Mistakes can be opportunities for learning and personal and professional growth. But for that to happen, employees need psychologically safe work environments. jasmine virhia and Grace Lordan writes that by fostering acceptance, respect, and open communication, organizations can unlock the full potential of their teams, allowing them to learn from their mistakes and adopt behaviors that drive collaboration and continuous improvement.
Taking responsibility for mistakes is daunting, especially if your ego is easily bruised or your professional reputation is at stake. However, acknowledging your mistakes will lead to more innovative problem solving and demonstrate objectivity toward your past actions. It will also make your colleagues trust you more. Fundamentally, how we judge our own mistakes, or how others judge our mistakes, has the potential to have lasting impacts on our career path.
Psychological safety
There are benefits to making mistakes in the workplace that we typically don’t consider. Framing mistakes as opportunities for learning and personal growth depends on psychologically safe work environments, within which leaders can set a precedent. Vulnerable leadership (in which leaders openly share their imperfections, uncertainties, and emotions) has additional benefits that likely interact with the sharing of mistakes and career paths. A vulnerable leadership style not only fosters work environments based on trust and authenticity, but also increases the humility that leaders express. In turn, teams increase their improvement-oriented behaviors, which means overall performance also increases.
Leaders who model a healthy approach to mistakes also set a powerful example for employees. When leaders acknowledge their own mistakes, take responsibility, and demonstrate resilience in the face of setbacks, they inspire employees to do the same. This fosters an environment where everyone is committed to improvement and collectively embraces challenges as opportunities to evolve.
Mistakes can become integral components of the learning process rather than sources of fear or guilt, and viewing mistakes as opportunities for growth encourages employees to engage in self-reflection. Instead of fearing mistakes, employees are more likely to analyze what went wrong, identify areas for improvement, and develop strategies to avoid similar mistakes in the future. This process of self-reflection leads to continued development and greater self-awareness. When employees are encouraged to learn from their mistakes, their skills and knowledge constantly improve. Over time, this continuous development translates into greater productivity. As employees become more adept at recognizing and rectifying errors, they contribute to smoother workflows and more efficient processes. In an environment where mistakes are accepted as part of the growth process, employees are more inclined to think innovatively. They are more likely to propose unconventional solutions, challenge existing norms and contribute to the evolution of the organization. This mindset drives innovation and positions the organization as adaptable and forward-thinking.
Bugs are treated differently
It’s clear that paying attention to how errors are handled in our workplaces has many benefits. Unfortunately, not all mistakes are judged equally. While we can only speculate that all underrepresented talent experiences differences in the way mistakes are handled, leading to worse outcomes in terms of pay, progression and promotion, there is strong evidence that this is the case for women. Yes, there seems to be a lot of truth to the saying that men “fail” much more often than women.
Economic research indicates that discrimination, channeling problems, occupational choice and limitations in terms of care are the main factors that explain the differences in labor market outcomes between men and women. However, more recent work has begun to consider how the treatment of errors differs between men and women. Lordan and Wills (2024) draw on a unique survey of professional workers to demonstrate that there are gender differences in the treatment of errors. In this survey, participants were asked to rate the likelihood of three statements using a 7-point Likert scale. These are “I would feel comfortable telling my company about a mistake I made” (Errors-Comfort), “I would be penalized for the mistake I made” (Errors-Penalize), and “Mistakes would be seen as learning opportunities in my company.” ” (Errors-Learning Opportunity). Analyzing this data, the authors found that women and men have different perceptions about the handling of errors in the workplace, which interacts with the proportion of men in the environment. More specifically, women experience errors in a much more negative way when they are in roles where there is a large proportion of men. In contrast, both men and women have the most positive perceptions of errors when working in environments with a low proportion of men.
Conclusions
It is clear that accepting mistakes is of great importance in the workplace. By establishing psychologically safe environments based on acceptance, respect and open communication, organizations can unlock the full potential of their teams, allowing them to adopt behaviors that drive collaboration, learning and continuous improvement. The opportunity for employees to reflect on themselves improves productivity at work over time. Additionally, creating cultures where learning and development are encouraged to overcome any negativity bias (where more attention is paid to something bad), can generate greater trust between employees and leaders. But it is imperative that all colleagues experience their mistakes equally!
- This blog post represents the views of the authors, not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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