Your team is watching.
Not just your successes, but how you handle the moments when things go sideways. When the quarterly projections miss by 20%. When the product launch stumbles. When your strategic bet doesn’t pay off.
Here’s what separates exceptional leaders from the rest: they don’t hide behind excuses or deflect blame downward.
The Vulnerability Trap
Most senior managers fear that admitting mistakes makes them appear weak or incompetent. This thinking is backwards.
Your team already knows when something went wrong. They watched it happen. They felt the ripple effects.
What they don’t know yet is whether you have the courage to face it head-on.
The Three-Step Recovery
[ Email readers, continue here…]
When you mess up as a senior manager, follow this sequence:
1. Own it immediately
“I made the call to prioritize the enterprise features over user experience. That was my mistake, and it’s showing in our retention numbers.”
No softening. No corporate speak. Just direct ownership.
2. Explain your thinking (without defending it)
“I believed enterprise clients would drive revenue faster. I was wrong about our users’ priorities.”
This shows your decision-making process without making excuses.
3. Share what you’re learning
“Moving forward, I’m instituting monthly user feedback sessions before any major product decisions.”
Concrete action beats empty apologies.
The Ripple Effect
When you model authentic accountability, something powerful happens:
Your team starts taking bigger risks because they know failure won’t be met with blame games.
They bring problems to you sooner instead of trying to hide them.
They respect you more, not less, because courage is rare.
The Senior Manager’s Advantage
Junior employees might get fired for big mistakes. Senior managers have something more valuable: the platform to turn failures into teachable moments.
Your mistakes become case studies. Your recovery becomes their blueprint.
That’s the real power of senior leadership—not avoiding failure, but transforming it into fuel for team growth.
The Bottom Line
Your team doesn’t need a perfect manager. They need a human one who can face reality, learn from it, and keep moving forward.
The next time you stumble, remember: how you handle that moment will define your leadership more than any success ever could.
Because authenticity isn’t a weakness. It’s your superpower.
Image created by Dave using DALL-E3.
