We can all remember a time when someone said something slightly offensive to us. An offhand comment from them landed badly on you. I’d bet you can still remember exactly how it felt, as if it happened yesterday.
But have you ever stopped to ask yourself how your comments may have landed for someone else?
In our busy lives and under the pressure we live under, it’s easy to make offhand comments you think are innocent. But that comment may hurt the people in the room, or a particular person who feels slighted and singled out.
Sometimes you have a nagging feeling that something isn’t right but you’re too busy to stop and reflect. Sometimes you know you said something that wasn’t ideal but you shrug it off and move on to the next task.
There’s an old saying: people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
When was the last time you apologized to someone at work or to your team?
We repair naturally in our closest personal relationships. When something feels off with someone we love, we notice and we go back. We check in.
At work, most leaders have been conditioned to keep moving, stay professional, not make it a thing. But doing it at work can be equally powerful, if not more so. At home, your family and friends know you well. An offhand comment can be shrugged off because the relationship has history and depth. At work, the relationships are more fragile. So when you repair intentionally, it sends a clear message: I notice you and I care about how what I say lands on you.
I’ve done this myself and sometimes discovered I misread the situation entirely. The person looks at me and says “no, everything’s fine. You didn’t say anything that offended me.” The message still lands the same way. I notice you. I care. And in that moment, I’ve deepened the level of trust with that person.
One of the most common patterns I see in my coaching work is leaders who operate with an unspoken belief: I’m the boss, so I get to say what I want. They don’t mean this maliciously. They’re working under tremendous pressure and don’t always have the time to articulate things well. Most of them aren’t even aware they’re doing it. It shows up as bluntness that comes across as dismissiveness. And when I bring it up in coaching, the response is often some version of “they’re too sensitive” or “I didn’t mean it that way” or “people need to toughen up.”
Underneath all of that is a belief that authority exempts you from accountability for your impact. It doesn’t.
What these leaders don’t see is what’s happening on the other side. The person on the receiving end doesn’t forget it. They file it away. They go home and tell their friends. They have a good cry. They disengage slowly or quickly, sometimes to the point where they’re dusting off their resume. Meanwhile you’re wondering why people aren’t speaking up and why the energy in the room feels flat.
What gets in the way of repair isn’t that these leaders don’t care about their people. Most of them do. It’s that apologizing feels like losing ground. There’s a deeply held belief that admitting you got something wrong undermines your authority. So instead, they minimize, explain, or keep moving and hope everyone will shrug it off, and forget. They don’t
Here’s what repair actually looks like. It doesn’t require a long conversation or a formal sit-down. It sounds like: “I want to come back to something I said earlier. I don’t think it landed the way I intended and I’m sorry.” That’s it. No lengthy explanation, no justification, no “but here’s the context.” The moment you start explaining, you’ve shifted the focus from the other person’s experience back to your own.
And if you want to get ahead of it before repair is even needed, try this. After making a statement in a meeting or a difficult conversation, ask: “How is this landing on you?” It’s a small question that does something significant. It tells the other person you’re paying attention to impact, not just intent. And it builds the kind of trust where people actually tell you the truth.
When you repair, it tells the other person their experience was real and it mattered to you. They feel seen, and often is what most workplace tension is actually about underneath all the defensiveness and distance.
Repair isn’t weakness. It’s one of the most credible things a leader can do. The leaders who do this consistently create loyalty and followership.