It's amazing what becomes newsworthy these days. Just last month, there was a lot of press about the fact that President Biden tripped while climbing the stairs of Air Force One. I suspect that the opposition political party would love to make this a bigger issue, but this may not have the intended impact on voters. History repeats itself, or so it seems here. During the early years of the television show, Saturday Night Live (in my opinion, the seasons with the original cast members will always be the best years), the comedian Chevy Chase used to impersonate President Gerald Ford. Chase used to overplay the narrative that President Ford was a klutz. President Ford had famously stumbled down the steps of Air Force One during a visit to Salzburg, Austria in 1975. Reportedly, the young comedian Chase was indignant that Ford "had never been elected, period, so I never felt he deserved to be there to begin with" and wanted to poke fun at the President. His impressions of Ford as a bumbling idiot did not have the intended effect. Ford was humanized and perhaps more popular.
According to the Pratfall effect, when a person makes a mistake or acts in a clumsy way that makes people laugh, they are found to be more likeable, more human, less threatening, and maybe even more credible. Avoiding politics this time, consider the actress Jennifer Lawrence and her famous stumble at the 2013 Academy Awards. She had just won her first Academy Award for the movie Silver Linings Playbook. As she ascended the stairs to the stage to accept the award, she fell. Again, the fall made this talented movie star seem more like the rest of us, and the audience loved her even more for it.
The term "pratfall" means basically to fall on your butt. Back in the late 1960's, the psychologist Elliot Aronson conducted a study in which he brought subjects from the University of Minnesota into the laboratory to listen to another college student (an actor) being interviewed for a trivia show called the College Bowl. During some of the interviews, the actor would answer almost all of the trivia questions (all of which were difficult questions to answer) correctly, while in other interviews the actor would answer around one-third of the questions correctly. The subjects were then told that the "superstar" contestant had a stellar high school career and was a star athlete, while the "average" contestant earned only average grades in high school and wasn't a star athlete. Finally, towards the end of the interview, some of the videotaped portions of the interview recorded the contestant spilling a cup of coffee and apologizing for doing so, while in other cases this portion of the interview was left out.
The study subjects were asked to rate the likeability and attractiveness of each contestant. For the "average" contestant, the blunder at the end decreased his attractiveness. Conversely, the blunder for the "superstar" contestant actually increased his attractiveness. These findings were published in the journal Psychonomic Science in 1966 and have been replicated in a number of studies since that time.
Bottom line, making mistakes makes us seem more human. As leaders, we don't need to be fearful about how we may be perceived following a mistake or error. By acknowledging the mistake and taking responsibility for our actions, our teams will appreciate us even more for it. As proof (perhaps), the Pratfall effect has famously been cited as one reason (maybe THE reason) why President John F. Kennedy's popularity actually increased following the botched Bay of Pigs invasion at the beginning of his presidency. He was honest, open, and transparent following the mistakes his Administration made, and he accepted full responsibility for them. And the people loved him for it.
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