The Repair
28 Days of Asking: Day 25
Day 25: When something breaks, do I hide the cracks or lead with repair?
I spent some time on a podcast today looking back at the map of my career. We traced the non-linear path, the pivots from early professional hurdles to the lessons of endurance racing, and finally, to modern leadership.
As we talked, one word kept surfacing: responsibility.
In endurance racing, when your body or your gear breaks down at mile 40, you don’t have the luxury of blame. There is no one else in the woods to point at. You either take full ownership of the “mess,” or you don’t make it to the finish line.
Leadership is no different, yet we’re often taught the opposite. We’re told leadership is about projected confidence, being right, or remaining “seamless.” But the most transformative lessons I’ve learned didn’t come from the wins; they came from the moments I dropped the ball and had to find the floor.
It was a game-changer for me when I realized that true authority starts with the courage to say: “I f-ed this up. I am responsible. Here is how I’m going to fix it.”
Repairing a connection is always harder than building a new one from scratch. It requires you to sit in the cold discomfort of the break without rushing to find an excuse. It’s an athletic feat of the ego. But in my experience, the payoff (the trust built through the repair) is always worth the friction.
What is currently “broken” in your world? Is there a project, a relationship, or a habit waiting for you to stop explaining the crack and start leading the repair?
