Step 3: Forgive Yourself, and Then Apologize to Whomever You Need To

Your confidence has taken a hit after you make an error, so it’s only natural to beat yourself up. However, if you’ve honestly acknowledged reality, you can focus instead on taking action toward a resolution instead of stewing in a soup of anxiety and fear (and barraging yourself with questions like, “Who knows? Who will find out? What will they think of me? What’s going to happen?”).

“Learn to look at yourself in the mirror and like what you see again,” advises Maryann E. Winfield, human resource administrative specialist at Dell Inc. in Austin, Texas. “From that point on, you should have no trouble aligning your actions with your values.” This is an internal dialogue you have to have with yourself before you can proceed in a constructive way. Why? Because you have a few potentially difficult conversations ahead of you, and you will be less effective if you don’t mentally prepare yourself for them.

Apologize sincerely but briefly to the people you’ve affected, and assure them that this situation will not be repeated. This will probably include your boss; consider whether you cost the company money or credibility. It might also involve coworkers and outsiders whose lives you made more difficult. You must take ownership with confidence and humility and acknowledge your mistake to whomever it affected. If you do so without blaming others—or using any terms or phrases that cause people to doubt your sincerity—you ...

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