Part 3, Chapter 2: If you’re wrong, admit it

Principle: If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.

When you admit you’re wrong first–it takes the “fight” away from that person.

Similar to the previous points about making someone feel important, if you admit you’re wrong versus fighting them, more often than not, their tone will soften.

• Anyone can defend their mistakes, it gives one a feeling of nobility to admit them first
• Overcoming pride is a struggle more of us experience.
• “By fighting, you never get enough. But by yielding, you get more than expected.”

Family life example: Your parents, kids, spouse, or someone close to you.
How much better would you feel/do you feel if you get an “I’m sorry,” versus nothing?When you get nothing, it just brews that “fight” in you, or that angst, that grudge.

But when you get an, “I’m sorry,” you can almost immediately feel your shoulders drop and you are more open to conversation.

From a work/business perspective. If you know you messed up on a project, or misspoke with a client, I’m 99.9% sure they will let it go if you apologize first, rather than waiting for them to figure it out, or call you out on it.

Personal story time:

I remember (very vividly) messing up on a print project at my last job.
I was 2mm off on the sizing of a postcard, and the post-office wouldn’t accept it.
I was pissed. So mad I almost cried at the post-office.

My brain was spinning. All I kept thinking about was that I did the measurements to the T–there was no way I was wrong!
But the lady said no, so me and my co-worker left with 1,000 printed postcards and I had to go back and tell my boss what happened.

So many thoughts went through my head about how I could tell her it was right, that I don’t know why it didn’t work there. But instead, I went into her office, (after practicing what I was going to say), told her how the post-office didn’t accept the postcards, and apologized so many times. I didn’t mention how I knew I was right, but instead admitted that maybe the sizing was somehow wrong and suggested that I would see what other cost-effective ways we could mail it.

I was sure she’d be pissed, but looking back now and after reading this chapter, I’m convinced that because I came to the conversation apologizing first and genuinely feeling bad about it, she was pretty chill about the whole thing. (This all happened in 2018 and it still haunts me).

Imagine how the world would be today if more people admitted they were wrong.

– Angela