The Power of Being Wrong: Why Great Leaders Embrace Their Mistakes
Nobody likes being wrong. It feels awful. We squirm, make excuses, blame the intern — anything to avoid saying the three scariest words in the English language: “I was wrong.”
We’re born into a culture of wrong
The aversion starts early. From kindergarten to college, we’re taught that wrong equals failure. Red pens. Bad grades. Disappointed sighs from teachers who definitely expected more from you.
In America, being wrong means you’ve failed the test, not that you’re in the middle of learning.
Remember math tests? You got a giant X if you wrote that 7×8 was 54. (It’s not. But you knew that. Eventually.) And nobody celebrated when you finally realized it. They were well on to finding your next mistake.
Or consider how we treated kids on the playground. Make a mistake, and what happens? Other kids laugh. They point. They mock. “Ha! You thought George Washington was the third president? What an idiot!” Being wrong wasn’t just academic failure — it was social death.
At home? Same deal. How many parents do you know who freely admit their mistakes to their kids? Instead, most parents double down when challenged, hiding behind “because I said so” rather than acknowledging they might be wrong.
As kids, our parents were always right. Our teachers were always right. And we were always wrong — doing it wrong, saying it wrong, thinking it wrong, using it wrong. We also learned by watching, and what we learned is this: No matter how wrong you are, never admit it.
C.S. Lewis put it this way: “Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.” That’s a man who turned rejection into a literary empire. Meanwhile, most of us are still stuck trying to cover up our fourth-grade spelling bee loss like it’s a state secret.
Enter: The toxic manager who’s never wrong
By the time we enter the workplace, this avoidance is hardwired. And now we have titles. Teams. Budgets. And a deeply embedded fear of being wrong.
Nowhere is this more destructive than in management.
We’ve all worked for That Boss — the one who would rather burn the company to the ground than admit they made a poor decision. They rewrite history in real-time, blame their team or simply refuse to discuss failures. Their favorite phrases include “If you had done exactly what I said…” and “Well, based on the information I had at the time…”.
That kind of leadership creates a culture of fear where employees hide problems instead of solving them. Why report issues when the boss will just shoot the messenger? Why suggest improvements? Being helpful just gets you in trouble.
And here’s the kicker: If nobody on your team challenges you as their manager, that’s not a sign you’re right. It’s a sign they’ve given up. On you. They’ve given up trying to help you see different perspectives because you’ve made it so exhausting and pointless.
So you end up living in a warped little reality bubble where you’re always right — simply because no one wants to deal with the fallout of telling you you’re not.
But here’s the truth bomb: “Right” only exists on the other side of “wrong.” That’s why nobody says “I am wrong.” They say “I was wrong.” The moment you admit that you were wrong, it transports you from that past mistake to someplace better. Wiser.
But if you want to skip the whole mea culpa step? Too bad. There’s no express lane to Rightsville. You have to go through Wrongville. The toll is your ego.
I say to my clients 50 times a day, “I’m not smarter than you; I was just already wrong about this and I learned my lesson. Here is what I learned from doing what you’re doing…”.
Leadership expert John C. Maxwell calls this idea failing forward — using mistakes not as stop signs, but as stepping stones. It’s the difference between being embarrassed by your errors and being empowered by them. You don’t have to like being wrong, but you do have to learn from it — or you’ll just keep rerouting with no ETA.
Let’s normalize being wrong
Successful leadership isn’t about being right all the time. It’s about how quickly you recognize and correct when you’re wrong.
I was wrong recently. Case in point: I once gave advice in a meeting — confidently, as one does — and someone said, “I don’t think you understand.” As they explained more, I realized that they were absolutely right. I hadn’t understood. So I said, “Oh boy. Yep. I was wrong. That’s not helpful at all.”
And we moved on.
You know what I could have done instead? Pulled this classic-yet-icky move: “Well, based on the info you gave me, I was technically right.” That’s the dodge. That’s the ego trying to win on a technicality, and it’s one of my favorite ways people avoid being wrong. Just changing the facts. “Well, if it had been different, it would have been different.”
We all think we’re being clever, but everybody sees it. And nobody’s impressed.
My resume of wrong
Look, I’m wrong all the time. Here’s just a small sample:
- I’ve fired ~30 people, which means I was wrong when I hired ~30 people.
- I spent too much money buying one of my competitors and never made a good return on the investment.
- Underestimated a construction project. Like, badly. ROI = LOL
- I was wrong about the iPad. I thought the product would be a flop.
- I was wrong about buying international plane tickets. I didn’t know they were cheaper if you bought a round trip, so I bought two one-way tickets and probably overpaid by $1,500.
- I was wrong about cats. I thought they would be annoying pets. I LOVE having a cat. I wish I’d gotten a cat 20 years earlier.
I have been wrong about millions of things, and there are millions more that I’m currently wrong about. That’s also part of the point — acknowledging that we’re wrong is not when we become wrong. We’re all wrong about all sorts of stuff all the time and we just don’t know it yet.
And being wrong doesn’t make me a bad leader. Refusing to admit it would.
Building a “wrong-positive” culture
The most innovative companies aren’t led by people who are always right. They’re led by people who make it safe to be wrong. They create a culture where wrong is acceptable, and even celebrated, as part of the learning process.
One of the most important things that we can do as managers is acknowledge when we’re wrong about the strategy, which product to put out or how we approached or handled a situation. And when we can be wrong, we give our employees permission to be wrong too.
We must create environments in our organizations where people can be wrong without punishment. Where someone can come to the meeting and say, “I made a mistake. I was wrong. Here’s what I learned. Here’s what I’m going to do right next time,” without receiving a demotion or getting fired or getting yelled at or punished.
Instead, build a workplace where mistakes are met with curiosity. Where owning a misstep is treated as a sign of growth, not weakness. Where feedback stays focused on ideas, not egos. And where success isn’t just about the wins, but about how you respond to the losses.
That kind of environment doesn’t just build trust — it builds better outcomes.
Here’s how you do it:
- Model it yourself. Publicly acknowledge when you’re wrong.
- Remove punishment for honest mistakes.
- Reward learning and growth, not perfect performance.
- Create spaces where ideas can be challenged without personalities being attacked.
- Celebrate the lessons from failures, not just the wins from successes.
This behavior has to be modeled for our employees because a lot of them have never seen it before. We want them to get better, too. And if you’ve ever had an employee, you know you’ve had those who will regularly argue with you about how they’re right instead of learning from their mistakes. But they learned that behavior from us and from their environment because we don’t want to be wrong.
Learning from Aviation’s “Just Culture”
You know what industry is obsessed with being wrong? Aviation. The literal safest form of travel.
They use a model called “Just Culture,” where pilots and crew members can report errors without fear of punishment (as long as those errors weren’t the result of gross negligence or deliberate violations).
Under a Just Culture system, the question isn’t “Who screwed up?” but rather “Did you react as you would be reasonably expected to on the basis of your training and experience?” Investigations look at all causal factors and what actions can prevent recurrence — not who to blame.
The results have been remarkable. Pilots make one to five errors per flight segment … and it’s fine. They are expected. And prepared for. And fixable. In fact, for the vast majority of honest mistakes, Just Culture creates an atmosphere of trust where people are encouraged, even rewarded, for providing essential, safety-related information.
This approach recognizes a fundamental truth: Human error is universal. The difference between a catastrophe and a learning opportunity is how those one to five errors are handled.
When someone on your team makes a mistake, do you punish them and drive future errors underground? Or do you create an environment where people can say “I was wrong” and help the entire organization learn?
Or to put it another way: If the aviation industry, where mistakes can be catastrophically deadly, can create a culture that emphasizes learning over blame, why can’t we?
The reality of success through failure
The best baseball player is wrong about swinging the bat 70% of the time. A top stock broker is only right about 55% of the time. There are plenty of fields where you can be wildly successful and still screw up constantly.
Yet somewhere along the way, American business decided being wrong = being weak. That’s nonsense. The opposite is true.
Everything good happens on the other side of saying “I was wrong.” When we stop being wrong, we learn our lessons. The day comes when we stop being wrong about something, and that’s the day we truly understand it.
Because contrary to everything we were taught growing up, being wrong isn’t the enemy of success. It’s the only path to it.
Everything good happens on the other side of saying 'I was wrong..