With the ups and downs of corporate life, it isn't easy to consistently shed the best possible light on every action.
But whether you're dealing with an error that you made or a subordinate's mistake, presenting the facts honestly and competently -- in the office grapevine, company newsletter or trade press -- can make the difference between a little blip and a huge disaster.
Your response to mistakes should be the same whether you're employing the most sophisticated spin-doctoring or the simplest rules of good conduct: Admit you goofed and show a willingness to fix the problem.
Other common reactions -- anger, denial, covering up and making excuses -- will only suggest that you're not responsible and could delay measures to contain the damage.
If people are angry at you for making the mistake, let them vent. Then explain how you plan to correct the situation and avoid similar errors in the future.
By owning up to a recent mistake, Katherine Cronin helped resolve the problem. Ms. Cronin, a senior marketing analyst with the Xerox Corporation in Irving, Texas, was approaching a deadline on a strategic planning project when she realized that some of her statistics were artificially high.
Rather than waiting for her boss to hear about the foul-up from other sources, Ms. Cronin promptly stopped by his office when the door was open, and called her error to his attention.
Introducing the news, Ms. Cronin stuck to the facts ("I've discovered that . . .") and stayed away from emotional phrases ("I'm disappointed to tell you that . . ." or "Something terrible has happened . . ."). She offered to work overtime to repair the snarl and keep the project on schedule, but her boss chose instead to extend the timetable by a few days.
Ms. Cronin then explained the delay to the six people directly affected, saying, "The data are not perfect, and we'd like to make them perfect." Although she was prepared to own up to her role in causing the trouble, no one ever asked for specifics, so she didn't volunteer any. What's more, the extra communication needed to correct the flub helped solidify her business relationship with colleagues involved in the project.
In retrospect, Ms. Cronin says, meeting the problem head on and dealing with it early completely overshadowed the mistake. The subject hasn't come up during subsequent performance reviews. And apart from working hard to fix the error, "I don't think I paid for it," Ms. Cronin says.
In the long run, the outcome has been seen as a positive situation rather than a negative one.
Taking the heat for foul-ups is equally important when it's your subordinate who makes the mistake.
Pointing a finger at someone who works for you only suggests that you're not in control of your team, says Jean-Anne Matter, a vice president of market research at PNC Bank in Pittsburgh: "You can't denigrate your team to save yourself."
When she hears about a blunder made by someone in her department, Ms. Matter promises to "get right on the phone and find out how the heck it happened," taking responsibility for any errors made on her watch.
Recently, an outside vendor was compiling the results of a customer satisfaction study being done by Ms. Matter's group when a coding error slipped into the data: Customers who were not from Philadelphia were counted as though they were. Ms. Matter's colleagues in the bank's Philadelphia office were understandably worried that the glitch would cast doubt on their evaluation of client service.
The actual effect of the mistake would have been slight, but Ms. Matter immediately issued a corrected report.
Deborah Jacobs, a business writer specializing in legal topics, regularly contributes to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Newsweek. Write to her c/o Chronicle Features, 870 Market St., Suite 1011, San Francisco, Calif. 94102. Please include your name, address and telephone number.