Owning Up to Mistakes

This is the first edition of Leading Edge, a blog that will offer perspectives on leadership and management. Your comments and reactions are welcome.

It was odd that President Trump chose to give his final appeal to midterm voters Nov. 2 at the Reflecting Pool, at once a symbol of hubris, corruption, and incompetence. That decision did serve to remind me that nearly 40 years ago, as one of a handful of foreign correspondents traveling through conflict zones in impoverished and war-torn Angola, I received a lesson in leadership and life that resonates today.

As Angola’s first prime minister post-independence, and then minister of planning, Lopo do Nascimento had been an architect of the socialist economic policies that helped drive the revolution. On this trip, we interviewed do Nascimento, who in blunt and specific terms described how those policies had utterly failed.

The country’s economy was in shambles. Power and water were unreliable in the urban areas, food and other staples were hard to come by, there were few jobs and even fewer people qualified to do them, and conditions were even worse in rural towns. The government now was asking do Nascimento to help find solutions.

We were struck by do Nascimento’s candor and asked him if admitting mistakes could undermine confidence in the government of then-President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. I have never forgotten his response:

“You only lose confidence if you say, ‘I have never erred’ – especially when everyone can see for themselves that you are wrong,” he said.

These words come to mind in considering several of our current national calamities, and particularly the Reflecting Pool debacle. That situation featured two particularly extraordinary events – President Trump’s doubling down on his claim that the pool had been damaged by “vandals,” absurd on its face and now thoroughly debunked; and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s abandonment of that narrative, risking the president’s wrath.

Being human, managers often are reluctant to admit mistakes, but I’ve found that smart people at the top of organizations see candor as an essential component of leadership. They know that failure to acknowledge errors creates an erosion of trust and discourages followers from owning up to their own failures. It is difficult to learn from mistakes if no one can admit they were made.

One of the most remarkable books I’ve read was “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,” a comprehensive and unflinching account of the mistakes that got us into that quagmire, written by one of the people who made them, Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the conflict.

McNamara’s book, published in 1995, does not ask for absolution. Mea culpas or no, McNamara, like Pirro, will strike most as an unsympathetic figure, given the scale of the blunders and their consequences. McNamara knew that. But all of us who are leaders should at least recognize that some smidgen of self-reflection and courage are possible when it comes to admitting mistakes. Perhaps our current Pentagon leader and his boss can take note.