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He owned the wrong numbers
The mistake
He had botched some figures, handed the deck to his boss, who didn't catch it, and the boss passed it to the partner, who probably never looked. The client found the mistake in the meeting, and the team blew past it as fast as they could.
The call
The next day there was a ten-person call with the three people from the meeting and the rest of the team. He knew what was coming and had thought through his answer. The partner brought it up: it was not okay, the numbers were wrong, and it made the team look bad in front of the client.
Taking the blame
He could have pointed out that others hadn't checked the numbers either. Instead he said the partner was right, that he was sorry he had messed it up, that it wouldn't happen again, and that nothing he could say would take it back.
His boss immediately felt bad. The boss told him it wasn't a big deal, that it wasn't his fault, that the team should have checked the numbers too, and not to beat himself up.
Why does owning a mistake make people forgive it?
Psychologist Elliot Aronson and colleagues described the pratfall effect in a 1966 study. A highly competent person who made a small blunder, spilling coffee, was rated as more likable than the same person without the blunder. Admitting an error shows that someone is human without removing the evidence of competence. A plain acknowledgment of fault also leaves the listener with nothing to argue against.
Why does nobody catch the error before the client?
Psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané described the diffusion of responsibility in their 1968 studies of bystander behavior. The more people who could act, the less responsible each one feels. In a chain of reviewers, each person can assume that someone else already checked. The result is a document that passes through several hands and still carries the original mistake.
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