably shouldn’t be trusted to lead.” I once had a boss who made a serious error in calculating some figures. When confronted with her mistake, rather than admit to it, she tried to explain that she’d used a different method for calculating her figures. Not different information or data, a different method for adding and subtracting. Ridiculous, but true. Other than arithmetic, I was, and still am unaware of any other method for adding and subtracting numbers. We never looked at her quite the same again, referring to her as the manager who rather than admitting a mistake, created her own private system of mathematics.
After a couple of hours, my knowledgeable friend restored my site to its former glory. The fact that you’re reading my mea culpa today means that fortunately for me, fatal errors in the blogosphere aren’t terminal, and neither are my mistakes. Bosses, do us all a favor – admit when you’ve made a mistake. It’s the only way to begin the process of fixing what went wrong in the first place.
