Mistakes can happen at work. As a manager, how you react and respond to them can influence the culture of your team. When we react with blame or criticism, it can create an environment of fear and distrust. What you want to do, is foster a culture where mistakes are expected, accepted, and used as learning opportunities.
- Don’t avoid or conceal mistakes: One of the biggest mistakes that first-time managers make is trying to conceal their own mistakes—often by ignoring or even hiding them. Prioritizing “blame avoidance” over learning and growth can have a considerable negative impact on your team’s motivation and productivity.
- Adopt an investigative approach. When people feel that their mistakes are treated fairly and with compassion, they will be more likely to take responsibility for them. To do this, create a process to investigate incidents in which mistakes occur that will help you uncover the underlying cause of the mistake. This will help uncover systemic or process failures that may be at the heart of the issue while simultaneously fostering trust that can help strengthen your team.
- Reward people for sharing what they learn after a mistake. When you incentivize knowledge-sharing, fewer incidents happen, and team collaboration improves. To encourage knowledge sharing, you could create a “failure wall” in the office where employees post their failures stories and what they learned from them. Or you could start your weekly team check-ins by talking about a “failure of the week” and congratulating the employee on their learnings and knowledge contributions.
Read more here https://hbr.org/2023/05/how-to-build-a-blameless-work-culture
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