Yes, leaders should talk about setbacks, though first in the right circle and once some time has passed. If you soberly explain what went wrong and say what you’re changing as a result, you gain credibility with your team. Silence invites rumours.
A setback here means a missed goal you’re visibly responsible for: A failed project, say, or a lost tender. Whether to talk about it was the subject of a pro-and-con debate in HR Today magazine in 2017, and I took part in it. The question has stayed. My answer has become more precise over the years.
A team almost always notices when something has gone wrong. Deadlines get pushed back, and the boss seems tense in meetings. Without an explanation, the office grapevine fills the gap, and rarely in her favour.
The signal weighs more heavily. If you keep quiet about a setback of your own, you show the team how mistakes are handled here: You hide them. Employees draw their conclusions and report problems later, or stop reporting them at all.
So silence costs twice: First your credibility, then the early warnings an attentive team could give you. A leader needs exactly those warnings most right after a setback.
A lot gets said about error culture in workshops. It only takes effect when the top leader shows how they deal with their own failure. Employees watch this closely. What they see shapes their behaviour more than any mission statement does.
A CEO who tells the leadership team “This acquisition was my decision, and it was wrong” opens up a space. After that, it’s easier for the division head to put her own sales problem on the table.
This role-model effect reaches down and sideways. Peers on the same level notice too that you can talk about your own mistakes here without losing face.
There’s a big difference between open and public. You can explain a setback to the people close to you, because they know you and the circumstances. People who know neither only see the result.
Reputation forms in other people’s perception, and in many companies a mistake still counts as failure. That’s why I recommend a sequence. Your immediate circle and your team come first; a wider audience follows once you can say what you’ve made of the matter.
Distance here means weeks or months, depending on how far you fell. Whatever you can’t yet talk about calmly stays in the small circle for now. With superiors and the board, a separate rule applies: Bad news belongs on the table early, before someone else delivers it.
When the time comes, four rules help. I describe how to prepare conversations like these in more detail in Difficult conversations: 15 ways leaders get the best outcome.
Facts first. What was the goal, and what actually happened? Two or three sentences are enough. Long justifications sound like a speech for the defence.
Your own share. Name what was your responsibility. You can skip the self-accusation, because it forces your listeners to comfort you.
Make the learning visible. Say what you’ll decide differently next time or check earlier. A date on which you report on progress makes the announcement verifiable. Only this part turns the report into an act of leadership.
Keep your feelings in proportion. It’s fine to say you were annoyed. Dwell on your disappointment at length and the attention moves from the team to you.
I consider talking openly about setbacks an underrated leadership skill. Leaders who can calmly tell me in two minutes what went wrong and what they made of it come across as more resilient than those with a spotless CV. In my observation, teams see it much the same way.
I see one limit clearly. In some boards, an admission gets used against you months later, and openness requires a minimum of trust. During ongoing legal proceedings or in the middle of a negotiation, restraint is often wiser.
And I’m sceptical of the fashion for celebrating failure on stage. A setback used as the punchline of your next talk quickly looks calculated. I tend to advise my clients to have the conversation in their own leadership circle, where people know them and where it counts.
Yes, as soon as the team is affected or knows about it anyway. A short, factual word at the start of a meeting is usually enough. What matters is the ending: What changes now?
In the short term that can happen, especially where mistakes are equated with failure. More damage usually comes when it emerges later that you kept something quiet. In my experience, people who take responsibility and draw a lesson tend to earn respect.
For your immediate circle, a few days, so that no rumours start. For a wider audience, as long as it takes until you can talk about it without resentment and name a consequence. That can be a few months.
A mistake is a wrong action, often small and quickly corrected. You speak of a setback when an important goal is missed and others see it. That’s why it touches your reputation more than a single mistake.
Further reading on hofmann.coach: Resilience at work: Getting back on course after setbacks · 13 steps after a disastrous mistake at work · Failure starts in the mind: How leaders interpret setbacks · Fear of failure: How leaders lower it in their teams
Note: This article was first published on 03.05.2017 and was revised and expanded in October 2026.
Cristian Hofmann is an executive coach in Zurich and Schaffhausen (MAS Coaching & Supervision BSO, Forbes contributor). Over more than 20 years he has coached more than 1,500 leaders: CEOs, executive boards and leadership teams in Switzerland, with measurably agreed goals and, on request, pay-for-results. More about Cristian Hofmann.
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