Want your team to acknowledge their mistakes? Start by acknowledging yours

Admitting a mistake is also the first step toward identifying problems

One of the things most commonly found on the internet are “stock phrases” about how important it is to acknowledge a mistake, learn from it and try to fix it. Just “Google”, for example, the expression “quotes about admitting mistakes” to discover and read thousands of thoughts of this kind.

It is no accident. Exposing and acknowledging mistakes in a truly voluntary, sincere, clear and transparent way is something that requires a certain nobility and courage.

This becomes even harder in certain organizational environments, where people are often blamed in aggressive and cruel ways for the mistakes they make. Or where they are not even allowed to try again, conveying a feeling that everyone must always get it right, which inhibits experimentation and boldness, increasingly necessary in organizations.

Unfortunately, aversion to error is common in companies. In many of them, individuals spend their time hiding their mistakes, “sweeping failures under the rug”, because they are afraid that, if discovered, they may suffer retaliation. For example, losing their job.

This is a big problem for management. In the lean system, there is a completely opposite idea about this. In this model, the goal is to encourage people to expose and admit mistakes. To make this good, praiseworthy, part of the individual's commitment and efficient work.

The underlying concept is simple: admitting a mistake is also the first step toward identifying problems. And, in this way, understanding root causes, thinking of scientific solutions and permanently eliminating the possibility of it happening again.

To this end, the lean system promotes an important separation between people and processes. The idea that most deviations occur not because of people's fault, but because processes are poorly designed.

In this context, there is a fundamental agent: leadership.

If a leader - whether a manager, a director or a CEO - never acknowledges mistakes, and never or almost never admits failures, always presenting himself or herself as the hero who knows everything and makes no mistakes, why would his or her subordinates do any differently?

This is a delicate question, perhaps almost a taboo in traditional companies, whose “bosses” are seen by corporate cultures as “enlightened” beings who cannot make mistakes. Or even in organizations that still follow “command and control”, in which the hierarchical division does not accept leaders who acknowledge mistakes.

There is a lot of room for progress in this respect.

Leaders can and should, indeed, acknowledge mistakes. Not least because many of these failures are the result of bad processes that also affect leaders. And even if they are not, in the case of personal failures, honestly acknowledging a deviation is the first step toward personal growth. It shows character, honesty, personality, humility and other qualities of those who are truly great leaders.

And when you have a boss who acknowledges a mistake and does so in a healthy and productive way, that is, by seeking the root causes and going after possible solutions, this has a very strong symbolic effect on the people he or she leads. They too will feel more comfortable acknowledging the failures they themselves are involved in.

This kind of attitude and openness on the part of leaders is a small part of building psychological safety, which is so much discussed nowadays and which is so necessary for creative and collaborative work environments to exist.