Admittedly raising the voice and pointing out a mistake or error is something which seems not natural and common nowadays. Too much society seems to keep an overcoat above things which might go wrong or did go wrong. Feedback and error analysis degrades to a shower of wellbeing. The general tendency to a flawless world is overwhelming. And some factors why silence wins over voice so often is that silence has immediate benefit to oneself whereby voice may not create that individual benefit but more one for the team which is psychological not immediately favorable for humans. And also speaking up does often bring benefits with some time delay.

But errors do occur!

And the first thing that is crucial is to accept that fact. In order to reduce the number of mistakes to be made, this acceptance is the first and most important step. If you can not accept the fact that there will be things that go wrong and errors will be made, you cannot deal with these when they show up and shit is likely to hit the fan. At least this was likely flying a mission.

A big part of our preparation as aircrew was to accept the presence of errors and to talk about them. No mission, no deployment had been possible without the ability to accept and manage errors. 

With the mutual acceptance that errors can occur among the aircrew we prepared the ground for the next element which is paramount in error management: 

Open your mouth and say it when you see it coming

Some of the devastating accidents in aviation history happened because someone did not say something, did not open the mouth pointing out the mishap that was about to happen and did not raise a concern about the situation. Somebody saw the signs and yet kept silent.

We could not afford silence over a voice pointing out things that weren't right. In the late 70s the fundamental basis of dealing with errors - alongside other things - was introduced in aviation and has been the backbone of how aircrew military or commercial has been working ever since. This backbone is CRM - Crew Resource Management. CRM gave us the structure to deal with errors. CRM has been introduced to numerous areas of industry and teams as the backbone of their daily collaboration.

But beside this procedural element managing errors there was something else. Something which was of greatest importance not only when it came to managing errors but an element without which we hadn't been able to do what we had to do, to achieve our mission objectives as a team in a high pressure scenario. And this element is psychological safety. 

Psychological safety is the grounds to high performance in which everybody can speak up and raise any concern. No error management = no high performance as a team.

So in raising the psychological safety leaders lower the threshold for team members to speak up and raise concerns which in turn will reduce errors to be made. 

How did we create an environment that allowed psychological safety?

• precise mission analysis so that everybody knows what's coming
• be clear on the situation of the crew
• self-awareness in the crew
• recognize crew members as human beings
• foster asking questions and actively request them
• take every perspective serious and into account before making a decision
• keeping your own mouth shut while listening to your crew members

This is what we institutionalized alongside crew resource management not only before the mission but throughout the mission and the aftermath.

Error management is crucial in today's business environment and one pillar of high performing teamwork. And today's organizations are better off creating an environment which allows the team members to speak up, raise concerns and point out where the team runs into making mistakes. And today´s leaders should embrace such behavior and not take it personal even though it might be the first impulse. It is for the better good.

Because in the end, the worst thing you can do is to keep your mouth shut