Sports blogs are read 100 times more than leadership blogs. So I’m going with Mark McGwire’s apology to raise a leadership point. During the Bob Costa interview, McGwire admitted to his steroid use http://tinyurl.com/yhxqb87 — use he’d been denying for years, even under oath to Congress. I’ll let you call McGwire’s apology a ball or a strike in the zone of authenticity.

First, let’s all get off our high horses – give me a moment to dismount – and move beyond the ball park and into cubical land where most of us work. The mistake is not the point. The point is, when we make them, what do we do next? What’s the leadership move? What’s the impact

we have the opportunity to make after we recognize the mistake?

For the mistake-maker and the mistake-receiver, an authentic apology works, a lame one does not. The truth works, lies do not.  You know this, I know this, we tell our kids this. Well, some of us tell our kids this. Others say “Lie, Baby, Lie.”  Who are these Others?  Execs at Hooker Chemical who created the infamous Love canal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal. Enron traders who called power plants to request power outages, (watch the movie, The Smartest Guys in the Room). Unfortunately, there are lots of Others to choose from. Take malpractice lawyers.

The overwhelming consensus among medical malpractice lawyers, when it comes to conflict resolution and mediation strategies, is to recommend silence when their physician clients are sued for a medical error, http://www.perfectapology.com/medical-malpractice.html.  The leader of South Carolina’s Trial Lawyers Association sums up this conventional wisdom about medical apologies—”I would never introduce a doctor’s apology in court. It is my job to make a doctor look bad in front of a jury, and telling the jury the doctor apologized and tried to do the right thing kills my case.”

More than the case gets killed when the truth is intentionally concealed. And more than the case is revived when the truth is told. Read about the impact of a doctor’s apology on a patient he misdiagnosed http://tinyurl.com/2evph2.The patient was deeply touched; the doctor changed lab procedures to eliminate the same mistake in the future.  That’s the impact I seek.

To authentically apologize, a person has to first take responsibility, not blame, for how they contributed to the mistake happening.  Once this first step is taken, the next steps show up: speak to the people impacted by the mistake. Ask what can be done to correct the impact of the mistake. Listen and get it..

Leaders impact. An authentic apology has the possibility to examine ‘how we do things around here” and how we treat each other. That’s the point. That’s what’s possible when people lead themselves first.

Camille Smith understands what it takes to change at the individual, team and organizational levels. It’s not easy, it’s worth doing, and it’s required of everyone today, not just leaders. Specializing in transformational leadership, Camille provides the knowledge and coaching to teach others to create and sustain breakthroughs in performance. She doesn’t bring the answers, she creates them with you. Reach her at camille@wipcoaching.com.