If you've used ChatGPT, you've seen the small text at the bottom of the screen:
“ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.”
I noticed it again the other day and thought (and wrote on LinkedIn) — I need the same disclaimer on every LinkedIn post, email, and blog post I write.
“Mark can make mistakes. Check important info.”
Actually, forget “can.” I will make mistakes. It's not a possibility. It's a guarantee. The question is whether I catch them before you do, and the answer is often no.
At least ChatGPT is being upfront about it.
The Strange Thing About Disclaimers
Most people assume that admitting you could be wrong costs you credibility. But when ChatGPT tells you it might be wrong, something odd happens. You trust it more. Not despite the disclaimer — because of it.
No. You trust it more. You trust it more than if it said nothing, and far more than if it claimed to always be correct. A claim of perfection triggers suspicion. A claim of fallibility triggers something closer to alliance. It matches your lived experience, and when what someone says matches what you already know to be true, you lean in rather than pull away.
This runs against a deeply held assumption in most workplaces — that admitting you might be wrong undermines your credibility. What the ChatGPT disclaimer suggests is that the opposite might be closer to the truth.
The Hidden Cost of Projecting Certainty
Think about the last time someone in your organization sat on bad news a little too long. Not because they were hiding it. Because they weren't sure the leader actually wanted to hear it.
A leader who always projects certainty isn't just being overconfident. They're cutting off their own supply lines. People around them learn, quickly, what kind of information is welcome and what isn't. They filter. They hedge. They wait and see. The bad news travels slowly or not at all, and the leader makes decisions based on what people thought the leader wanted to hear.
This isn't a culture problem in the abstract. It's an operational problem with direct costs. Decisions get made on incomplete information. Problems stay hidden until they're expensive. Improvement stalls because nobody is willing to surface the things that need improving.
At Toyota, this insight is baked into the production system itself. Any team member can pull an andon cord to flag a problem — and the expectation is that they will. At well-functioning Toyota plants, the cord is pulled thousands of times a day. At a Ford plant that copied the physical system but not the culture behind it, the cord was pulled twice a week.
Same tool. Radically different information flow.
The difference wasn't mechanical. It was whether people believed it was safe to say something was wrong.
The organizations that surface problems fastest are the ones that fix them fastest. And you don't get fast problem-surfacing from leaders who perform certainty.
Going First
In my book The Mistakes That Make Us, I share a story about a leader who was asked at a town hall, “What's your favorite mistake?” He could have deflected. Instead, he shared a real one — a personal story about extending a business trip and the impact it had on his family. That moment didn't weaken his standing in the room. It made everyone else a little more willing to be honest, too.
Dan Pink, in his research on regret, points to something relevant here: when we share something vulnerable, we tend to assume others will think less of us. The research suggests the opposite — people admire the candor, empathize with the experience, and respect the willingness to say it out loud.
Amy Edmondson, the Harvard researcher who has studied psychological safety for decades, includes “acknowledge your own fallibility” in her recommendations for leaders who want teams that speak up and improve. Not as a performance of humility. As a factual statement about how the world works.
Related post: Amy Edmondson on Psychological Safety, Speaking Up, and Learning at Work
When a leader says, “I may be missing something — what are you seeing?” it signals that being wrong is a normal part of doing work. And it makes it easier for everyone else to say the same. Toyota built entire production systems around this insight — that surfacing a problem quickly is the beginning of improvement, not the end of someone's credibility.
Disclaimers as Competitive Advantage
The leaders who project certainty at all times aren't building confidence. They're building distance. People around them learn to filter, to hedge, to wait and see. The information flow gets worse. The problems stay hidden longer.
Meanwhile, the leader who says “I could be wrong about this” tends to get better information, faster. Not because the words are magic, but because they match reality — and people respond to honesty about reality more than they respond to performances of competence.
In a world where almost every leader defaults to projecting certainty, the one who signals fallibility is doing something genuinely unusual. And unusual signals get noticed. They're memorable precisely because they're rare. The disclaimer becomes a differentiator — not because it's a clever move, but because almost nobody else is willing to do it.
A disclaimer isn't a weakness. It's a trust signal. It says: a human is involved here. I'm paying attention. I care enough to be honest with you about the limits of what I know.
Why It's Still Hard
I'm not suggesting we add literal fine print to our emails. And I don't think the reason more leaders don't do this is that they haven't read the right article. The barrier is more visceral than that.
Admitting fallibility feels like it has infinite downside and no immediate upside. You can picture exactly how it could go wrong — the room going quiet, the board exchanging glances, someone mistaking honesty for incompetence. The upside is harder to picture because it's never a single dramatic moment.
It arrives as a slow accumulation: better information, earlier warnings, people who trust you enough to tell you what you actually need to hear.
That's the hard part. The payoff is real, but it's distributed over time and across decisions. The risk feels concentrated in one visible moment. So the math never quite seems to work — even when it does.
I'm not sure what changes that calculus for the leader who hasn't tried it yet. Maybe it's watching someone else go first and seeing that the room didn't collapse. Maybe it's the accumulating cost of finding out about problems too late. Maybe it's just exhaustion from maintaining the performance.
What I do notice is that the leaders who start — even awkwardly — tend not to go back.
One takeaway from this article is that admitting when you are wrong actually builds more trust instead of making you seem less knowledgeable. When managers or leaders recognize and admit they are wrong, workers feel more encouraged to speak up and dive deeper into their tasks. This also helps everyone communicate better and allows the organization to run more effectively and efficiently. When it comes to my green belt project, it is important to keep in mind that everyone may make mistakes, and it is best to admit when you do not understand something or are wrong instead of keeping to yourself. You are limiting your growth potential if you do not admit or act on something that you got wrong.
I enjoyed reading this blog by Mark Graban and read his comparisons about how chat GPT “can make mistakes” and how leaders act in certain situations. A point that really stood out for me was how lots of leaders struggle with admitting that they were wrong about a situation, even though this would benefit the team and work environment. In lean environments it is very important to speak your mind, especially leaders. Employees are always encouraged to speak up and identify issues. It becomes a problem when even the leader or boss will not speak up which sets a bad example for employees. This blog shows how uncertainty can actually bring teams closer together because and create more openness. By having leaders admit that they are unsure of an answer, it creates an atmosphere that feels much more open to sharing ideas or concerns rather than people hiding them. This is a good connection to our class because it is demonstrating that problems are just opportunities for improvement.
Loved this post. It’s wild how something as simple as I might be wrong can completely change how people respond to you. Most leaders act like admitting a mistake is the worst thing ever, but in reality its a good thing. The Toyota example nails it, you can copy the tool, but you can’t fake the culture. People pull the cord when they believe it’s safe, so in places that support mistakes it gets pulled a lot more.
What sticks with me is how backwards our instincts are as people. Leaders think certainty builds confidence, but it doesn’t. Meanwhile, the leader who says I could be missing something ends up getting better info, faster, because people don’t feel like they’re interrupting a performance. Honesty is so important in leadership as well as not always needing to have the answer.