Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes, though, they’re more than just awkward. Perhaps you dropped the ball on a project and caused your company to lose a client. Or maybe you sent confidential information to the wrong person. 

While companies hire crisis-communication experts to do damage control, you’ll need to take steps to fix your reputation. The first is to take responsibility for your actions, says Laura Crandall, author of Working With Humans: Tools You Didn’t Know You Needed for Conversations You Never Expected to Have. 

“Be clear and direct in acknowledging what happened, when it happened,” she says. “Don’t talk around the topic, just state the facts. Own the mistake and apologize if needed.”

“Sorry but” is not a believable apology, says Diane Rosen, principal at Compass Consultants, an employee performance, engagement, and productivity consultancy. “Apologies must be heartfelt, sincere, humble, timely, and authentic,” she says.

Circumstances may have contributed to the action, but be judicious about offering explanations in your apology, adds Crandall. “Trying to explain why can sometimes sound like an excuse,” she says. “Understanding why something happened is important for creating processes that can help prevent similar missteps in the future. Just be attuned to the idea that future planning is often most useful after the current problem is remedied.”

Don’t dwell on it and apologize 15 times for one mistake, says Michael Hinkle, author of Treasure Hunt: A Common-Sense Approach to Building a Successful Sales Career. “After so many apologies, it’s going to start to sound like you don’t really mean any of them,” he says. 

Don’t Make It Worse

Most mistakes are eventually caught. Ignoring the situation and hoping no one noticed could make the situation worse, says Crandall. “You run the risk of creating a reputation for deception, ignorance, or carelessness,” she says. “You also run the risk of not feeling proud of your own actions and work—and that can feel a lot worse than acknowledging a mistake.”

Also, don’t create stories to make you look better or make promises you can’t keep. Hinkle recalls a conversation he had with a client after a mistake had been on their account. “My client said, ‘Promise this will never ever happen again,’” he shares. “I said, ‘I’m not making that promise. I work with human beings, and human beings make mistakes. What I can promise you is if this ever happens again, you can expect the same efforts to make it right.’ I believe in order to rebuild your reputation, you have to be a straight shooter from the start.”

Implement Damage Control

Once you acknowledge and shed light on the mistake, it’s time to repair it. “Immediately get into ‘I need to fix this’ mode,” says Hinkle.

Quick action is key. Speak to your boss or a trusted colleague to gauge how bad it is. Get advice about how to rebuild trust, says Rosen. “You may need to discuss with your boss to see how to manage the situation and who should be involved in the steps to be taken,” she says. “Perhaps the boss needs to contact the relevant parties to explain the situation or perhaps you have to make those calls yourself.”

Learn from It 

Hinkle says most people don’t pay close enough attention to their reputations. “In today’s society, it’s too easy to point the finger at something else,” he says. “I don’t think that people are very aggressive at taking ownership of problems.”

The best way to move forward is to take pride in your work and make a commitment to learning as part of your reputation from the start, says Crandall. When colleagues see that you show up, pay attention, and take responsibility for your actions, you’ll create a track record of being a reliable person, she says.

Reputations are salvaged with intention and communication, says Rosen. “You may have to take the heat, be reprimanded, and feel embarrassed, but the only way to regain the trust of others is to show yourself as trustworthy,” she says. “Without that trust, you will not be selected for important assignments or given responsibility for tasks or relationships.”

It’s never too late to fix your reputation, to change, and to improve yourself, says Hinkle. “The easiest way to fix a bad reputation is to change your philosophy from denying and finger-pointing to internalizing and taking responsibility for the repair of the situations, then moving forward,” he says.