Oops, You're Still a Leader

Okay, now raise your hand if you publicly made a mistake recently, and felt like you had to crawl into a Teams chat and die.

It’s fine.

You’re still a leader.

People probably aren’t talking about your broken link in your last LinkedIn Field Note post and they’ve totally forgotten about it and I’m sure they wanted to read the Field Note so badly they went to the site anyway and navigated to the note and hey the best defense is a good offense and that’s why you’re still going with this stream-of-thought also that’s showbiz, baby!

Ahem.

Leadership -  the real kind - doesn’t evaporate the moment you misread a room, drop a deadline, forget a slide, or post a broken link to your own newsletter (it's me, hi, yes, that was still me). It doesn’t evaporate when the career move that was a transition in the first place pulled the rug out and you had to accelerate your evolution (in the midst of some well-known personal chaos, to boot).

In fact… as it turns out… mistakes are not career-ending. Pretending they didn’t happen? That’s a different story. (And not one I’d ever tell.)

There’s a myth in leadership: That confidence comes from perfection, or credibility comes from knowing everything. That trust is built on being bulletproof. But the most trustworthy leaders I know? They make mistakes in public, and they recover with grace. They admit when a decision didn’t work, and they adjust.

They don’t confuse “always right” with “always real.”

Want to know the worst thing I ever led? It was a cultural shift against a status quo that had too much history, too many machinations, to ever win out based on strength of idea. I look at the work now, though, and I’m like… damn. It was good.

It was polished, progressive, team-elevating. And it solved problems… just not any the politics wanted to address.

Strategy ≠ aesthetics. I know that now.

I learned more from that mistake than from five flawless launches that belted out ROI like K-pop hits. I learned so much because mistakes, and losses, and stubmles… they sharpen your frameworks even when your ego doesn’t survive the lesson.

And that’s good. That’s growth. That’s a story worth telling, even if you still cringe a little at the sound of it.

In the leadership role, it’s important to remember: Your team is watching you through each and every mistake you make. But… not in the way you’re worried about.

They’re not waiting to catch the fumble… they’re watching to see how you move after it happens. (Sports!)

Do you freeze? Deflect? Spiral? Or do you stay steady, name it, and keep moving?

A leader who never makes mistakes is probably hiding something. A leader who owns mistakes - and stays the course - is magnetic.

Finish this sentence to help plot out your next fumble (Still sports and yes it was spelled wrong up there on purpose!):

“I thought I had to be perfect in that moment. But… honestly… what I actually needed to be was…”

• Honest.

• Curious.

• Present.

• Calm.

• Human.

• Humble.

Pick one. And that’s the leadership muscle you’re building next. (Kind of sports?)

Stop asking “How do I never screw up again?”

Start asking: “How do I become someone who leads through it, anyway?”