What Really Happens When Smart People Make Mistakes At Work
High achievers aren’t immune to making mistakes. Here are the four traps that derail even the smartest leaders and how to recover when they do.
Welcome to Reframed! Work is complex, career advice shouldn’t be. I'm Ashley Rudolph and I write this newsletter for people ready for the next level in their careers. Reframed readers describe the experience best: “There's a depth here that I lack in many a Fast Co click bait article. You push beyond the superficial answers.”
It’s 2012. Early morning. I just arrived at work. I was a social media manager back then, so I was in the middle of my usual morning routine.
Check Facebook.
Check Twitter.
Check analytics dashboard.
Plan content.
Repeat.
I stepped away from my desk for a few minutes and returned ready to get back to work. A minute after I sat down, I received an email from my boss, sitting in her office just a few steps away:
Reminder: the policy is that you must email me every time you step away from your desk.
It was a stupid policy, but it was her rule. I followed it diligently, emailing when I left for lunch and when I came back. But this email made it clear that she wanted me to email her every single time I stepped away. Even to the bathroom. Demeaning, right?
I found out later that she made the same ask of all of her direct reports.
I didn’t realize it then, but what she really believed was that control equaled leadership.
Every single time I stepped away from my desk from that moment on was a reminder to spend my evenings planning my departure from the company.
Eventually, a new manager took over the marketing function and he was great, but there was no undoing the damage that my previous manager had done months prior.
Her decision to lead with ego spiraled into a pattern of behavior that eroded trust and drove talent away.
This is one (hilarious but sad and horrifying) example of how ego derails leadership. And it’s one of four common traps high achievers fall into. If you’re a Reframed reader, you’re probably not requiring your employees to log their bathroom breaks without a good reason (ha!), but these four traps will feel recognizable to you.
THE FRAMEWORK
The Four Reasons High Achievers Make Mistakes At Work
Now it’s time for me to make the messy parts of work simple, so you can focus on taking action.
Everyone will make at least one bad decision in their career. It’s normal. Most takes focus on incompetence as the cause (someone isn’t qualified). That’s rarely the case for high achievers. Our missteps are more nuanced. When high achievers mess up, it usually comes down to one of four traps: bad judgment, lack of expertise, ego, or a confidence wobble. Here’s how each one shows up, with examples you’ll recognize:
1. Bad judgment
You misread a situation, ignored critical context, or defaulted to a flawed decision making process. This happens to good leaders/smart people more often than you think. If you want to dive deeper on this topic, I highly recommend this article in HBR. It shows how smart, experienced leaders can misread situations because of unconscious biases like relying too much on familiar patterns or emotional triggers. Sometimes they serve us, sometimes they don’t.
Let’s apply a personal example: I once had a fantastic direct report — talented, loyal, someone I trusted. During a particularly stressful season, I let my leadership mask slip and treated her like a confidante. I vented about challenges at the executive level, complained about peers, and shared more than she should’ve had to carry. For me, it felt like transparency. For her, it was destabilizing. She needed me to be steady, and I wasn’t. Eventually, she left for a role with more stability.
In that moment I learned there’s a fine line between being real with your team and offloading on them. High achievers can confuse openness with honesty; in those moments, what your team needs most is clarity.
2. Lack of expertise
When you’re used to excelling, sometimes you overestimate your abilities. I see this when a high-achieving leader wades into territory they don’t fully understand — finance, tech, legal, project management, etc — and feels pressure to make the right decision, even without the right people/advisors in the room.
Here’s a few examples: This is where a high achiever’s bias for action becomes an Achilles heel. Take the CEO who commits to a new feature without engineering present (yikes!) — tech teams know how this ends. Or a leader who promises an impossible delivery date without project management in the room (as someone who led a PMO, I just triggered myself!). Or a team member who approves a lucrative/complex deal without proper input or approvals. In each case, the person thinks they’re showing decisiveness, but what they’re really doing is setting their teams up for rework, frustration, and a potential loss of credibility.
3. Ego
Winning fuels high achievers. I love to win. It builds confidence and pushes me toward bigger bets and harder challenges. But it can also distort judgment. Leading with ego can look like centering your needs over outcomes, inserting yourself into other teams’ issues (been there!), dismissing feedback, or assuming you’re right because of past wins.
Here’s a real life example: When you’re hiring, your needs are important, but you have to sell the job. One of the first things I ask my clients when they’re recruiting high impact roles is “why would someone be excited to work here/work with you?”
So, you can probably guess I’m taking us back to $55k gate (last week, I wrote about the details here → scroll to #3 and 4). Instead of selling the job — here’s why it’s exciting, here’s why you should want to work with me — her TikToks centered her frustrations. She blamed the lack of success of the previous roles on the candidates. Where was the learning? Hiring is hard, leading is hard, but ego convinces you the problem can’t possibly be you. And when that aura leaks out in public, you end up making people question your capabilities instead of wanting to join your team.
4. Lack of confidence
On the flip side, it’s not always about winning and ego. Sometimes high achievers have confidence wobbles. Those can look like not speaking up in a meeting when you should have, having an idea that would’ve helped solve a problem but not sharing it, or second-guessing your instincts.
Here’s some food for thought: A Fast Company/UNC study shows ~40% of employees don’t speak up simply because they lack confidence. The real danger of a confidence wobble for high achievers isn’t being cringey, it’s missing the upside. People who push their ideas through often end up with career-defining moments.
Think about Zaria Parvez, she started at Duolingo as a social media coordinator and single-handedly turned the brand into a cultural phenomenon. Imagine if she’d stayed quiet and maintained the status quo?! The app wouldn’t have 16 million followers and she wouldn’t have built a career-making reputation as the voice behind it. Speaking up can be the difference between staying where you are and putting your name on something that changes the trajectory of your career.
The good news? Every one of these traps is recoverable if you know how to handle the fallout.
Bouncing back is about learning how to recover from failure, faster.
THE SOLUTION
Four Easy Steps to Bounce Back From a Mistake at Work, Fast
Whether your mistake was driven by bad judgment, ego, a lack of expertise, or a confidence wobble, the recovery path looks the same. For high achievers, fixing the problem isn’t enough—you immediately go into overdrive trying to course-correct. That pit in your stomach? It’s the urge to bounce back fast, restore faith in your ability to lead, and get back to doing what you know you’re capable of.
Here’s my process for winning after losing:
1. Own up to it
If you truly messed up and you know it, don’t try to cover it up. Don’t spin a story, hide information, or downplay your mistake. The best course of action is to share what happened, why it happened, and outline what you’re doing to address the issue. If you’re unsure about the best course of action, be honest about that and ask for guidance — taking initiative signals responsibility and owning up to the mistake signals credibility.
2. Take steps to address the issue
After you share the mistake and your action plan, don’t disappear into a black hole of “I’ll fix it.” Optically, the worst thing you can do is announce the mistake and vanish. People fill gaps with the worst-case scenario, which is an unfortunate outcome when you’re actually working hard. Over communicate. Share updates, however small, so people can see you’ve moved past the mistake and are actively addressing it. Progress rebuilds reputations.
3. Keep showing up
Look, one mistake won’t kill your career. What will? Letting it rattle you so much you stop showing up as the high performer everyone already knows you are. This is probably the most important step to remember. Continuing to show up may feel hard, but doing so consistently ensures that the misstep doesn’t become your reputation.
4. Take Care of Yourself, Too
You’re reading this because you’re high achieving and let’s face it — high achievers are notoriously hard on themselves. You have an incredible instinct to power through things, but after a stressful event like making a bad decision at work, what you really need is space to reset.
For me, that might look like a long walk with Ailey, getting a facial at Glowbar, or taking a yoga class at Heatwise with my phone is locked away and nowhere in sight. Your version might be different but whatever it is, be intentional about incorporating a bit of self care.
You don’t have to “earn” self care, it’s not just a reward for doing something great, it’s also a stress reliever. High performance requires recovery. The faster you reset, the faster you’re back at your best.
THE WRAP UP
If you saw yourself in any of these examples — good. That means you’re self-aware. If you didn’t, bookmark this for the day you make a mistake and need a roadmap for how to bounce back. And if you’re just here as a spectator, I hope you at least got a chuckle (or gasped at the opener).
Have a great week.
Ashley
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