Most of us are leaders in many aspects of our lives. Perhaps we lead and manage a team of employees, and we may also lead our children, other family members, a board of directors or a committee. As leaders, the thing that can get us the most mileage is respect. If we are respected, things happen faster and easier, and people we lead will work harder than they might have if they did not respect us.

In your quest for respect, you may think you have to be perfect—or at least appear to be perfect. But actually, the opposite is true.

Leadership secret 101 : Be flawed!

There are two very important reasons why you should admit it when you miss the boat, forget something, miscalculate, experience an epic failure or otherwise screw up. The first reason why it is good to admit that you are flawed (a.k.a. human!) is that it makes others feel okay with being human themselves. Think about the social response to people we see as flawed in today’s pop culture—we tend to forgive flaws and harshly judge those who try to hide their mistakes (think Charlie Sheen, Alec Baldwin vs. Former Senator John Edwards and Lindsay Lohan). Covering up your mistake, hiding your humanity or trying to blame someone else is never a good idea.

The second reason why admitting to mistakes might work in your favor is because people as a whole tend to have very highly developed brains that let us know when something is not quite right. If you try to hide your mistake, although people may not consciously realize that you are covering something up, they may get a funny little feeling that creates a tiny bit of mistrust—and mistrust cannot ever lead to respect. If it’s respect you crave you will have a much better chance of getting it by copping to your flaw and moving on.

“A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.” – John Burroughs