How to Help Your Team Make Fewer Mistakes by Building a Learning Culture

Let’s face it. Employees will make mistakes. But your team will make fewer mistakes if you establish a learning culture.

My clients often come to me asking, how do I get my team to make fewer mistakes? I understand their frustration. They are usually high performers who have worked their butts off to get to leadership levels. A team that seems careless or distracted can be incomprehensible.

The last thing these leaders can imagine is that they are part of the problem. But in every difficult conversation, looking at your own contribution is the place to start if you truly want to make things better. Team culture results from complicated dynamics between a group of people. Inadvertently, even with the best intentions, some team leaders actually cause more errors on their team when they are trying to get their team to make fewer mistakes.

An Analogy: The Final Four

Let’s examine a sports analogy. Imagine a Final Four basketball game, a tight game, fourth quarter. These are 19 or 20-year-olds playing suddenly in front of millions of people, so the pressure is on. Someone fouls a player. As a result, the player has two free throws. Unfortunately, the player misses the first.

What do the teammates around them do?

If you can actually picture it, you know they all give the player five and nod. They let the player know it’s ok.

Think about it. Why would they do that? The player just made a huge mistake that may cost them the game! It seems crazy, but it is exactly the right response. The player needs to shake off the mistake in order to make the next shot. They can only let the mistake go, recover in this high-pressure environment, and have their best chance of making the next one if their team is supportive in that very moment.

But what if, instead, the teammates all slapped their foreheads and bemoaned the lost shot? In that case, it would be such a humiliating moment that the player would never play hard enough in the fourth quarter to be fouled again. In this case, the player would no longer be a championship quality player. That’s The Anxiety Zone.

Or what if the teammates simply looked down in disappointment and avoided eye contact with the player at the baseline? Well, again, shame would kick in, and the player would learn not to get fouled in the fourth quarter. That’s The Avoidance Zone.

Or what if the teammates nodded politely and told the player not to worry about it. They might not say it with much enthusiasm or support. I mean, it’s a lot more likely that they are going to lose now. They are saying the right thing, but it’s clear they don’t have high expectations. Again, the player will never play hard enough again to reach the playoffs. Why should they work hard? It’s ok not to perform. Lowering your standards is called The Comfort Zone.

The Learning Zone

If you want your team to make fewer mistakes, you have to establish a learning culture. The learning zone happens when you let people know, in their worst moments, that you have their back and believe in them to get the next one right. This is one of the highest callings of leaders. It’s a leadership behavior that has proven to be effective over time and across industries and disciplines.

Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson has built her career studying the importance of creating a workplace culture where it’s safe for people to make mistakes. She has shown how most learning in the workplace is trial-and-error learning. If you can’t make a mistake, you can’t learn and grow.

I highly recommend her book, “The Fearless Organization.” She shows conclusively that psychological safety is what people need for a learning zone mentality. According to her research, the learning zone requires that you build trust that others will not retaliate against them if they make a mistake. Ultimately, she proves that when you allow employees to learn safely, they make fewer mistakes.

Here is an extraordinary example of what the learning zone can look like. Tom Watson, the extraordinary Chairman of IBM from 1914 to 1956, famously discussed an employee who had made a terrible decision leading to massive losses. As he recalled the incident later, Watson said: Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?”

This kind of leadership is not easy, but establishing a learning culture will return huge results. At its most basic, it takes dedication to your team to have this kind of grace in leadership. Additionally, it takes empathy and an ability to control your own emotions. That is why it is sometimes called servant leadership.

Serious mistakes are frustrating, and it’s easy to get carried away in the moment. You have to be focused on your team’s sense of safety. You have to believe they will try again and get it right the next time if you give them a chance to take another shot. Let’s face it. Employees will make mistakes. That is human and to be expected. But your team will make fewer mistakes if you establish a learning culture where people are expected to learn from mistakes and do their best to try again smarter to make it right.

Next Steps

Read more about how to maintain high standards and high psychological safety.

• Trust at Work: The Most Important Way to Boost Team Performance
• What is Psychological Safety at Work and How Does it Improve Performance?
• How to Build Trust at Work: Five Everyday Actions.

FAQs: How to Help Your Team Make Fewer Mistakes

Q1: How can I get my team to make fewer mistakes quickly?

A: Start by creating psychological safety. When people feel safe to learn from errors, they recover faster and improve performance.

Q2: Should I punish mistakes to stop them from happening?

A: Punishment increases fear and avoidance. Support, problem solving, and learning reduce mistakes over the long run.

Q3: What’s the “Learning Zone”?

A: It’s the sweet spot where people feel safe enough to take risks and learn, and are also held to high standards. That’s where growth happens.

Q4: Do high-performing leaders ever tolerate mistakes?

A: They don’t ignore mistakes—they treat them as learning opportunities. That’s how teams improve without losing confidence.