4 ways owning up to your mistakes helps you—and everyone else

Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson’s groundbreaking work about the importance of psychological safety in the workplace shed new light on building teams that are not afraid to innovate and take risks. But those risks don’t always end up the way we want them to—and it appears that many companies may not be fostering that sense of safety that is so important for workers to take risks and make mistakes.

According to recent research from business publishing company Wiley, only 53% of individual contributors said they feel safe taking risks at their organizations, compared to 64% of managers and 76% of executives. Across the board, contributors (ranging from middle managers to individual contributors) feel unable to raise problems and tough issues at work, the research found.

That’s a problem—and could be holding people back in a variety of ways, says performance expert Eduardo Briceño, author of The Performance Paradox: Turning the Power of Mindset into Action. When we fail to admit our mistakes, we risk escalating problems that could do damage to the organization and our reputations.

Builds trust and credibility

When you know that someone is going to be truthful and straightforward with you, it’s easier to trust them, Briceño says. “They understand that if we are making a mistake, we’re talking about it. We’re not hiding things from them,” he says. “People feel like they really believe that we’re being open and honest with them.”

If you’re generally competent in your job, owning up to missteps is likely going to reinforce the feeling that you’re a straight shooter. And even in cases where an individual is still learning or lack elements of competence or knowledge in our jobs, when we’re committed to correcting or improving ourselves, admitting mistakes and asking for input to correct them helps us get better and build greater competence, Briceño says.

Encourages collaboration

When you admit mistakes and are open to feedback and guidance to correct the situation, you create an environment where people can collaborate on a solution, Briceño says. Start with your own thinking about solutions to show that you’ve thought through the situation, he adds. “Just being honest and saying, ‘I was doing my best here, and here was my thinking. Here’s where I went wrong,’” he suggests. Then, share your thoughts on a solution and invite others to share their insights about the best action to take and how to avoid a similar situation in the future.

As far as whom to ask, that depends on your organizational culture, he says. You may want to get feedback from your boss or a mentor first if the situation isn’t urgent and won’t escalate in the time it takes to get that feedback.

Creates teaching moments

Briceño points to organizations like Netflix and Skratch Labs that use mistakes and failures as learning experiences. He says that Netflix encourages team members to share mistakes through an online form or in meetings to help others learn. Skratch Labs shares great successes and failures in company meetings. “They have a process where they bring everyone back to the decision point. They think about what information the team had; and what their thinking was. They raise what the team did well that follows the company values,” he says. With that kind of objective analysis after the fact, the situation can yield key lessons for others in similar situations and what to take forward in future decision-making.

Changes thinking about mistakes

Briceño says that the more team members admit mistakes within an organization, the more they are seen as normal. “This helps us get more comfortable with mistakes,” he says and “be able to better think about them and talk about them. Our mental models about mistakes change, and that also reduces our stress and anxiety because we have realistic expectations about humans.”

Together, these benefits help build a culture of collaboration for learning, performance, collaboration and transparency, Briceño says. And while he admits that, sometimes, people may work in environments where their mistakes can be used against them. Admitting mistakes in such environments can be risky, but doing so may also reveal when a work environment is toxic and it’s time to leave.

“If we are in a toxic environment, where other people might use that information against us unfairly, for example, I think we still always want to admit the mistake to ourselves,” he says. “And if we’re in a toxic situation, ideally we want to get out of it—either by changing the culture or by going to a different place.”

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