Learn From Mistakes

5 Everyone makes missteps now and then. It’s how you deal with them and learn from mistakes that sets you apart from others. Bouncing back from errors also teaches you invaluable lessons.

Here are problem-solving steps to handle those inevitable errors:

Show you’re vulnerable by owning up to mistakes rather than hiding them, says Skip Prichard, chief executive of Columbus, Ohiobased library services and data technology provider OCLC. Others will gain trust in you because they know you’re being honest with them.

Create that culture by supporting people publicly and privately when a mistake occurs.

“You don’t want people afraid to admit when they made a mistake,” Prichard said. “Then you have a culture based on fear.”

Instead, show them it’s OK to suffer a misstep, as long as they learn from mistakes.

It pays to broaden your view, says Samuel Dinnar, instructor at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Say you’re running a startup and negotiating for venture capital. Don’t focus only on what you want. Get an idea of what the investor is seeking, too.

If the investor cuts you off midstream during a presentation, asking to test the prototype, adjust rather than getting angry, says Dinnar, who co-authored “Entrepreneurial Negotiation” with MIT professor and Program on Negotiation co-founder Lawrence Susskind. You can say you have just two slides you’d like to talk about, instead of a dozen more, before showing the prototype.

“Preparation is critical,” Dinnar told. “You want to figure out what your priorities are and plan for expected surprises.”

The way you react to mistakes makes all the difference. Say two people strike a business deal. But when one sends over a draft contract, some numbers are different from what was agreed on. Dinnar knows one entrepreneur who was in that situation and decided to drop the investor group.

“We told her to judge them by their intent rather than their impact on you,” Dinnar said. “Maybe they had their reasons for changing the numbers. Maybe next time agree on the terms of negotiation.”

Your outlook about a mistake is vital. Reframe it, Prichard says.

“Look at a mistake as an opportunity to reinvent, to be creative or entrepreneurial,” Prichard said. “Successful people look at a mistake as a setback, not a failure.”

Tiger Woods bounced back from several setbacks, including a divorce and back surgery, to win the Masters earlier this year.

“Reframe a mistake as, ‘We’re going to stay focused on our goal and use this as a learning opportunity,’ ” Prichard said. “If we’re not able to win a contract, it’s not a loss. It’s an opportunity to double down on our current customers to grow the business faster.

“You have to tap into the greater resilience I think all of us have.”

Learn how to apologize. It’s vital to rectify mistakes. The key is to not just say it once and feel as though you’re done.

“You have to give them time to hear it and to heal,” Dinnar said. “Relationships are key. They’re where trust is built.”

Show others how important it is to treat mistakes as opportunities to improve, not a reason to place blame.