No one likes to make mistakes. At best, it’s merely embarrassing—but at its worst, making mistakes can get you in trouble at work, or with your friends, and depending on the severity of the mistake, it can make you feel pretty bad about yourself.

Despite the fact that we don’t like making mistakes, we all make them, and we make them every day. Just this morning I sprayed my hair with static guard instead of dry shampoo—which I was using because I mistakenly slept too late to have time to wash my hair before taking my kids to school. Admitting this would be embarrassing if I didn’t already know that being a working mom is hard and that all my mom friends make dumb mistakes like this all the time.

It’s harder still to admit when you make a mistake that affects someone else; perhaps it hurts someone’s feelings or damages a friendship. In these cases, admitting fault can be even more important, and can make the friendship stronger in the end.

Mistakes happen in the workplace as well, and here, people seem even more reluctant to admit them. Perhaps it’s because of fear of embarrassment or some kind of negative consequence, or maybe it’s just pride, but I’ve seen people bend over backward to avoid admitting that they did something wrong in the office.

As a manager, when people won’t admit their mistakes, it makes my job pretty difficult, as mistakes are hard to fix if you can’t find the source. If mistakes are reported early on, it makes a business run more efficiently and saves potential future errors from happening.

Finally, as a........

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