Workplace errors are inevitable, particularly in jobs characterized by complexity, uncertainty, and high performance demands. While existing error management research has primarily examined how leaders encourage error reporting and communication, less is known about how leadership facilitates employees' adaptive responses after errors occur. Leader modeling fallibility---leaders' open acknowledgment of their own mistakes and sharing of how they reflected on and corrected them---may provide employees with constructive examples for coping with errors. Drawing on the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions and construal level theory, this study examines whether leader modeling fallibility promotes employees' error resilience and error learning through positive emotions and whether these effects depend on employees' subjective temporal distance from a focal error.

Data were collected from junior auditors in three accounting firms in Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, China, using a three-wave longitudinal survey. At Time 1, participants reported leader modeling fallibility and the subjective temporal distance of a focal audit error. Two weeks later, they reported positive emotions, followed by measures of error resilience and error learning two weeks afterward. After matching responses across the three waves and excluding invalid questionnaires, 254 valid cases were retained. Confirmatory factor analysis supported construct validity, and the hypotheses were tested using bootstrapped moderated mediation analyses.

The results showed that leader modeling fallibility positively predicted both error resilience and error learning. Positive emotions mediated these relationships, suggesting that leader modeling fallibility enhances employees' adaptive responses by activating positive psychological resources. Subjective temporal distance negatively moderated the relationship between leader modeling fallibility and positive emotions, such that the relationship was stronger when employees perceived the focal error as temporally closer. Accordingly, the indirect effects of leader modeling fallibility on error resilience and error learning through positive emotions were also stronger under shorter subjective temporal distance.

This study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it extends research on leader modeling fallibility beyond error reporting and communication by demonstrating its role in fostering employees' recovery- and growth-oriented responses to errors. Second, it identifies positive emotions as a key resource-building mechanism linking leader behavior to adaptive error responses, extending the application of broaden-and-build theory to organizational error management. Third, by incorporating subjective temporal distance as a boundary condition, this study highlights the importance of employees' temporal perceptions in shaping the effectiveness of leader modeling fallibility, offering a dynamic perspective on how leaders facilitate adaptive responses to workplace errors.