I made a mistake
"I messed up."
"I made a mistake."
How often do you hear this from your team?
How often do you say this yourself?
One of the biggest markers to the success of a team or organisation is psychological safety.
If you’re not hearing (or saying) these things above, then perhaps you don’t feel safe to.
When Silence Becomes Deadly
A nurse in a busy ICU notices that a patient's medication dosage seems unusually high. She's administered this drug hundreds of times, but something feels off. The prescribing doctor is known for being impatient with questions from nursing staff. Last month, she watched a colleague get publicly dressed down for "second-guessing" a doctor’s orders.
She hesitates, double-checks the chart, but the hierarchy is clear.
She stays quiet and administers the medication.
The patient goes into cardiac arrest.
A 2020 study published in BMJ Quality & Safety found that more than 237 million medication errors occur every year in England alone, with avoidable consequences costing the NHS upwards of £98 million and more than 1,700 lives annually.
Many of these tragedies could be prevented if healthcare workers felt safe to speak up when something doesn't seem right.
The Hidden Cost of Carrying Mistakes Alone
This story illustrates what research consistently shows: when people don't feel safe to speak up, organiwations don't just lose diverse perspectives – they lose critical information that could prevent disasters.
But there's another cost that's often overlooked: the crushing emotional burden of carrying mistakes in silence.
When psychological safety is absent, people don't just hide their mistakes from others; they often can't even process them effectively themselves. The energy that should go toward learning and improvement gets trapped in cycles of anxiety, shame, self-doubt …burnout.
Psychological safety isn't about creating a comfort zone where everyone just relaxes. It’s about creating an environment where discomfort is managed.
It's about acknowledging that mistakes are inevitable and creating an environment where people can:
Admit mistakes without fear of punishment – because early error detection prevents bigger failures and relieves the psychological burden of carrying secrets
Ask questions without looking incompetent – because curiosity drives innovation and prevents the isolation that comes with pretending to know everything
Challenge the status quo without career suicide – because breakthrough ideas often challenge conventional wisdom
Share bad news without becoming the messenger that gets shot – problems hidden are problems that worsen, both organisationally and personally.
When people can openly admit mistakes, they're not just helping the organisation learn – they're freeing themselves from the exhausting work of managing shame and fear.
The Competitive Advantage of Truth-Telling
Google's Project Aristotle studied hundreds of their teams to understand what made some dramatically more effective than others.
Technical skill? Nope.
Individual talent? Not quite.
The number one factor was …psychological safety.
Teams with high psychological safety weren't just happier – they were measurably more successful.
They had higher performance ratings, were less likely to leave the company, and generated more revenue.
Because when people feel safe to be honest, organisations get access to their full intellectual capacity, not just the sanitised version that won't ruffle feathers.
And crucially, when people can openly discuss their mistakes and concerns, they're not spending mental energy managing the stress of concealment – energy that can instead fuel creativity, problem-solving, and genuine engagement.
Building Safety, One Conversation at a Time
Creating psychological safety starts with leaders role modelling the behaviour they want to see:
Own your mistakes publicly. When a CEO says "I made the wrong call on that strategy," it gives everyone permission to be human, which really means, fallible.
Ask for feedback regularly. "What am I missing here?" and "How could I have handled that better?" signal that learning matters more than ego.
Respond to bad news with curiosity, not blame. The first question should be "What can we learn?" not "Who's responsible?"
Celebrate intelligent failures. When someone takes a calculated risk that doesn't pan out, recognise the thinking behind it rather than just the outcome.
The Bottom Line
Mistakes are a fact of life – especially in complex, high-stakes environments. Organisations that thrive are not the ones that make fewer mistakes, but that learn from them faster and more effectively.
That requires honest feedback, rapid course-correction, and the psychological bandwidth to actually process and learn from errors rather than just managing the fear around them.
The next time someone on your team says "I messed up," consider it a gift.
They're trusting you with their vulnerability, giving your organisation the chance to get stronger, and – perhaps most importantly – they're modeling the kind of healthy relationship with mistakes that prevents burnout and promotes genuine learning.
The question is: what will you do with that trust?
This article referenced a cheatsheet on psychological safety in The Same Page, my newsletter exploring leadership and creativity. DM me for a PDF or an actual, physical copy of the newsprint.
