A Bad Shot Isn't Always the Club's Fault

"Terrible drive. Stupid, new $500 driver. Waste of money!"

Sound familiar?

Anyone who's played golf has been there, blaming the clubs for a bad shot. Iif you haven't said it out loud, I bet you've thought it. As silly as that sounds, we do it all the time. We blame others or inanimate objects for our own errors, mistakes, and shortcomings.

Here's the thing about golf, everyone hits terrible shots. It's part of what makes the game great. Some shots are amazing, and others… Well, not so much. But why do we feel the need to blame something else for the shot we just hit?

Ego, perhaps?

We need to self-protect. We don't like the embarrassment of hitting a bad shot in front of our peers. Being who we really are both on the golf course and in life, isn't always easy.

We want to look better than we actually are at that moment.

Where Leadership Enters the Picture

So what does any of this have to do with leadership?

Over the past several years, especially since Brené Brown wrote Dare to Lead, the conversation around perfect leadership has shifted. She wrote about the strength of vulnerability, yes, the strength of being vulnerable.

At first, that didn't compute for me.

My understanding of vulnerability was rooted in weakness, an area at risk of illness or defeat. In my sales career back in the late '90s, I spent years finding competitors' vulnerabilities and exploiting them to win deals. A competitor had tremendous market share, but they had one weak spot. We highlighted that weakness to our advantage.

So vulnerability didn't seem like a strength. It seemed like a liability.

Then I read Dare to Lead. In Brown's context, vulnerability means showing our flaws, our mistakes, our wrong thinking. It allows our team to see we're a real person, not some fake character in a movie. And that? That is a strength.

The Disconnect Between Knowing and Doing

It's been six years since that book came out. There have been thousands of posts and videos seen by millions of people. Yet today, many in sales and leadership still can't admit a mistake. The blame goes to someone else, the team, an associate, whoever else might take the fall for our error.

Here's the paradox… We all know everyone on the planet is flawed. Yet somehow, we don't fall into that flawed category. We might jokingly say, "I'm not perfect," but the moment we show an imperfection, we won't admit it. Strange, isn't it?

We think we're protecting ourselves. But we're actually exposing ourselves to something worse.

Refusing to admit our mistakes signals a deeper problem, low emotional intelligence.

What Emotional Intelligence Really Means

Emotional intelligence isn't just about understanding our emotions. It's about having an accurate picture of ourselves.

Leaders with high emotional intelligence know their flaws intimately. They don't ignore them or pretend they don't exist. They integrate them into their leadership identity, as that's what people trust.

When we deny our mistakes, we're telling our teams that we believe we're infallible. And if we're infallible, what does that say about them when they make a mistake? It creates a culture of fear, not a culture of learning and growth.

Why This Actually Matters

Brené Brown didn't become a bestselling author by accident. She did the research.

People want their leaders to be real. Not some perfect resemblance of a person, but someone who faces the same daily challenges they do. Someone who knows what it's like to fail.

When leaders admit mistakes, something shifts in the room. Team members stop wasting energy protecting themselves and start directing that energy toward the mission. Trust grows and performance improves. Not because perfection was achieved, but because pretense was abandoned.

The Bottom Line

Your team doesn't need a perfect leader.

They need a real one.

And they're waiting for you to go first.

By the way, that driver is a pretty nice club!

Ready to lead with authenticity? Start by admitting one mistake you've been avoiding. See what happens.