There are three little words that everyone wants to hear. Oh, no. Not those three words. I see your confusion. Since it’s so close to Valentine’s day, I bet you thought I was talking about the words “I love you”. Sorry. That’s not what this is about. This is about those other three little words.
I’m talking about three little words that are rarely said by anyone these days. Three little words that have tremendous power and, for many people, are extremely difficult to say.
The three little words I have in mind can, when said sincerely, fix broken relationships, turn enemies into friends, and change the course of governments.
Need a hint? Maybe I should have been a little more specific and said that there are three little words that everyone wants to hear a politician say. Those three words are, “I was wrong”.
When was the last time you heard a politician admit that they were wrong about anything? I’m trying to think of a single instance and I’m coming up blank. I can’t remember a time when a politician admitted that he/she made a mistake.
Instead, what we get is some sort of weird deflection like “the attempt to find a solution was suboptimal” or “the results weren’t quite what we had in mind” or “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”. Other times they just redefine the goal or misinterpret/hide the data. They do all these things just so they don’t have to admit that they were wrong.
It’s OK to make mistakes. Everyone does. When someone who works for me makes a mistake, the thing I’m most interested in is what happens next.
You can tell a lot about a person by watching how they react to a mistake. Will they own up to it or will they try to shift the blame? Will the burden of being wrong overwhelm them or will grow from the experience? Will they try the same thing again or come up with a better plan?
If someone makes a mistake, admits they were wrong, and takes corrective action, I’m impressed. Sure, it may have been a boneheaded mistake but at least they’re better for the experience of making it. I know they’ll make more mistakes in the future. And, as long as they’re making new mistakes, my expectation is that they’ll continue to learn from them.
But if they don’t admit their mistake, I don’t know if they’re trying to cover it up or if they’re too stupid to recognize the mistake they made. Either way, we’ve got a problem.
I would love to hear a politician say those three little words. I would love to hear them walk up to the microphone and say, just once, “I was wrong. I made a mistake. And this is how I’m going to fix it.”
People make a lot of mistakes. No one is perfect. But politicians expect us to believe that they are 100% right, 100% of the time, when it’s more likely that they’re making a lot of mistakes that we don’t know about.
When a politician doesn’t admit that they made a mistake that we can all see, when we see them double-down and do more of the same crazy stuff, it makes me wonder a couple things. I wonder what else they’ve blundered that they’ve kept hidden from us. And, I wonder if maybe they admit the mistake because they were too stupid to recognize it as such.
Either way, we’ve got a problem.
