The People Business - Admitting Error is Not A Weakness, It's A Strength

Welcome to the people business! It’s a business where the ability to read and interpret mood and behaviour in others is paramount - a business where suddenly the technical knowledge and executions that got you there somehow don’t matter quite so much. It’s a business where the more proficient of us are able to transition from an absolute understanding in one dimension of an industry into a (seemingly) unrelated second industry where the inspiration and motivation of others is the principal determinant of success. To many, promotion to leadership signals the replacement of a company’s best technician with its poorest manager – but it doesn’t have to be that way!

The people business is as much about awareness as it is about skill – although the more successful of us are able to find equilibrium between the two. In the first instance however, newly appointed leaders must first and foremost make a commitment toward the affiliation and understanding of those under their care. It is a fact that almost everything in leadership comes back to a leader’s ability to build high quality relationships. It is my experience that the level of loyalty between two people increases exponentially as the level of trust between the two rises – and it is loyalty that matters most when the odds are stacked against you. The only way you can possibly generate a loyalty in others is to understand them better - and the best way to understand them is to get to know them through the leadership strategies you employ.

Moreover, lasting success in business involves more than simply building relationships between the leader and the other members of the team. That is to say, connections must be formed among all members of the team. Every member of the team must feel the existence of a strong bond between themselves and the other members of their team – a strong bond that ultimately culminates in the kind of trust that founders commitment, loyalty and pride on the shop floor. And the only way to accomplish this within any team is through leadership – through leadership that appreciates its importance and commits to ensuring its occurrence.

Leaders who immerse themselves in the business of people are better positioned to interpret what members of their team are thinking and feeling throughout the journey of their working day. It’s a great challenge – but a challenge that is prioritised, met and conquered by the truly great leader! Obviously, there are occasions when even the most diligent observer of human behaviour may be mistaken in their interpretation – but if a leader has built a strong relationship based on loyalty and trust the chances are they’ll be accurate on the vast majority of occasions. The people business is about getting to know your staff well enough to confidently implement a method of operation most likely to be effective for each individual member of your team.

Moreover, a leader is also a part of the people business and has to show that they are real! They have to show they can make a mistake and openly accept it as error. Admitting error is not a weakness – in so many ways, it’s actually a strength! It’s the kind of strength that enables a working relationship to build, because it signifies the kind of honesty and integrity that brings people together. And it’s often the catalyst that enables people to unite and successfully handle a crisis situation, simply because it enables a strong bond to develop prior to the crisis ever taking place. “I got it wrong. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. Let’s move on from here” can be a compelling and bonding admission.

The Kiwis 2006 tri-series campaign was remarkable for two reasons. The first was the epic culmination of the series that saw the Kiwis defeated in a golden point extra time final – a game many rugby league pundits have since claimed to be the greatest international ever played. The second was even more heavily publicised. It featured an Australian rugby league player, a Wanganui-born Great Grandmother and a media frenzy that threatened to turn the game upside down – and in the process bring down the Kiwis and their amiable coach, Brian McClennan. Grannygate – as it would come to be known – was the story of Nathan Fein and his desire to play for his adopted country – but it also came to be the stimulus that united a team and irrevocably enhanced that team’s regard for a coach who wasn’t afraid to admit a mistake.

The revelation that an Australian-born player was ineligible to play for the Kiwis was met with a tirade of condemnation from the media. Quick to grab onto a potentially damning story, the Sunday newspapers wasted little time in identifying Brian as a central figure in happenings that had seen Nathan play despite concerns around his eligibility. By placing Brian at the scene of the meeting in which the question mark over Nathan’s eligibility were first raised, the media were able to direct accusations of dishonesty and deceit directly at the team’s coach. Whilst Brian’s actions could not honestly be construed as deceitful, the truth was that he had (somewhat naively) assumed Nathan’s eligibility when his instinct told him this probably wasn’t the case – it was a mistake that jeopardised the entire campaign and personally placed him in an untenable position. 

And it was only through Brian’s prompt and open delineation of the what happened - and his readiness to admit error - that the team was able to uphold its belief in a good people get good things ideology. Brian’s actions in honestly conveying the actual happenings and conceding error were merely a reflection of his integrity. It was an action that triggered an urgent meeting of all players who needed to first express their despair, and then commit to forging resiliently ahead in its campaign. The players proclamation, “Bluey, we accept what’s happened and need you to know we’ve got your back” was both an expression of trust and a precursor to a record winning victory against Great Britain that very same week. 

It is this kind of honesty that breeds respect, and I can honestly say that in all my time in elite, international sport, I have never once witnessed a team that did not have respect as the cornerstone for its success. Everybody has to have a mutual respect for each other. Respect is extremely broad, encompassing respect for each other, respect for the management staff and respect for what the team will have to go through to achieve its ultimate goal. Once you attain the respect you desire, developing and nurturing the team chemistry required is a relatively simple task, but without team members that truly believe in one another you won't travel too far. I've seen countless teams who've tried to ignore this foundation step and instead projected into the recruitment of talent and the conceptualizing of benchmark team tactics. All these teams have failed when their team has been subjected to extreme pressure from a rampaging opponent.

There's no secret formula to developing respect in your organization - positive communication and standards based on common courtesy and honesty are paramount, as is a willingness and concerted effort to better know and understand colleagues. Success is derived not through a sequence of overbearing rules and regulations, but rather through the acquisition of respect within the collective – respect for the person and for the performance they are able to exhibit. It is through the need to better understand and respect each other that teams learn how to maximize the collective knowledge and talent they possess.  Respect can be in the giving of time in order to empathize with and develop others. And respect is omnipotent! There should exist respect for the team and its members and the strategies you choose to implement. In addition, there also needs to be a healthy respect for your major competitors - to disrespect them is to disrespect yourself! And it is the leadership that primarily instills the respect in the organization. By possessing a caring attitude, by communicating your concerns and commendations on a regular basis and by being honest, business leaders are most likely to enjoy the benefits of respect.

Whilst a naïve and less experienced leader might assume commitment, loyalty and pride from the outset, this is very rarely the case. The kind of loyalty and pride that hallmarks all great teams is significantly harder earned than these leaders might wish. People respond to leaders they respect. They respond to leaders who they believe care and are concerned for their welfare. And both of these commodities require a passage of time and a course of commitment that commences with the establishment of a formally developed rapport. People follow leaders not because they have to, but because they want to.

Do players play for coaches? Without question they do. And they play best for the coaches who they feel a strong affinity to – an affinity that is built up over a proven period of trust, loyalty and honour. Of all the great coaches and leaders it has been my privilege to associate with, the ones for whom I have the greatest admiration are those who have clearly set about building a foundation from which to launch a business relationship of a lifetime. And these are relationships nurtured and built over time. They are relationships that have been created from a platform that never once assumed blind follow ship.

Leaders of quality commence their tenure from a positive of ascertaining the motives of others. Theirs is not an expectation of blind allegiance, but rather it is a period of gradual growth and appreciation. Call it distrust or simple experimentation, the fact remains that it is unreasonable to expect cultures and relationships to become evident without first a period of trial. Get to appreciate the motives of others before providing them with an unequivocal freedom, and be certain that they’ll be doing the same of you. Tell people what you stand for and care about, but don’t expect them to buy it until they have been given sufficient time to assess it as a living process. When you’re in a true period of setback, trust perceived on a brittle foundation almost always falters. True trust is what you’re aspiring to -the kind of trust that drives performance when we’re confronted by despair. The kind of trust that can only be developed through a constancy of effort and a process of unmitigated honesty and affiliation!  

People are not going to follow you unless they sense you are real. They’re not going to believe in you unless you earn their trust – and they’re not going to trust you unless you always tell the truth and admit when you’re wrong. To admit a mistake is not a weakness – it’s a strength!