Jason Pfeiffer (3:04)
You messed up or something went wrong. Your first instinct, no matter what, is to just hide. You know, to act like it didn't happen or to feel a wave of shame. But wait, you should know this. According to research, your mistakes make you more likable, so long as you present them properly. Today, I'm going to show you what to do and why it works and how to use errors to your advantage. But first, let's start with a simple, funny, charmingly effective example. So would you buy coffee from these people? Maybe you've seen this image floating around online. I love it. I saved it a couple years ago. Like, trot it out every once in a while. So imagine a sandwich board, you know, like a big chalkboard that's sitting outside of a coffee shop. And just in big, blocky letters, somebody wrote this. Come in and try the worst coffee One woman on TripAdvisor had in her life. It's pretty great, isn't it? I love that sandwich board. All time favorite sandwich board. And this image, it's gone viral for years. Every time I see it, I. I want to try their coffee. And I was thinking about this sign recently because it reminded me of a charming Idina Menzel video. Did you see this by chance? So let me just describe it. So this is a. Just a, you know, video that somebody in the audience made at one of her shows. And it says, queen Idina Menzel struggling with Let it Go finale. And so first, what you hear is star. Okay, so she. She did not nail that note. I'm no singer, but she didn't nail that note. And then the next thing you see is her just admitting it to the audience, like. Like the Star Spangled Banner. You all know I screwed it up. And then she takes another couple cracks at it. Oh, my God. I just. I want to be perfect, but it's a really hard song to sing all the time. Let the snow break. Anyway, it keeps on going. People absolutely love her for this. Love her for this. And it got me wondering why, like, why do our brains find errors so appealing and charming? Is there a reason for it? And better yet, is there a way to control for it? After Some research. I found an answer. So this is actually a known psychological phenomenon. It is called the pratfall effect. And it might just be the most liberating science you've ever heard. So let's talk about the science of lovable mistakes. Here's the origin story. In 1966, a psychologist named Elliot Aronson published an interesting experiment. He gathered a group of college students and split them up into four groups. Each group listened to a recording of someone taking a quiz, but with some key differences. So here's what each group heard. The first group heard the person doing okay on the quiz, and that's it. The second group heard the person doing okay on the quiz and then accidentally spilling coffee on themselves at the end. The third group heard the person ace the quiz. And the fourth group heard the person ace the quiz and then spill coffee on themselves at the end. Afterwards, participants rated how likable the quiz taker that they heard was. And here were the results. The most likable person was the person who aced the quiz and then spilled coffee on themselves. The least likable person was the person who did okay on the quiz and then spilled coffee on themselves. And the people who didn't spill coffee, whether they aced the quiz or not, were rated about the same. In short, what we learned is mistakes can make someone either more or less likable based on how competent they already appear. In 1966, Aronson called this the pratfall effect. So why does this work? If you ace a quiz and then spill coffee on yourself, you're lovable. But if you fail that quiz and then spill coffee on yourself, you're just a hot mess. Over the years, researchers have repeated this, but also found many nuances to it. The effect can change based on someone's self esteem, the context of the mistake, and more, but the general pattern holds. So again, why? Here's the thinking. People admire perfection, but they don't relate to perfect people. Perfection makes someone seem intimidating and inauthentic. Mistakes, on the other hand, make people more relatable and human. Their vulnerability triggers our empathy. And when someone slips up, we feel like they're not hiding anything. And that builds trust. For example, that Idina Menzel clip was posted by a fan of hers, and she wrote in the caption of that video, she wrote, I love going to see real and genuine people on the stage. And this was one of my favorite moments of the night. So you see it right there. This fan wasn't there to see Idina be perfect. She was there to see Idina be a real person. And flaws enabled that to happen. So how do you use your flaws? There are endless applications of the pratfall effect, but here are a few that come to mind. First, number one, marketing. Did you or your brand make a mistake? Did something go wrong? Well, ask yourself, can I use this without undercutting my competency? The coffee shop sandwich board was a perfect version of this. By acknowledging, quote, the worst coffee one woman on TripAdvisor had in her life, end quote. It displayed confidence and competence. It was almost daring you to try their coffee. And I'm also reminded of this brilliant apology from KFC a couple years ago. Do you remember this? So it ran out of chicken in the UK because of a distributor issue, and then it published this ad in some UK papers. Imagine a kind of messy red background and then a tipped over bucket of kfc, except that it says fck instead of KFC fck. And then underneath it says we're sorry. A chicken restaurant without any chicken. It's not ideal. Huge apologies to our customers, especially those who traveled, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, so it was funny, but it was also earnest. The first words were we're sorry. KFC pledged to make it right. The ad was so well received because for customers who love kfc, this humanized the company. So, okay, so that's the first way to use pratfall effect. It is with marketing. Now let's talk about leadership. Number two, leadership. No leader is perfect, which is why overconfident leaders are insufferable. So long as your team trusts you, they will appreciate when you acknowledge your own mistakes. It shows that you accept responsibility and that you're open to learning and growing alongside them, and that you won't hold them to impossible and unfair standards. And here's a third way to use the pratfall effect in writing and speaking. I share my mistakes in this podcast all the time. Anyone who's listened knows that Nicole does it too. And those episodes always drive the most engagement. People reach out and thank me for my vulnerability. I do the same thing on stage in my keynote talks. Many of my talk segments are actually built around a mistake that I made and then what I learned as a result. Again, people thank me afterwards for being vulnerable. And I don't mean to sound calculated, but to me, none of this is actually being vulnerable. I know that my audience will like these things. That's because I'm following a very pratfall effect like formula for sharing my errors. And here it goes. The formula is this. Number one, I display or explain that I am good at something. Number two, I describe what went wrong. And number three, I immediately pivot into what I learned that helped me become better. When I give a talk, for example, I never open by describing a failure. Instead, I spend time displaying my competence and only then get into a failure story. This way, I'm using my mistakes to humanize my skills rather than to define myself as a failure. And now, here's the best part. To be clear, I am not saying you share every error that would come off as performative or like you're just incompetent. Instead, I'm saying this. Now you have a choice. You have a way to evaluate which mistakes to make and which mistakes to make. Actually, I'm just going to keep that in there. That was a mistake. That doesn't make any sense. You are not going to be able to choose which mistakes to make, but you can choose. You can choose which mistakes to share and how best to share them. Usually when I stumble, I cut things out from the episode, but that was just so meta that I'm keeping it. Anyway. When something goes wrong, you can ask yourself, does my audience already view me as competent? And if so, does this make me more likable? And if the answer to both those questions is yes, then that mistake wasn't bad at all. It was the thing that makes you even more competent and even more likable and even more awesome than you already are. Help Wanted is a production of Money News Network. Help Wanted is hosted by me, Jason.
