Performing Capability, Postponing Growth.

How workplace culture can silence learning and what it costs.

Workplace culture can cause silence and loss of growth opportunities.

The Pressure to Appear Capable.

Most people enter the workplace with the intention to learn, grow and contribute meaningfully, but somewhere along the way, learning can get lost.. displaced by a quieter, more urgent instinct: the need to look competent.

In many organisations, mistakes carry more than operational consequences.  They affect perception, credibility and opportunity and in these environments, people quickly learn that appearing capable often matters more than actually learning to become capable. 

What develops is a culture of surface competence where people avoid asking questions, downplay uncertainty and hide failures to protect their professional image.

It’s not dishonesty in the traditional sense. It’s something subtler.. a survival strategy in systems where being wrong is interpreted as being weak and while this strategy may preserve status in the short term.

It extracts a long-term cost from individuals, teams and the wider organisation: it prevents learning.

Errors are withheld due to fear of consequences.

The High Cost of Hiding Mistakes.

Harvard researcher Amy Edmondson has written extensively on this dynamic.  Her work on psychological safety reveals that in many teams, employees withhold questions, concerns and admissions of error not because they are disengaged but because they’re afraid. 

Afraid of looking ignorant.  Afraid of seeming incompetent.  Afraid of becoming the one who gets left out of the next opportunity.

In Edmondson’s words, “To avoid being thought of as incompetent, we don’t admit weakness or mistakes.. But every time we withhold our thoughts, we rob ourselves and our colleagues of small moments of learning.” 

The cost compounds quietly and over time, this creates a culture where nobody says what needs to be said, especially when something has gone wrong. 

Problems escalate, small errors compound, truth becomes dangerous and silence becomes the norm.

This is how learning dies.. not with a bang, but with a culture of quiet self-protection.

Defensive Routines: The Psychology of Self-Protection.

Organisational psychologist Chris Argyris coined a term for this phenomenon: skilled incompetence. 

He described how highly capable professionals develop habits that protect their self-image, even at the expense of performance. 

These “defensive routines” include rationalising mistakes, avoiding feedback, shifting blame, or steering conversations away from uncomfortable truths.

These aren’t signs of immaturity, more they’re signs of people who have learned that vulnerability can be punished.  In organisations that conflate error with inadequacy, self-protection becomes a performance requirement.

Over time, the entire culture adjusts.  Leaders model certainty, teams avoid scrutiny, people speak in polished language and cautious half-truths. 

The worst part is that nobody is learning. 

Energy that could be spent improving systems, developing skills, or resolving issues is instead spent managing impressions.

When people feel safe at work, they speak up and voice their concerns/issues.

Learning requires Psychological Safety not Perfection.

To learn from mistakes, people must first feel safe enough to acknowledge them.  This doesn’t mean comfort or coddling.  It means creating an environment where being wrong is not punished, but used.

This is the essence of psychological safety, which Edmondson defines as “a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.” 

When psychological safety is high, people don’t waste energy protecting themselves, instead they invest it in the work. 

They speak up. 

They ask for help. 

They share problems before they become crises.

This kind of environment is not only more humane it’s more effective.  When people can name what’s wrong, the organisation gets early warning.  When people can admit what they don’t know, the organisation gains clarity. 

When people can fail safely, they can learn quickly.

Systems thinking fundamentally changed the Aviation Industry and its approach to learning.

Aviation’s Turnaround: From Silence to Systems thinking.

The aviation industry offers a clear illustration of what this shift looks like in practice. 

For decades, hierarchical culture in cockpits meant that junior pilots rarely questioned senior captains even when they saw errors unfolding.  Tragic accidents occurred, not because of technical failure, but because of silence.

In response, aviation reformed. 

It invested in Crew Resource Management a suite of non-technical training that includes communication, teamwork and decision-making under pressure. 

It also adopted a just culture approach, which separates human error from blame.  

If a pilot makes a mistake but follows protocol and reports it, the goal isn’t punishment it’s learning.  Mistakes are logged, reviewed and shared so others can learn.  The result?  

Aviation, despite its inherent risk, is viewed as one of the safest industries in the world. This transformation didn’t happen by demanding perfection.  It happened by making it safe to tell the truth. 

Learning became systematised not just encouraged, but expected.  Silence, once seen as professional decorum, is now treated as a liability.

Healthcare, Checklists and Humility.

Similar changes are emerging in healthcare. 

Historically, medicine carried a culture of perfectionism where doctors were expected to have answers, not questions. 

Admitting uncertainty could feel like weakness, but that attitude led to missed steps, miscommunication and preventable harm.

Change began when the industry started borrowing lessons from aviation.  Hospitals began using checklists for surgical procedures, encouraging cross-disciplinary briefings and normalising debriefs after complex cases. 

Importantly, some institutions began holding Morbidity & Mortality conferences not to blame, but to learn.

One landmark example is the adoption of a simple five-step checklist in intensive care units to reduce central line infections. 

Initially, some senior doctors resisted the implication that a checklist could improve their performance, but when the checklist was implemented, infection rates dropped dramatically saving lives and reducing costs.

What changed wasn’t just the process. It was the mindset: we are fallible and that’s why we build structures that help us learn.

The Ego Barrier.

At the core of this struggle is ego. 

The belief that we must be seen as competent at all times is powerful and blinding.  It prevents people from asking the better question: What can I learn here?

In truth, most of the best performers in any field are those who’ve made peace with their own fallibility. 

They aren’t reckless, but they’re not fragile either. 

They can receive feedback without flinching, they can admit what didn’t work and they can say;

“I got it wrong and here’s what I’m doing to improve.”

This is not weakness.  It’s professional strength.

From Performance to Learning Culture.

Organisations often talk about creating “learning cultures,” but unless the conditions for truth-telling exist, these cultures will remain aspirational.

To build a true learning culture, leaders must do more than encourage growth they must model it.  

That means acknowledging their own mistakes, making space for disagreement. showing that capability isn’t about always being right, but about becoming better over time.

The most effective teams are not those that never fail. 

They are those that learn every time they do and are not afraid.  This starts with a shift from performance management to learning engagement. 

When the performance mask comes off, the real work of development can begin.

With a learning culture in place, capability can be built.

Conclusion: Learning as Integrity.

There’s nothing soft about learning.

Learning requires humility, rigour and true resilience.

It means actually confronting discomfort, letting go of perfectionism and choosing growth over personal image.

In environments where performance is constantly on display, it’s tempting to manage appearances, but the reward of this approach is temporary and the long term cost, high. 

Organisations that thrive are those where people don’t have to perform competence they can pursue it, together.

That’s the shift to my mind; from impression management to skill development.  

From silence to clarity.  

From performing capability to building it.

This shift is what makes learning not just possible, but probable and very powerful.