When Making Mistakes At Work Is Okay – The Importance Of Creating A Learning Culture

As a manager, you can do a lot for your business by creating a learning culture. A learning culture is an environment that tells your employees that making mistakes at work is okay. By taking some of the pressure off, your employees will be able to look at their mistakes and find ways to improve, rather than simply view them negatively.

I think mistakes are an extremely undervalued resource for managers. If your employees are making mistakes at work, would you rather place blame on someone and leave the mistakes unanalyzed, or really explore what went wrong without accusations or reprisals?

There’s a treasure trove of information to found in errors and it’s all part of the process of learning. By creating a learning culture, you can speed up that learning process and take the fear out of failure. Once you remove the fear, it becomes easy to learn from mistakes.

As a business leader, you should be a teacher. Teach your employees that making mistakes at work is okay; you can even encourage them to make mistakes. What’s most important is that everyone learns to move forward. That can never happen if employees are afraid of messing up. Your attitude towards mistakes will set the tone for your employees and will determine whether the workplace is a place of safety or of fear.

You can ensure that your business is a safe space by creating a learning culture. You might be surprised by what you can accomplish when your team is solely focused on getting better. Remember, failure is not the opposite of success – it’s an essential part of it.

Carrie is a frequent keynote speaker on HR and leadership topics and regularly conducts employee training and leadership development workshops as well. She is the author of the recently published book, Restaurant Operator's HR Playbook: Your Hands-On Playbook for Finding, Hiring, and Developing Leaders and Implementing Organized People Systems and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Restaurant News, Pizza Today and Independent Restaurateur.