Standing in front of an audience of 80 senior marketing and advertising leaders from around the world, the words that came out of my mouth were, “Let’s play with that under the covers and come back to it later.”
The audience immediately exploded into laughter. And, as one of only four American men who still blush, I could feel my face turn bright red.
My statement was a completely random brain seizure. I had intended to trot out something like the tech cliche, “Let’s take that offline.” Sadly, that’s not what came out of my mouth.
This article argues that you too will eventually say something stupid. This article will also tell you the obvious: apologize quickly and loudly. But it also shares how stupid accidentally became brilliant.
The Math Problem
To be a great leader, be a great listener — continually learning from people around you at every level of the organization.
Yet, leaders spend a huge amount of time talking — communicating long term strategies, giving career advice, touching projects periodically to ensure they are on course, and providing guidance day to day.
Do the math. Imagine being an executive that talks for two hours a day out of a minimum of 8-10 working hours per day. Over a ten year period, that adds up to 4,900 hours talking (assuming three weeks off a year). Unless you spend your day spouting platitudes, there are just too many opportunities to put your foot in your mouth.
My Stupid Comment
As the head of global advertising for a Fortune 100 company, I hosted annual summit meetings in each region that brought together media agency leaders, the in-house ad team, and key internal stakeholders like product or campaigns marketing. Roughly 80 senior leaders at each summit. We always finished with an “ask anyone anything” round to ensure that sticking to the agenda didn’t bury issues that might be lurking.
One year, an attendee asked a tough question that I was not comfortable expressing an opinion about without first engaging my own leadership team. I worried that my opinion would become “the” answer when the topic merited real discussion and not a snap comment.
In the tech industry, it is common to say, “let’s take that offline” to move a topic to the side. But it can come across as evasive. So for some reason, the words that came out of my mouth were, “Let’s play with that under the covers and come back to it later.”
Apologize Quickly and Loudly
Obviously, you need to immediately apologize and then correct yourself. The sooner that is done, the less damage you will do.
In my case, I quickly rephrased my answer, acknowledged the importance of the topic, and pledged to follow-up after the summit.
Turning Lead Into Gold
You won’t be surprised to hear that, in the months that followed, my loving colleagues reminded me constantly about my stupid comment.
Unprompted by me, this also triggered a mini-movement collecting “stupid comments” from across the virtual team.
Our brilliant young analytics person, @AnjaBarthelemy unwittingly signed up when she publicly argued that, “I’m not anal, I just like everything to be organized and in its place.”
Future CMO @CariluDietrich mentioned in passing that she had a secret love for Cheetos, “…but the orange dust freaks me out, so I eat them with chopsticks”.
By the next global summit, a dozen particularly ridiculous statements had been collected and a contest was added to the agenda. It challenged people to match each anonymous comment with the person who said it.
Purely by accident, my colleagues had turned lead into gold — turned my personal embarrassment into a tool that humanized and connected people across the virtual team.
Magical… and my only contribution was saying something stupid.