Why leaders who share personal mistakes help those around them

We had the chance to interview Nicolas Durville, CEO EMEA, and Nils Weinzierl, Principal Engagement Manager at Zühlke, to explore this topic in more detail. Of course, it would be impossible to condense this entire topic to one interview, so below we’ve taken some key insights from our conversation. 

We will cover:

• Why leaders who share personal mistakes help those around them 
• How normalising the pain of mistakes helps everyone learn
• How you can encourage people to take steps into the unknown 

Let’s dive in…

How has your professional journey shaped your approach on sharing mistakes?

Nicolas: "What fascinates me is using technology to deliver business advantages for our clients. I have a passion for both engineering and business. On my journey, the toughest part was being the CEO of Zühlke Switzerland during the pandemic. It was a challenging time that forced us to enhance collaboration across countries amidst significant change, and to take decisions with the unknown."

Nils: "I'm currently an engagement manager, responsible for delivering Solutions and Services to clients in the financial and insurance industry. I took on this role in January, but before that, I spent two years building our location in Vietnam, focusing on the talent market and establishing a delivery hub for Asia. Especially the time living abroad, shaping and establishing our corporate culture, showed me how important it is to walk the talk and let others learn from your mistakes."

What is Zühlke's approach to experimentation?

Nils: “When we talk about innovation and experimentation, the goal must always be to solve a problem and deliver value to the market. It's pretty simple: we build an MVP and do prototyping and testing in the market. For example, clients struggle to build a talent pool outside their home country due to cost pressure and talent shortages. We recognized this problem and, instead of doing big concepts, discussed it with one client and started a pilot project. We scaled up from there and now offer this solution to over ten clients."

Nicolas: "We also need to recognize when something doesn’t work and stop it. This is not always easy because we have many passionate technology enthusiasts who love to experiment. It's tricky to balance perseverance and recognizing when mistakes begin."

How do you inspire Zühlke employees to take calculated risks while feeling supported?

Nils: "I've seen two worlds: Vietnam and Germany. In Asia, pivoting was key and happened at a very high pace. This worked well there, but you need people who are open to this approach. The pace in Germany is different—we pivot, but not as quickly. Proper governance structures are essential to ensure that no one feels alone. Empathy is key. I need to fully trust the team working there because I can't and don't want to control everything. Our job as leaders is to enable teams to make the right decisions and challenge them, rather than just having them executing orders."

How important is it for your leaders to role model making mistakes?

Nicolas: "It's very important and one of our core values: courage. You can't delegate this; you have to own it. I encourage people to share their mistakes, and I share some of mine on LinkedIn, in ask-me-anything  sessions, and during onboarding sessions with new joiners. It makes me more credible when I point out 2-3 mistakes I've made, and people appreciate it. Many of us are engineers who have learned in education not to make mistakes, but we can still improve at Zühlke in talking about our mistakes and learning from them."

Nils: "Sharing mistakes comes at a price; it hurts, which is totally fine. Walking the talk and going through that pain is so important. As a people lead, I've had to admit to a mishire, which is painful because we have a thorough interview process. But it's worse to continue with a bad fit. Another example is messing up on a client project—missing milestones or poor communication can happen. It's crucial not to finger-point. We do retrospectives in our teams to avoid blaming individuals."

What training does Zühlke offer to help you create a safe-to-fail environment?

Nicolas: "We don't have formal training on sharing mistakes, but we do have soft skills training. Creating a safe-to-fail environment isn't just about training; it's the job of a leader to foster such an environment through a mindset learned on the job."

Nils: "My experience shows that the more our business moves into the VUCA world, the more we deal with high uncertainty. Leadership needs to serve this purpose. We started creating Leadership training programs focused on mindfulness, which has helped me a lot. The awareness of this topic is very high, and we need to identify future leaders internally. Empathy and mindfulness are big parts of the behaviors we look for."

In your career, what mistakes have you made?

Nicolas: "The toughest part of my career was navigating the company through the pandemic. I started as CEO of Switzerland in 2018, and when COVID-19 hit in 2020, I suddenly had to make decisions on questions I didn't have answers to. It was my biggest failure and learning opportunity. I had to change my team and communicate optimism despite uncertainty. Admitting I had sometimes little control and going with it was tough, but it taught me a lot. This experience of not knowing everything but still moving forward with a positive outlook and mindset is something I'll take into my current role."

Nils: "A big learning experience was in a client project where I took our experience at Zühlke for granted. In Asia, we had to offer something to a client that we excel at, but I underestimated the differences in culture and ecosystem. My learning is to challenge assumptions and reach out for help earlier. Using available resources is crucial."

Conclusion

It’s clear from our interview that both Nicolas and Nils believe that when leaders share the lessons learnt the hard way, they help create a psychological safety net that aids curious thinking. Perhaps most interesting is how this in turn helps teams unearth the best solutions to complex technology and innovation challenges. 

But there is one final point that Nils and Nicolas both agree needs to be acknowledged. Creating an open sharing culture is not something that’s ever finished. It’s a process of constant learning and improvement. 

“When you’re sharing mistakes publicly, you need to acknowledge that you’ll never have everything right when it comes to how you share them!”, says Nils. “It’s a journey”.