<p>Leader covering up employee errors refers to the act of leaders keeping employee errors known only to those who made them. Considering that this practice hinders open error communication and learning within teams or organizations, it is commonly viewed as a negative management practice. However, this understanding is incomplete because it overlooks the potential beneficial effects for leader-employee interactions. Drawing on relational identification theory, we develop and test a model that specifies how and when leader covering up employee errors relates to OCB toward leader. The results of a multi-source, three-wave field study (<i>N</i> = 306) show that leader covering up employee errors is positively related to OCB toward leader via relational identification. Furthermore, the relationship between leader covering up employee errors and relational identification is moderated by employee psychological entitlement, such that this relationship is stronger when employee psychological entitlement is high rather than low. Overall, our work provides insights into the benefits of leader covering up employee errors and makes theoretical contributions to research on errors.</p>