I can tell my leadership team is hiding their mistakes and protecting their reputations rather than admitting when they need help. How do I introduce vulnerability to build actual safety?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When team members hide mistakes, it is a clear sign of low safety. In his book, The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle notes that high-performing teams do not succeed because they are smarter; they succeed because they feel safe enough to be vulnerable. If your leaders believe that exposing a flaw will damage their status or invite punishment, they will hide failures until they become catastrophes. To change this, you must change your response to failure. Start by looking in the mirror. If you react to bad news with anger, micromanagement, or disappointment, you are teaching your team to hide the truth. You must become the first person to show vulnerability. At your next quarterly offsite or weekly meeting, share a major mistake you made recently. Explain what you did, what it cost, and what you learned from it. Do this without defensiveness. This simple act of leader vulnerability gives your team permission to do the same. Next, implement a regular check-in during your Level 10 Meeting where leaders must share one thing they are struggling with or where they need help. Make it a structured part of the agenda, not an afterthought. When a team member admits a mistake or a missed Rock, praise their honesty immediately before you help them IDS the issue. By rewarding vulnerability, you lower what Charles H. Green calls self-orientation, which is the tendency to focus on one's own reputation rather than the team's success. When self-orientation goes down, trust and collaboration go up. Your team will stop wasting energy on status management and start spending it on solving business problems.