Research backs up Reed’s claims about the positive ramifications of the leader speaking openly about mistakes. In her book, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, Brené Brown explains, based on her own qualitative studies, that “we love seeing raw truth and openness in other people, but we are afraid to let them see it in us. . . . Vulnerability is courage in you and inadequacy in me.” Anna Bruk and her team at the University of Mannheim in Germany wondered if they could replicate Brown’s findings quantitatively. They asked subjects to imagine themselves in a variety of vulnerable situations—such as being the first to apologize after a big fight and admitting that you made a serious mistake to your team at work. When people imagined themselves in those situations, they tended to believe that showing vulnerability would make them appear “weak” and “inadequate.” But when people imagined someone else in the same situations, they were more likely to describe showing vulnerability as “desirable” and “good.” Bruk concluded that honesty about mistakes is good for relationships, health, and job performance. On the other hand, there is also research showing that if someone is already viewed as ineffective, they only deepen that opinion by highlighting their own mistakes. In 1966, psychologist Elliot Aronson ran an experiment. He asked students to listen to recordings of candidates interviewing to be part of a quiz-bowl team. Two of the candidates showed how smart they were by answering most of the questions correctly, while the other two answered only 30 percent right. Then, one group of students heard an explosion of clanging dishes, followed by one of the smart candidates saying, “Oh my goodness—I’ve spilled coffee all over my new suit.” Another group of students heard the same clamor, but then heard one of the mediocre candidates saying he spilled the coffee. Afterward, the students said they liked the smart candidate even more after he embarrassed himself. But the opposite was true of the mediocre candidate. The students said they liked him even less after seeing him in a vulnerable situation. This tendency has a name: the pratfall effect. The pratfall effect is the tendency for someone’s appeal to increase or decrease after making a mistake, depending on his or her perceived ability to perform well in general. In one study conducted by Professor Lisa Rosh from Lehman College, a woman introduced herself, not by mentioning her credentials and education, but by talking about how she’d been awake the previous night caring for her sick baby. It took her months to reestablish her credibility. If this same woman was first presented as a Nobel Prize winner, the exact same words about being up all night with the baby would provoke reactions of warmth and connection from the audience. When you combine the data with Reed’s advice, this is the takeaway: a leader who has demonstrated competence and is liked by her team will build trust and prompt risk-taking when she widely sunshines her own mistakes. Her company benefits. The one exception is for a leader considered unproven or untrusted. In these cases you’ll want to build trust in your competency before shouting your mistakes.
I first read about the Pratfall effect while reading the autobiography (titled Not By Chance Alone) of Elliot Aronson, a psychologist known for his research in Cognitive Dissonance among many others. Strongly recommend it as its one of the few books I managed to finish in 2 or less sittings and a fascinating insight into the lift of a psychology researcher.
Back to the point on hand, what the key takeaway is that if your colleagues already think that you are competent, a few mishaps here and there actually makes you more relatable and hence, likeable. That is why having a good body of work such as your CV help you establish credibility and buys you a lot more leeway at the start.
For those who are unproven, you’ll have to be extra careful and focus on building trust first. Ultimately, people try to justify the prenotions they already have about you based on initial first impression. For those whom enter situations unproven, the deck is stacked against you. While we all wish we could let our body of work speak for ourselves, there is just no getting past basic human psychology and biases.
