It is entirely feasible that by focusing on avoiding mistakes you either a) make more or be) achieve little.

With this in mind, contemporary executive training places significant weight behind the positive contribution to business and careers of mistakes and failure.

“The best advice I was given when starting my business was ‘go make mistakes’. And I made lots,” says Henry Stewart, chief happiness officer, Happy Ltd, an executive training consultancy. “But that’s the point. If you, and your people, aren’t getting things wrong then are you trying anything new?”

This can seem anathema to new managers who probably feel they need to hit the ground running, to shine and prove to their superiors that promotion was a good decision. Mistakes can seem like failures, as opposed to a completely natural aspect of being, firstly, human and, secondly, a new manager.

Communication: the root of much failure

Yet as Phanella Mayall Fine, an executive coach at The Executive Coaching Consultancy, highlights, making mistakes happens when learning new skills is normal and many stem from the same place – poor communication. “The biggest mistakes I made as a manager before becoming a coach were around communication – or rather lack thereof.”

Alastair Barlow, founder of accountancy practice flinder and a former PwC partner agrees, with most mistakes he witnesses, having worked in practice for over 13 years, centred on the communication-heavy spheres of client relationship and project management.

“Moving into the manager role brings challenges all at once; increased responsibility, increased ownership of client relationships, project management, technical go-to for the team, team management,” he says.

“All of this can sometimes lead to one of these many balls being dropped. New managers are so head-down and focused to deliver on time and get to the right technical answer that they often overlook keeping the client informed of progress and issues along the way.”

Recovering from big mistakes

Making professional mistakes can be a huge blow, one that depletes confidence levels and self-belief, and subsequently opens the door to more mistakes.

As Alastair puts it, however, the key to bouncing back is akin to picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and getting back on the horse: “Take the feedback on the chin, move on and learn from it.”

Indeed, it’s all in your mindset and if you’re capable of lifting your head up after a mistake, then there are opportunities for self-improvement and professional development. And it’s also worth remembering that within mistakes, there are likely actions, decisions or outcomes that probably went well, so don’t focus purely on the negative.

“If you can adopt a growth mindset – ‘I can learn from this’ – as opposed to a mindset that is more fixed – ‘I’m just not a great manager’ – then you can flip a mistake into a learning opportunity.”

Phanella keeps a three-step process in my mind when evaluating mistakes:

• What did I do well?
• What did I do wrong?
• What can I learn from this mistake to apply to the future?

“If you follow this process after each mistake, gradually you can train your mind to adopt a positive, growth mindset in the face of failures,” she says.

Celebrating mistakes

Returning to the theory of mistakes being encouraged as a sign of effort and ingenuity, Henry talks about the importance of “celebrating” mistakes. “I don’t want people terrified of getting something wrong, I want them eager to try a new way of doing something – knowing that they won’t get blamed if it doesn’t work out.

“Think about the difference that approach could mean. How liberating it can be to say ‘I got it wrong’. I love hearing those words from a new member of staff, as it means they are settling in to the Happy culture and taking responsibility.”

Mistake celebrators

• India headquartered multinational Tata Group has a failure award, for which there is fierce competition.
• Indian outsourcing company HCL encourages those seeking promotion to submit a Failure CV, to check they’ve taken risks.
• Nixon McInnes, a former digital consultancy in Brighton, had a monthly Church of Fail where staff reveal what they’ve got wrong – to loud applause.

Common “new manager” pitfalls

• Feeling pressured to prove you know it all
• To show that you are in charge
• To change everything overnight
• Or, a fear of making any changes
• Not trying to bond with your team
• Being too independent and not keeping your boss in the loop
• Avoiding managing problem subordinates
• Fear of developing your own management style, or in other words, maintaining the status quo
• Over-promising, under-delivering

Neil Johnson is a freelance business journalist who contributes regularly to trade publications and member organisations, covering employability, recruitment, business trends and industrial analysis.