I’ve got a lot of ideas for where I’m going with this post, so forgive me if it is disjointed.
I play in a basketball league, and the games are officiated. Recently a player on the opposing team corrected the official and said that the ball went out of bounds after he touched it and the possession should go to us. Not only did this stick out to me as excellent sportsmanship but I was also impressed that the referee so easily deferred to the player. I have never seen a referee blow his whistle and then say “that was my mistake, I should not have made a call.”. I don’t even know if the game of basketball has a rule for what happens if a referee were to say that. So what happens often is the referee will do a “make up” call or they’ll let something slide that they normally wouldn’t to even things out. Wouldn’t it be better to just admit the mistake in real time and reset the play? Of course the no call still has an affect on the game, but officials are human and no one should expect them to be 100% perfect in calling a fast paced game.
Can a politician even admit a mistake? Obviously there are times where the action was so indefensible that an apology must be made, such as the politicians who dressed in black face. Since political junkies (that’s what I call anyone who is not a moderate because I just don’t understand how a person’s ideas about life can align directly with a political party) will pounce on every mistake politicians never admit to one. And then from there it just becomes a farce.
I’d say a huge issue in relationships is when mistakes are never acknowledged. It’s hard to apologize if you’ve never admitted to doing anything wrong.
In our business we have a ton of potential for mistakes. Sometimes our customers make mistakes too. The coolest customer is one who will say “I used scissors to open the package and I cut the shirt, is there anything you can do for me.?”. Or they might say “I entered the address wrong during checkout…”. I can guarantee that we are more happy to help people who admit to their mistake than those who tell us that we sent the package to a different address than they entered or that we sent them a shirt with a slice in it. Either way we take care of our customers, but it feels so much better all around when we aren’t blamed for something that we didn’t do.