I once made a decision in the middle of a Sunday service that felt right in the moment. By Monday I knew it was wrong.
On Tuesday I sat in front of our entire team during our staff meeting and told them so.
I didn’t soften it or blame the variables of a live service. I said what I did, owned it, and told them what I would do differently next time. Saying “I was wrong” out loud to the people who trust me most ranks among some of the most uncomfortable moments of my leadership life.
It also ranks among the most important.
The team trusted me more after I owned it. They could see I cared about getting the decision right far more than I cared about being right, and that difference changed how they followed me from then on.
I keep returning to one conviction about leadership.
Repentance is one of the strongest moves a leader owns, and I define it simply: An apology says sorry, while repentance changes direction.
Research backs this up. A Dale Carnegie (huge shoutout to the Dale Carnegie Institute, which is primarily responsible for making me the communicator I am today) study of roughly 3,100 employees across 13 countries found that 81 percent say it matters when a leader admits they were wrong. Only 41 percent believe their own supervisor would actually do it.
That 40-point difference represents an enormous opportunity for any leader willing to turn.
Apologies Come with Words. Repentance Comes with Change.
When I coach people through a failure, I ask them to run it through four steps instead of one.
Name the specific thing. Skip the vague “mistakes were made” language.
Own your part. Leave the circumstances out of it.
Say what you will do differently. Make it concrete.
Do it where people can see it. Visibility makes it real.
That last step is where apologies die. We say the words, change nothing, and everyone watching quietly files us under all talk.
John the Baptist saw the same thing at the Jordan River.
Crowds were coming out to be baptized, and the religious leaders showed up wanting credit for the moment without any intention of changing. John speaks directly to them.
Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father.”
Matthew 3:8-9 (NIV)
Fruit is visible. It takes a season to grow, and everyone around you gets to watch whether it does.
John wanted evidence that something in them had actually turned, instead of a ritual that let them feel bad for a minute and move on. He also refused to let their pedigree stand in for a changed life, and most leaders have a version of “Abraham is our father.” It sounds like my track record is strong, or I built this.
The same standard applies in the workplace. Your team believes in change they can see, and that visibility is exactly why repentance earns trust while apologies without change erode it.
Hiding Is the Expensive Option
Many leaders assume admitting fault makes them look weak, so they cover the mistakes instead. Covering protects your image for about a week. Then the problem goes underground, where it quietly keeps charging interest until it comes back to collect.
Buried mistakes rarely stay buried. They resurface later as turnover and rework, and in people who stop telling you the truth. Your team also learns from what you hide.
If the leader covers, everyone underneath learns to cover, and now the organization is full of problems nobody will name until they are too big to fix.
Confession is only half the work. The other half is the turn, the part where you walk away from the thing you named and refuse to go back. A leader who confesses without turning has just narrated the problem, and the team knows the difference. That is the fruit John was asking for at the river.
Hiding is expensive. Repentance is the cheaper, braver bill to pay.
Changing Your Mind in Public Is Integrity
There is a persistent myth in leadership circles that reversing a decision makes you look wishy-washy. So leaders dig in on calls they privately know are wrong, just to look consistent, and tie their name permanently to a mistake they could have walked back in an afternoon.
Jesus told a short story to the chief priests and elders that dismantles the myth.
“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’
“’I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.
“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.
“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”
“The first,” they answered.
Matthew 21:28-31 (NIV)
Those were the same kind of credentialed leaders John confronted at the Jordan, and they answered correctly without realizing they had just described themselves. They were the son who said yes and stayed home.
The son who reversed himself is the hero of that story. His turnaround counted as obedience.
Integrity sometimes looks exactly like publicly changing your mind.
Make Repentance a Daily Habit Instead of a Crisis Event
The healthiest leaders I see make small course corrections constantly. T
hey catch the sharp tone and go back to that person within the hour. They notice a drift and adjust before it starts changing the overall direction.
Do that consistently and the corrections stay small. Let them pile up, and one day you face a situation that could have been a lot easier to deal with.
Build a whole culture around it and something rare happens. Your people stop hiding their mistakes, because they watch you own yours quickly and without drama, so problems surface while they are still cheap to fix.
Amy Edmondson’s research on hospital teams showed this. The better-led teams reported more mistakes because staff felt safe to speak up, and those were the stronger teams. The difference lived in the courage to bring mistakes into the light for correction.
Keep short accounts. Small fruit grown every week beats one dramatic harvest after a crisis.
Your Repentance Is Never Only About You
Think about the last time you snapped at your kids after a long day. You can let it pass and hope they forget, or you can sit on the edge of their bed and tell them you were wrong and you are sorry.
Those children will learn how to handle their own failures by watching how you handle yours. The same thing is happening in your office. Every person who reports to you is taking notes on what a leader does after getting it wrong.
The people you lead sit downstream of whether you are willing to turn. Every time pride protects your image, the people under you absorb the risk. Repentance costs you some image and covers them.
A Four-Question Diagnostic
Answer these about the direction you are actually heading, honestly.
Have you drifted from the person you were when you started, the one you would be proud to still be?
Is there an apology you made that your behavior never backed up?
Name one area where you keep saying you will change and have not.
If someone you trust named your blind spot right now, would you turn or defend?
Hold your answers up against John’s standard. If there is no fruit you can point to, the turn hasn’t happened yet.
True Repentance Comes With a Price Tag
The clearest picture of real repentance I know is Zacchaeus, a tax collector who spent years cheating people. One dinner with Jesus broke something open in him.
“Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
Luke 19:8 (NIV)
That moment shows repentance becoming a decision with a cost.
He restructured his whole life and his bank account around the change. The proof was the fourfold check he was willing to write, the exact fruit John had demanded at the river.
Real repentance always shows up in your calendar and your choices, long before it shows up in your reputation.
I have had my own tree moments, where feeling sorry finally turned into changing something that cost me. I have never once regretted those turns.
So here is your assignment this week. Name the decision, the tone, or the drift you already know needs a U-turn. Say it out loud to the people it affected. Then produce the fruit where they can see it.
Your willingness to turn is one of the clearest signs your leadership still has a pulse.
Repent quick and move on, Leader.
— Jared