I’ve been talking at length about credibility here for the last few days on the blog, and not only am I about to do it again, I’m also about to offer an object lesson along with it.

You might have noticed, yesterday, that two of my posts, one on unexpected absences and one on sticking to a schedule, went up pretty close together.  See, that’s because you were actually supposed to read the one on scheduling yesterday.  I accidentally published right after writing it instead of holding it in drafts, so you got two posts on Tuesday.

Screwups like that are inevitable.  Let me say that nice and big for the kids in the cheap seats: INEVITABLE.

You’re going to drop a ball somewhere.  You’re going to say he when you mean she, or misquote somebody or do something that reflects poorly on your credibility.  Maybe–but hopefully not–someday you’ll get so passionate about an issue that you’ll pull a Kanye West.

But either way, no matter what screwup you make, whether it’s yanking a mike away from a teenage girl half your size to deliver insane diatribes about Beyonce or making two posts in one day when you’d planned to make only one, the loss to your credibility by making the screwup will generally (even in Kanye’s case) at least be lessened by your willingness to stand up and take responsibility for it.  Of course, there’s also something to be said for not making screwups in the first place but, being human, these things have a way of happening.

So just remember, the most credible people aren’t those whose information is never wrong, it’s those who, when it IS wrong, will be accountable for it.

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