Made a mistake at work recently? Who hasn't? 

We all make mistakes. Sometimes they are small—like missing a typo in a letter to a client. Or, unfortunately, sometimes they are big, and potentially career-limiting—like making a recommendation to senior management based on incorrect data. 

Nobody likes to make mistakes—but the truth is mistakes can provide opportunities for growth if we have the right mindset and we choose to learn from them. 

4 Steps to Recover from a Mistake: 

1. First and foremost, own up to the mistake. Acknowledge it. Take responsibility (even if was the mistake of someone who works for you). Taking responsibility is what leaders do.
2. Fix it if you can. Believe it or not, sometimes how you handle a mistake can endear you to a customer or increase stature with your boss.
3. Learn from it. Don't focus on assigning blame. Instead, take action to ensure better results next time.
4. Move on. This is perhaps the most difficult part of recovering from a mistake. We tend to catastrophize the consequences of the mistake we made. Give yourself permission to say, "Oh well," or "Next."

Mistakes you've made are (hopefully) mistakes you are not going to make again. Failure is part of the career journey. What you consider to be a horrible failure today is not likely to be one when viewed over the course of a career. With that perspective, mistakes, even major ones, just become part of the fabric of your career. 

I hosted a two-part series on recovering from mistakes on the Advice to My Younger Me podcast (www.tomyyounger.me). You can listen to the episodes on mistakes here—episode 61—The Gift of Failure and episode 62–Mistakes were Made.