In my first job, I got to see Leadership at its best and worst. I joined an engineering company. I was not an engineer. I was and am a woman. I was the first woman to be hired in an executive rank. Being young, and rearing to go, I got stuck in the grind of the machine tool company. My first shock was to learn how not to learn. People would ensure that work was done at the pace and place they wanted.
People would ensure that my lack of engineering background meant that I was half-baked. People would ensure being a woman in a male tech culture meant you remained ignorant enough to do the trivial leftovers. When you are fresh out of the university, you are feeling your way through. You do not really know that is this the way things are in practical life or is there another life out there.
To make things less boring, an engine with the Japanese collaboration had to be launched. I was given the glamorous role of copying and editing, collecting reports, but at least it was better than just following up people on their attendance in the meeting.
To cut the story short, the engine was launched and it was a great failure. That started a series of investigations and analysis on what went wrong. Multiple meetings were held and that started the classic passing-the-buck cycle.
The board blamed the head, the head blamed the team, etc. Every meeting to find out what went wrong started with a scapegoat and ended without a solution. To make matters worse the Japanese team scheduled a visit to Pakistan to study the great failure. Everyone was on the edge. Everyone was preparing how to evade, avoid, dodge, delay and disseminate the responsibility of the debacle.
The dooms day arrived. We all sat down, knowing that this is the final showdown to beat brow down the ranks. After the normal introductions, the Japanese head got up to give his intro remarks. He started by saying, “I was wrong in not taking into account the local realities of the Pakistan market.” There was pin drop silence. I thought maybe his English is not good, and I am misconstruing what he is saying. But he gave a whole explanation of errors of his own judgement.
He said, “I missed this fact,” “I overlooked this factor,” and “I did not pay attention to this report”. Shock and awe. I could not believe what I was hearing. Till date, as it is decades old now, the memory stays. That changed my view on leadership, management, and life.
As I entered more deeply into the work-life and life itself over the next two decades, I found most things change, except this great resilience to owning up to your own follies. If anything, not owning up is on the rise, especially as you rise in power and hierarchy. Two factors contribute to it:
Leaders have a dependent mindset— Most leaders are in the habit of taking credit for success and putting the blame on others for failures. The minute the numbers do not add up, their mind starts browsing on who all to dump it on. They have a kitchen cabinet that is made of people who give them the sycophancy kick. They constantly feed their “HGYA” i.e., “How great you are” appetite. The minute things go wrong these CEO HGYAs feed him on what and who can be blamed for it. The leader thus can make the bad economy, poor market conditions, lack of talent, anything and everything the scapegoat. That shows that he is dependent on all these things to work before it gets better. This approach could help save his own back but will in the long run be counterproductive.
Leaders feel they will look so small— The other problem with most people is that they feel ashamed to admit their own flaws fearing that they will look foolish and incompetent. They are too focused on “appearing” great and flawless. They feel that they are on higher positions because they are above the others. Admitting flaws will place them equal or below others.
These two factors are present in people who are insecure about themselves and need external validation to appease their insecurity. The same goes in personal relationships too. Families are broken down when partners resist admitting wrongs, or resent being blamed.
This produces a chain of reactions, retaliations and rejections. That is why the biggest quality to build in a human being and especially those who are up in hierarchy is to make them responsible. Responsible leadership is mostly interpreted as those who are now dealing with multiple roles and functions.
They have vast market domains to attend to. Their span of control has multiplied. All these are correct interpretations. This gives them the position and power to influence more and more. However, the real power of responsibility lies in the magic of not just owning up to your successes but your mistakes too.
That is what distinguishes the ordinary from the extraordinary. There is a dire need to promote this trait and this culture in the companies. The benefits are far too many but in the leadership corridors far few buyers for it. Let us attempt to champion it because:
Super power#1— vulnerability is a power - Gone are the days of superheroes locked in their palatial offices and looked up by the people below. Teams want the human touch. Teams want truth. Teams want humility. In a recent international Gallup survey, 82 percent of employees wanted to hear the magic words of “yes, I was wrong”, but only 42 percent said they had seen this in practice. Vulnerable leaders are stronger than insecure leaders.
Super power#2— transparency begets trust - Integrity begins with yourself; when you openly admit you are wrong, you are taken as honest and courageous. People trust you. People relate to you. People find you refreshing.
Super power#3— the culture you set is the culture you get-If leaders at the top do not own up to wrong doings, your managers will not do so. And their managers will not either. Thus, the whole culture of blame, fishing for a scapegoat starts. Vice versa, when you first take the responsibility of your errors, others are pressurized to do so and a culture of ownership begins.
Super power#4— growth is fuelled as ownership increases-With time wasted on whom to blame and little time on solution, conflict blocks growth. As owning up to errors creates room for more solutions, growth starts amplifying.
Be vulnerable, be a super leader. As Brene Brown says, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.”
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
The writer is a columnist, consultant, coach, and an analyst and can be reached at andleeb.abbas1@gmail.com