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Remember when you were a kid and broke your mom’s favorite vase? You had a split-second decision to make: confess immediately or concoct an elaborate story about the dog, the wind, or maybe even a small earthquake? That same impulse follows us into adulthood, except now the stakes are higher and the vases are a lot more expensive. Two back-to-back client disasters taught me something surprising about honesty, trust, and the one thing most of us get wrong when we mess up.
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. This is episode 685, “The Honesty Advantage,” and I’m Darrell Darnell. Tomorrow I turn 50, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
Mistakes are unavoidable. To err is human after all, right?
And yet many of us, in fact, probably all of us at least at some point, have tried to cover up a mistake and act as if it didn’t happen. Maybe we hope others won’t notice. Or if they do notice, maybe they won’t say anything. They’ll just let it go and we’ll be off the hook.
Or how about this scenario: We make a mistake and we do get called out on it. We want to seem less foolish, less incompetent, less vulnerable. So when someone approaches us about the mistake, we offer up excuses. Reasons to justify why the oversight happened or why we dropped the ball. We deflect responsibility to someone or something beyond our control. We pass blame.
Now, to be fair, there are times when something beyond our control is genuinely the reason for a mistake. Times when we communicated clearly, did what we were supposed to do, checked all the boxes, and still things fell apart. Maybe in this situation you call out the person you trusted or the thing you expected to work properly but didn’t. You throw those people or those things under the bus.
These are natural responses to dealing with mistakes. We’ve all done it.
But here’s the question: To those on the receiving end of the mistake, are these reactions satisfying? When you’re on the receiving end and someone offers up a bunch of excuses, does it remedy the situation? Does it help you feel better about it?
Probably not. In fact, probably almost never.
When you’re leading a team and serving a lot of clients with a lot of moving parts, it’s only a matter of when a mistake will happen, not if. We owe it to our clients and our team to always bring our best. We create systems with quality checks that minimize mistakes. But no system, no team is perfect.
A few months ago we had a week where mistakes happened that were completely unexpected. The first had to do with a missed meeting.
One of our team members was scheduled to meet with a new client to start the process of creating some visual branding. This particular team member has been on my team for nearly a decade. Never once, not one single time, have I known him to miss a meeting. He’s the kind of guy who shows up ten minutes early with his notes organized and his coffee already half-finished.
To ensure meetings aren’t missed, we have scheduling apps and automatic reminders that go out to every attendee. It’s a system we’ve relied on for years. When the meeting time arrived, the client showed up. And waited. And waited. And waited.
Twenty minutes later I got an email letting me know that he’d been blown off and was quite unhappy.
I don’t blame him.
I immediately replied and told the client that I was genuinely surprised because I’d never known this team member to miss a meeting. I let him know that I’d dig in and find out what was going on. In fact, it was so unusual that I thought something might be physically wrong or that an emergency might have taken place.
The next day, a similar situation occurred.
One of our clients messaged me to let me know a deadline had been missed and their content had not been published on time. While this type of situation isn’t as rare as a completely missed meeting, it’s still quite unusual. We have systems in place specifically to make sure it doesn’t happen. What made this situation even more unusual was that the client had tried reaching out to their account manager but hadn’t received a reply.
Of course, I once again jumped in and tried to get to the bottom of it. How was it that we’d not only missed a publishing deadline, but our account manager wasn’t responding to communication? We all know there’s an audience around the world expecting that content, waiting for it to get published. When it doesn’t publish on time, minutes feel like hours and stress rises quickly.
So what happened with these situations?
For the missed meeting, it turned out that my team member had double booked. It was his wife’s birthday and he’d scheduled a lunch date with her. He’d completely overlooked the reminders and had only been thinking about taking care of his wife that day. A sweet gesture. A human moment. And a legitimate mistake.
As for the content not getting published, we had a breakdown in our system. The account manager missed a notification and thought the content had been scheduled when it hadn’t. As for why she wasn’t responding to messages, the mistake happened while she was out of the office attending her daughter’s awards ceremony and end-of-year class party. Again, a completely understandable situation. But still our mistake.
In each case, we were at fault. Neither of these issues should have occurred. And for the second issue, we should have had better internal communication so that we had coverage on the account during the account manager’s absence.
I had a choice to make.
I could offer explanations that sounded like excuses. I could soften the blow with justifications. I could make it seem like these were unavoidable circumstances completely outside our control. After all, the reasons were legitimate. Birthday lunches and school parties are important. Life happens.
But to me, the best way to handle these situations was simple: own up to our mistakes.
For the missed meeting, I replied to the client and said, “I just spoke with [the team member], and my understanding is that he’s already reached out to you with an apology and explanation. I also apologize for the situation. It’s not reflective of how we normally do business, nor is it reflective of how [the team member] normally operates. I’m confident your experience with him will be much better moving forward. Please reach out to me if you need anything else. I’m always here to help in any way I can.”
The client replied and said, “Thanks Darrell, these things happen. I completely understand [the team member’s] explanation. The old saying is true…happy wife, happy life!”
For the other issue with the late content publishing, we took the same approach; honesty, accountability, and a genuine apology. The client had a similar response to our account manager. She said, “Thanks so much for getting back to me—and for the thoughtful explanation. I totally get it. This is such a full season, and it sounds like you’ve had your hands more than full (congrats to your daughters, by the way!).”
In both cases, grace was extended. Understanding was given. The relationships remained intact.
Here’s what I learned.
When you make a mistake (and you will make mistakes) the single most powerful thing you can do is own it. Completely. Honestly. Without hedging.
There’s something disarming about simple honesty. When someone messes up and immediately says, “I’m sorry. This was my fault. Here’s what happened, and here’s how I’m going to make it right,” it stops the blame game before it starts. It shifts the conversation from finger-pointing to problem-solving. It builds trust instead of eroding it.
When we offered excuses or deflected responsibility in the past, we might have felt temporarily protected. But excuses don’t build trust. They build suspicion. The person on the receiving end might nod along, but inside they’re thinking, “So you’re telling me this wasn’t your fault? Then whose fault was it? And if it wasn’t your fault this time, will it be your fault next time?”
But when we’re honest, when we simply say, “We messed up. This shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry,” something shifts. The person who was wronged suddenly has space to extend grace. They can relate. They’ve been there. They know what it’s like to be human.
Because here’s the truth: most people aren’t looking for perfection. They’re looking for integrity. They want to know that when something goes wrong, you’ll be honest about it. They want to know they can trust you to tell the truth, even when the truth doesn’t make you look good.
That’s what accountability does. It says, “I value this relationship more than I value protecting my ego.” It says, “I’m more committed to doing what’s right than to looking like I’m right.” It says, “You can trust me, even when I fail.”
In both of these situations, we told the truth. We didn’t hide behind our systems or blame the calendar apps or point fingers at circumstances. We simply said, “This was our responsibility, and we didn’t deliver. We’re sorry.” And because we were honest, our clients gave us grace and understanding. The trust in our relationships was maintained, maybe even strengthened.
But here’s the second part of this lesson, and it’s just as important: just because someone extends grace doesn’t mean we get to move on without learning from the mistake.
Grace is a gift. It’s unearned and undeserved. When our clients responded with understanding instead of anger, it would have been easy to breathe a sigh of relief and move on. Crisis averted. Relationship intact. Let’s get back to business.
But that’s not enough.
After we apologized to our clients and received their grace, we had to turn inward. We had to look at our systems, our processes, and our communication. We had to ask the hard questions: Why did this happen? What broke down? How do we make sure it doesn’t happen again?
For the missed meeting, we talked about backup systems and better calendar management. For the missed deadline, we talked about coverage protocols and clearer communication when team members are out of the office. We didn’t just say “we’re sorry” and hope it wouldn’t happen again. We took action to make sure it wouldn’t.
Mistakes are opportunities. They reveal the cracks in our systems. They show us where we’re vulnerable. They give us a chance to learn, to grow, to improve. But only if we’re willing to do the hard work after the apology.
Accountability without action is just words. And words without follow-through eventually become meaningless.
So here’s the challenge: The next time you make a mistake, whether it’s with a client, a coworker, a friend, or your spouse, resist the urge to make excuses. Don’t deflect. Don’t justify. Don’t pass blame. Just own it. Be honest about what happened and what you’re going to do to make it right.
And then, here’s the critical part, actually do the work to make it right. Don’t just rely on the grace you received. Use the mistake as an opportunity to grow. Fix what’s broken. Improve what’s weak. Learn the lesson so you don’t have to repeat it.
Because here’s what I’ve discovered: people will extend grace to someone who’s honest. But they’ll extend trust to someone who’s honest and who learns from their mistakes.
And trust? That’s the foundation of every meaningful relationship, in business and in life.
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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