How To Rebuild Trust At Work After A Bad Judgment Call

We all make bad calls at work. But the impact can feel disproportionate, especially when your judgment gets questioned rather than your performance. 

In this article, I'll offer a clear and non-dramatic guide to repairing trust – externally and internally – when your credibility takes a hit.

When making a bad call, I'm not talking about tripping over your words during an important presentation or being 15 minutes late for a meeting. I'm also not talking about ethical lapses in judgment that rightly get you escorted out of the building.

I'm talking about professional judgments you made that, in hindsight, weren't the right call. Those that don't get you fired but might quietly bruise your credibility.

Maybe you pushed too hard during a high-stakes meeting or not hard enough. Or maybe you passionately backed the wrong idea or person at exactly the wrong time. You may have gotten caught not fully on top of your brief during a board meeting. Or you took a direction with a client that, in hindsight, didn't work.

Whatever it was, you made a bad call. And now you feel like people are judging you. 

If you're lucky, you'll get candid feedback on what went wrong and how to fix it. But more often than not, people stay polite. They won't bring it up. Or they'll say, "Don't worry about it", even though you can sense they're a little embarrassed on your behalf.

People often hold back because nobody knows what advice to give in a situation like that. After all, this wasn't just about you getting your facts wrong. This was about your judgment, and in professional spaces, judgment is major currency.

That currency builds over time in quiet and invisible ways. Previously, I've referred to this as your trust account. When the balance in that account is high, people trust your input implicitly. You speak, and they listen because you've earned that kind of weight.

But now you've made a bad call? Well, you've just made a pretty considerable withdrawal from that account. You're not quite in the red yet, but you have much less credit to spend. Enough to make you wonder if you can ever get it back.

That's an uncomfortable feeling that we all recognise. But I'm here to tell you that if you play your cards well, you can use this to gain even more trust in the future.

Whether you succeed or not depends on how you play your cards and what you do next.

In this article, I'll talk about how to recover from this type of public embarrassment by taking you through a four-step process to help you recover and rebuild that trust account.  

But before I take you through those four steps, let's look at what happens inside your brain after you get caught out. 

What your brain does when you slip   

Let's say you made a professional error. Before you try to fix anything, you need to understand that your brain is about to make this much harder than it needs to be.

Even the slightest dent in your credibility can feel surprisingly intense because your brain sees reputation as a proxy for belonging. 

In evolutionary terms, losing belonging used to mean losing protection. So when your status drops, even slightly, your nervous system will experience it like a real threat.

You'll start over-monitoring your environment over the next couple of hours, days, and sometimes weeks, reading into pauses, analysing the tone of email responses, etc. That's your nervous system flagging every social cue as potentially meaningful.

As a result, you'll become hyper-attuned to how others see you. And then you start adjusting – sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically.

You might start to hold back in meetings, say less, and hedge your opinions. Or you might go the other way by over-talking, over-explaining, and trying a little too hard to show how on top of things you still are.

Neither response helps. Because what people are looking out for isn't what you say next but how you say it. They want to see you behave with steadiness. 

If you suddenly feel off-brand – more anxious or more performative – that becomes a new signal your bosses and peers will pick up on.

The irony is that the real reputational impact of making a mistake often doesn't come from the mistake itself but from the energy you bring afterwards.

Indeed, in the long run, people probably won't remember your bad judgment call, but they will remember your composure-or lack of it-in the aftermath. 

I will take you through four steps that will allow you, over time, to regain that trust.

Step #1: reframing 

So, you made a bad judgment call. You’re embarrassed, and you feel your reputation is on the line. 

The first step after a bad call isn’t about fixing but reframing. Not publicly, but internally. Indeed, what derails most people after they make a bad call isn’t the mistake itself. It’s the story they tell themselves about what that mistake meant.

Our first instinct is to beat ourselves up and use it as proof that we’re not very good at our job. But if you zoom out, it just means we interpreted a situation one way, and now we understand it differently. 

With the benefit of hindsight, which, as we all know, is always 20/20, we would now make a different choice. That’s not failure. It’s just how our judgment evolves.

That’s also not you trying to put on a spin on what happened or save face. It’s you recalibrating. You’re updating your internal logic to better match what happened.

And this matters because how you frame what happened will shape everything that comes next.

If your inner story is, “I’ve failed, I made a big mistake, I’m useless”, you’ll either shrink, overcompensate, or try to prove yourself in ways that feel a bit off. And, as I said earlier, people will pick up on that. 

But if the story is, “That was a useful miss. Knowing what I know now, I’d make a different decision”, you’ll move more steadily. That steadiness is exactly what people want to see from you now.

So don’t rush to defend yourself. Also, don’t pretend it didn’t happen. And don’t turn it into an unnecessary crisis that needs managing. Start by telling yourself, “That was a misjudgment.  Now I understand the context better. I’m moving on”.

Step #2: Who needs to hear from you? 

Now that you’ve reframed the story for yourself, you need to take as ask yourself: 

Does anyone else need to hear something from me?

If the bad judgment call only affected you, or it’s already been resolved in how you’re now showing up, silence might be fine.

But ask yourself: did your mistake or bad judgment call create work for someone else, cost them time, or leave them even slightly exposed?

If the answer to any of these questions is a yes, then you need to say something. Briefly. Calmly. Like a professional who’s paying attention. Something like: “I’ve been thinking about that call last week. In hindsight, I don’t think I read the timing—or the room—quite right. I appreciate you rolling with it.”

That’s all it takes. No crisis language. No self-flagellation. Just a short signal that you’ve clocked the impact.

If you don’t do that, and there are indeed people who are feeling the ripple effects of your decision and hear nothing, they’ll simply assume you didn’t notice. Or you didn’t care. And if you’re in a leadership role, that’s really not what you want people to think.

Even a passing acknowledgement – “This one’s on me, guys. Thanks for your patience.” – can model something far more useful than pretending it didn’t happen.

It shows that you’re not fragile. That you can reflect, reset, and move forward without getting weird about it.

Again, it shows that you’re steady and that you’re self-aware. And that’s what makes people feel safe working with you again.

Step #3: Re-establishing presence

Now that you’ve reframed what happened and acknowledged it calmly and briefly with the people who needed to hear from you, the third step is how you show up next.

Most people won’t obsess over the details of your mistake or bad judgment but will pay close attention – consciously or not – to how you carry yourself in the days that follow. 

Are you composed? Are you still switched on? Do you seem like someone they can still trust?

This is where your executive presence, or what some people call gravitas, matters. 

People with great executive presence usually don’t rush to fix the mood or to win people back. They show something we can call grace under fire. But that I mean, they don’t over-perform or over-explain. They respond proportionately and carry on with quiet clarity.

To respond with gravitas, you need to decide what kind of energy you want to project and then make a few deliberate choices reinforcing that energy.

Ask yourself: “What do I want people to pick up on from me this week?” Maybe it’s that I’m grounded. Or I’ve taken it in. Or I’m still sharp. Or I’ve moved on. Then, let that guide your next few moves.

Follow through on something. Pick up a task no one else wants to do. Support someone else’s idea without making a big deal out of it. Deliver slightly ahead of expectation. Show up on time if you’re always late.

However, if your misstep affected specific people, don’t just acknowledge it and then move on. Instead, think about how to rebuild trust through small, deliberate signals of re-engagement. You don’t need to make a big gesture or buy them chocolates, and you definitely don’t need to keep circling back to the mistake. 

But you do need to create some forward momentum in the relationship. For example, you could ask for their input on something they’re close to. Include them early in a conversation where they might otherwise feel left out. 

In other words, you signal how much you value their perspective, not in a performative or guilt-ridden way, but because you genuinely do.

And if there’s an opportunity to give credit, use it. Again, not as a strategy but as a way of showing that the relationship is still important to you.

These small, collaborative gestures matter a lot when repairing trust. They make it easy to work together again and signal that things can get back on track.

Step #4: Rebuilding self-trust

Now that you’re slowly rebuilding trust externally, there’s one final step we haven’t yet covered: how to start trusting yourself again.

Remember that your professional reputation is mostly driven by your wins rather than your failures. 

But even long after everyone else has moved on, you might still be carrying the residue. Not shame necessarily, but hesitation.

“What if I get it wrong again?” That voice often shows up quite subtly. You might start second-guessing your decisions, delaying them, or softening your opinions.

You might even convince yourself that you’re just being more thoughtful, even though what’s really happening is that your self-trust has eroded. If you don’t tackle it immediately, your self-trust will quickly evaporate.

Here are four tips on how to rebuild your internal credibility.

1. Separate the error from your identity

You might have made a judgment call that didn’t land, but that does not automatically mean you’ve lost your edge or your instincts aren’t trustworthy.

Your brain doesn’t always see it that way, though, and will try to make it personal. It’ll start stitching up a little story like: “I can’t trust myself in these situations.”

This is where you need to get forensic rather than fatalistic. Instead of spiralling into self-doubt, get specific. Ask yourself: “What exactly went wrong here?”

Was it the dynamic? The power structure? The timing? Was my data incomplete – or did I misread the tone? Was my delivery off, or was the context simply different than I thought?

Don’t allow your brain to default to vagueness like “I just messed up” or “I should’ve known better.” Because the fuzzier the story, the more likely you are to turn a situational error into a character flaw.

2. Salvage the good bits

Most bad judgment calls don’t come out of nowhere. They usually start with a good instinct that just got misapplied.

Instead of discarding your entire thinking process, ask yourself: “What part of my thinking still holds up?”

Maybe your concern was valid, but the timing was wrong. Maybe your read of the people involved was sound, but your delivery was off. Maybe the idea itself was right, but the context wasn’t ready.

This isn’t about defending the decision to anyone else but about understanding it better yourself.

If you can spot which parts of your thinking still make sense, you protect the part of your judgment that was working so you don’t lose trust in your instincts altogether. 

3. Rebuild your evidence bank

Self-trust doesn't return just because you want it to. It comes back once you give your brain new data and proof that your judgment still works.

You start by making small, intentional decisions again – decisions that require you to read a moment, act on it, and watch it land.

I'm talking about a few well-placed choices made with clarity and good follow-through.

And yes, feedback from others can help, but you don't need to wait for it. The point is to find opportunities to tell yourself, "I judged a situation. I acted upon it. Yaaay, that worked."

Stack a few of those together, and you start rebuilding your internal reference point in ways that aren't based on wishful thinking or positive mantras but on recent evidence.

That's what makes your confidence feel earned again.

4. Don’t confuse being cautious with being wise

After a misstep, it’s tempting to become more cautious, which can sometimes be a good thing. 

But always ask yourself: “Is this caution coming from reflection, or is it coming from fear?”

When caution is rooted in reflection, it can help you read the room more clearly and act more intentionally. But when it’s driven by fear, it dulls your instincts, makes you second-guess yourself and gets you to hold back even when you know better.

When you find yourself doubting your judgment, do as follows. Look at the decision you’re hesitating about and write down two ways to approach it – one safe and one bold.

Then ask yourself: “Which way best reflects the version of me that’s already learned from the mistake?”

Choose that one.

Conclusion: the silver lining

So, how do you rebuild trust after a professional mistake or bad judgment call? You don't spiral, and you don't panic. And you also don't try to turn it into a TED Talk moment.

Instead, you follow these four steps by reframing what happened and talking to whoever needs to hear from you. You then start showing up again while focusing on getting in a few wins again and rebuilding your inner confidence. 

And to repeat myself, I'm not talking about catastrophic lapses in judgment here, like when you're caught with your hands in the till or with your pants down, but the kind of professional misfires that smart, capable people make all the time.

I'm talking about the kinds of judgment errors that aren't career-enders but are big enough to knock your confidence.

The beautiful irony is that these wobbles are often where real trust is built. Because when people see you recover, not defensively, not dramatically, just steadily. It makes them feel safer around you. and more likely to trust your judgment in future, not less.

So, if you're in the middle of one of those moments right now, I see you. Take a breath. You didn't blow it. You're just learning in real time, and if you follow this approach, you're going to rebuild that trust account again in no time – maybe even with a nice little bit of interest on top of it.