Confidence isn’t pretending you’re perfect. It’s being secure enough to say, “Yep… that one’s on me.” When you can laugh at your small mistakes: • You lower tension. • You build trust. • You show strength without ego. Taking your work seriously is professionalism. Taking yourself too seriously is ego. The balance? High standards. Light ego. That’s leadership energy. #VelaroMindset
What a quote man!!! 💯
I’ve always admired leaders who can say, “Well… that one’s on me,” and mean it with a slight grin. It keeps the room relaxed without dodging the fix. When people see you own it and move forward, trust tends to increase rather than erode. Be serious about the work, but never overly serious about yourself.
The most intimidating CEO I ever met walked into a board meeting with his shirt inside out. He noticed halfway through his opening remarks. Paused. Looked down. Smiled. "Well. That's a first." The room exhaled. Then laughed. Then listened more deeply than ever before. That moment taught me something the data confirms: people don't follow perfection. They follow 'humanity.' The Stoics called it *equanimity* — the ability to remain undisturbed by what cannot be controlled. Including your own imperfection. A leader who can laugh at himself has already conquered the most dangerous enemy in the room. His own ego.
This is so true especially for leaders. When C suite and CEOs humanize themselves by admitting mistakes and laughing at them, they set the tone for greater psychological safety for the entire organization. I remember when I was in my 20s and became CEO. I was so scared to not show up perfectly. As I let ‘my hair down’ and laughed at myself, this allowed my team to do the same. Through these small mistakes, we actually in turn because more open, and in turn prepared as an organization.
All that depends on where and when you grow up and what kind of education you got I am 62 years old when I got to elementary school it wasn’t till the first grade when the government took over education and they pushed it in our faces and it it was rejected the first couple years and I ended up getting a very good education and my parents taught me well they taught me manners. They taught me how to respect people specially elders, but there’s not a lot of people around anymore that have the ability that I have younger generations have been taught to hate everything and trust no one and government is evil and corporations are evil and plus they’re lazy. They don’t wanna work for anything and they don’t even want to learn how to change a lightbulb or a car tire or even a water pump on a car I can change anything on a car. My dad taught me that when I was nine years old parents don’t teach that anymore and they don’t teach morals anymore.
Watched a senior leader laugh off a process failure in front of the whole team once. Room relaxed instantly. People started admitting their own blockers that had been sitting hidden for weeks. That one moment of "yeah, that was me, pretty bad" unlocked more operational honesty than any retrospective we'd ever run. Ego protects the person. Humility protects the team.
Making fun of yourself is only wise for minor blunders. Showing amusement backfired if people made major errors—it signaled a lack of care: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-pspa0000477.pdf