When You Screw Up, Man Up
May 28, 2009 by Phil Gerbyshak
Filed under Business
Note from Phil: This is a guest post from one of my newest favorite bloggers, Chris Johnson. Chris actually CALLED ME after I visited his blog one night. We talked for about 25 minutes about life, business, and everything else under the sun. He was such an interesting guy, I immediately asked him to write an article for you here on Slacker Manager. This one is all about making mistakes, and how to own them. I hope you enjoy it.
We’ve all screwed up. And, we’re all gonna screw up again. This is a matter of ‘when,’ and not ‘if. It might be a matter of degree–some people do make more mistakes than others. But as a point of fact we will all screw up. And that means, we have to have a plan in place for dealing with it. Everyone that breathes will have breakdowns of judgment, character or knowledge from time to time.
The current superstar culture that we live in makes admitting you were wrong hard. Nobody likes to be wrong. Everyone wants to cover things up with the most implausible of reasons. Credulity is strained as people search out plausible stories that sort of match the evidence. Such an effort is spent on ‘not being wrong’ nothing gets done.
Look at what happened to baseball. Mark McGuire–it’s all but certain–did steroids. He never admitted it. Now, because of the egos of athletes that continue to get busted, the sport can’t shake the steroids allegations. Nobody wants the blame for screwing up, so they spend more time, energy and effort covering their tracks than it would take to fix the problem. And the elephant in the room continues to have an odor and it continues to be unmentionable.
What would have happened if they had admitted it 5 years ago? At the congressional hearings, if Mark McGuire had said, “I used a number of supplements and I sought everything I could get to get an edge. I crossed the line a few times, and I wanted to keep it quiet so kids wouldn’t imitate me. I’m sorry I screwed up, and I hope that this isn’t my whole legacy.”
The dude might be in Cooperstown. He wouldn’t be remembered as a sniveling coward. Instead, he didn’t man up and take responsibility. But look–despite what F. Scott Fitzgerald said, America is the land of second acts. We welcome celebrities back from rehab, politicians back from their hotel trysts, and business people back from prison.
The thing is? People are not stupid. They know when someone screwed up. They might play along and pretend things are hunky dory, but the truth of the matter is that they know who did what, and what cover was used. Generations X and Y have fine tuned B.S. detectors. So you’re not getting away with it.
So what to do? Man up. You’re gonna make a mistake. Get that in your head. How you react determines how you are perceived. Say, “Hey, I was dead wrong about that, here’s what I think we do to fix it.” Or. “Hey, I wasn’t accurate–or even close when I told you this.”
That will build your credibility, and make people trust you. You’ll be the guy that admits that you were wrong, and not the guy that covers up his mistakes. People aren’t stupid, they always know if you covered up a mistake anyway. So when–not if–you screw up, man up, and move on.
“Genuine” Chris Johnson is a mortgage lender turned freelancer. His blog GenuineChris.com covers how you can make the switch to freelancing and adding value to your clients and friends. He is the owner of the social media account creation site Guerrilla.me where you can get online and trained in one fell swoop.
I’m sorry, courtesy of pict_u_re
This is a an incredibly important point. It is true what the article says about the pressures we all feel to cover up, but in my experience the advice offered is the best thing to do. I recently screwed up. My boss saw that I was working feverishly on something as I tried to do what was needed to recover. I have worked with this man for years, so I can read many of his reactions. The fact that I admitted I had screwed up, and I was now taking action to minimize the damage actually helped me. He has also screwed up. Like the article says, we all do. By admitting it and then moving forward from there, you are actually minimizing the total damage. Trying to hide it would have resulted in even more damage. I took the best course of action.
Very good article. My thoughts as I read the article – First, people don’t like to get in trouble. We do the crime, but we don’t want to do the time. In other words, consequences are difficult for people to face. Second, we have something on the inside of us that looks for the path of least resistance. Admitting that we make mistakes means there is still WORK to be done within us. Which leads me to point number three, it all comes down to the character of the person.
In this society, we esteem celebrities and high profile people. But they are people too, just like us. We don’t put a demand on character in this country anymore. We give people the space to become anything they want to become, but there is no demand on the people to live life based on principles and standards. So when making mistakes, the natural response is to hide it in order to avoid marring the perceptions that people have of people.
Your article is very good, it speaks to a gap within us, in the foundations of our core being – to be truthful, to be honest with ourself and others and to make mistakes, learn from them and move on. That is a difficult concept. We are trying to save face, rather than being transparent about our failings. In the end people will not “man up” when they make mistakes if the cost for being honest cost them position, money, and reputation. Transparency, candor, honesty, CHARACTER, have been lost. Until we as a society choose to embrace honesty and integrity, and people are not punished for being honest, few people will heed your recommendation to “man up and move on.”
Hahaha, it might happen on main street, but not on Wall Street or in Washington DC.
Good post, good truths.