Learning from errors not only helps recognize the boundary conditions of how things operate and establish the correct mental models, but also promotes innovation. Given the importance of learning from errors, it is crucial for employees to cultivate a positive error-learning orientation and mitigate the negative error-covering orientation. Drawing upon the social information processing theory and a sample of 284 employees, this paper proposes and tests the direct positive effect of humble leadership on facilitating subordinates’ error-learning orientation and suppressing their error-covering orientation, and the indirect positive effect on subordinates’ job performance. Furthermore, this paper examines the effectiveness of humble leadership for two types of narcissistic subordinates. The results reveal that, for subordinates high on narcissistic admiration, humble leadership’s direct effect on their error-learning orientation and indirect effect on job performance are weaker; while for subordinates high on narcissistic rivalry, humble leadership’s direct effect on their error-covering orientation and indirect effect on job performance are stronger.