Summary

Employees often hesitate to share their errors with leaders due to the potential risks associated with revealing them in the workplace. Our research, published in the Journal of Management Studies, shows that employee error sharing can serve as a double-edged sword towards leader trust: it may impair leader evaluation of employee ability, but also enhance leader evaluation of employee integrity; these two evaluations then influence leader trust in the employee. Furthermore, the severity and visibility of errors can influence how leaders react to employee error sharing.

The importance of employee error sharing

Errors are prevalent in organizations due to human fallibility. Errors can lead to negative consequences, yet, they can also stimulate learning and performance improvements. However, when employees fail to communicate errors to their managers who have no visibility over the errors being made, the organization will lose the chance to effectively learn from and manage these errors, which may lead to organizational losses and even disasters. Although the importance of error communication has been consistently acknowledged in error management research, little work has been done to investigate what happens to employees who disclose their errors. Since it is commonly assumed that hiding errors in the workplace is safer than revealing them, it is appealing to examine whether error communication is harmful or beneficial to employees who honestly share their errors. In our research, we examined the relational consequences of error sharing. In particular, we focused on how employee error sharing affects leader trust in the error sharer.

Employee error sharing and leader trust

Errors contain sensitive and unfavourable information about the error sharer at the workplace, suggesting that the error sharer performs under the expected or desired level. In an organizational context, when an employee admits to committing an error, it may demonstrate the employee’s honesty and moral character (integrity). However, it could also lead to questioning and doubts about the employee’s competence (ability). Integrity and ability, in turn, are two cognition-based components of one’s trustworthiness, as revealed in the trust literature. Following this line, it is reasonable to propose that error sharing can serve as double-edge sword toward leader trust in the error sharer. Findings from our three studies (two field studies and one experimental study) did confirm the above propositions. An interesting question follows: Which effect is stronger, the negative evaluation of ability or the positive evaluation of integrity? With further data analysis, we did not find any significant difference between the two effects, suggesting a paradoxical impact of employee error sharing on leader trust.

The role of error attributes

The findings presented above prompted us to consider whether attributes of committed errors influence how leaders respond to employee error sharing. In particular, we studied error visibility and severity. Error visibility is defined as the extent to which errors one typically makes at work are observable to co-workers. Compared with sharing visible errors, sharing invisible errors is regarded as disclosure with more sincerity and can be taken as a signal that the error sharer is behaving with authenticity and honesty. Therefore, sharing less visible errors may boost leaders’ evaluation of employee integrity.

Error severity refers to the extent to which errors one typically makes at work impede the achievement of performance goals at the individual, team, and organizational levels. As the severity of errors increases, the more disruptive the error disclosure becomes, because team leaders perceive a larger negative gap between the actual and the expected performance of the error sharer. Therefore, the level of error severity determines the extent to which the ability evaluation will be shaken and challenged. Understandably, sharing more severe errors may harm leaders’ evaluation of employee ability. Nonetheless, the leaders may perceive the sharer to be more responsible, sincere, and trustworthy when sharing severe errors. Despite the risk of grave penalties for making a severe error, such as salary decrease or impaired image, the sharer reveals it for the purpose of minimizing its negative impact on goal achievement at the individual, team, and organizational levels. With this perception, the higher the error severity, the greater the self-sacrifice perceived by the team leader in the internal assessment process. Thus, sharing more severe errors may elevate leaders’ evaluation of employee integrity.

Upon analyzing the data from our three studies, we found that sharing less visible or more severe errors can enhance leaders’ evaluation of employee integrity, while sharing more severe errors can diminish leaders’ evaluation of employee ability.

Takeaways for employees and managers

For employees, instead of hiding errors and experiencing the potential stress associated with doing so, we suggest they use strategies such as apology and compensation when they engage in error sharing. Employees should not be hesitant or afraid to share their less-visible or more-severe errors, as leaders may trust the sharer even more as a result.

For managers, they should be mindful about their competency appraisals of an error discloser and ensure their ability evaluations are unbiased and justified. This is easier said than done and requires, for example, a valid performance management system that not only records each employee’s performance pattern but also recognizes the value of errors by documenting the lessons that are learned from errors. Perhaps the most common practical recommendation is that managers should develop a culture or climate where errors are not regarded simply as negative performance events to be avoided but rather as learning opportunities. Such a positive mindset towards errors would change the stance one holds towards errors, which can ultimately motivate honest error communication.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (71902061, 72272011) and SSHRC Insight Grant 435-2021-0618 (Canada).