Why the Best Leaders Admit When They’re Wrong (And How It Builds Unbreakable Trust)

One of the more challenging skills today’s leaders have to master is how to be vulnerable with your team; of being able to tell them you don’t know something or to admit you were wrong.

Maybe this is due to the stories we share about leadership, where the focus tends to be on how to achieve success. Even the “hero’s journey” story structure makes it implicitly clear that the point is not the hero’s imperfections, but how they prevailed in spite of them.

But with the arrival of an AI world, what’s going to become critical to your leadership success is not just your knowledge or expertise.

Rather, it will be your ability to create deep connections with those you lead so you can earn their trust, foster a sense of belonging, and empower them to commit to your shared purpose.

And studies have shown that when leaders share what they don’t know, admit when they make mistakes, and are open about their own journey of learning and personal growth, they create stronger bonds with their team.

And these deeper connections lead to improved problem-solving, more creativity, and higher engagement from team members.

Because when we’re open about ourselves and our limitations, it creates an environment where people can be more open about themselves – their hopes, their dreams, and how we can better support them to succeed.

So contrary to what we might’ve been led to believe, being vulnerable as leaders doesn’t make us weak.

What it does do is make us more relatable and capable of inspiring a collective effort to bring our best efforts to the work we do.