I once had a yearly performance review. I got hit pretty hard cause my boss said that I admitted when I made mistakes to other staff members that reported to me. He said he viewed this is a "sign of weakness" on my part.

I told him I thought this was total BS. That what would really make me look weak is making up false excuses to try to justify mistakes in judgement or attempting to blame them on somebody else.

He didn't agree. I quickly found another, better job.

I guess Mark Penn went to the same management school as my former boss.