You lost your temper in the meeting. The words came out sharp and cutting, aimed at the junior developer who had missed a deadline. The room went quiet. Everyone looked at their laptops. You knew immediately that you had crossed a line, but you kept going anyway because stopping would have meant admitting the mistake in real time. Now it is three days later, and you cannot stop replaying it. The question sitting in your chest is whether you can come back from this, or whether this failure disqualifies you from the kind of leader you wanted to become.
Here is what most leaders do in that moment: they minimize it, rationalize it, or ignore it entirely. “It was not that bad.” “They provoked me.” “Everyone will forget in a week.” The failure becomes rubble that just sits there, unaddressed. The team learns that the leader cannot admit mistakes. Trust erodes quietly. The breach in the wall becomes permanent because no one ever attempted a repair. This is how good leaders become mediocre ones. Not through one catastrophic failure, but through a dozen unrepaired small ones.
Nehemiah faced a different kind of rubble. The walls of Jerusalem had been destroyed for decades. The gates were burned. The ruins were so normalized that people stopped seeing them as a problem. Nehemiah’s gift was that he looked at the wreckage and saw a construction site. “You see the trouble we are in,” he told the people. “Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem” (Nehemiah 2:17). He did not pretend the breach was not there. He did not say the wall was fine. He named the ruin and called for repair. That is the principle: a breach in the wall is a repair order, not a demolition notice.
There are three reasons leaders refuse to repair. The first is shame. The failure is so embarrassing that you cannot look at it directly. You hope everyone will just move on. The problem is that unacknowledged breaches become permanent weaknesses. The team knows exactly where the wall is thin, even if you are pretending it is fine. The second reason is pride. You will not admit you need help. You will just try harder next time. But trying harder without addressing the root cause guarantees you will fail the same way again. The third reason is despair. You believe the failure is too big to come back from. You give up on the fortress entirely. This is the enemy’s favorite tactic. If he can convince you to abandon the wall, he wins without another fight.
The alternative is a repair protocol. It has four steps, and none of them are optional. First, own the ruin. Before you can rebuild, you have to acknowledge what broke without minimizing, blaming, or spiritualizing. Just state the fact: “I lost my temper. I said things I should not have said. I hurt my team.” Confession is not weakness. It is the foundation of repair. Second, clear the rubble. Rubble is the debris of failure that blocks reconstruction: unresolved conversations, broken trust, lingering resentment. You have to clear it before you can lay new brick. That means the hard conversation. Go to the person you wronged. Do not defend yourself. Ask them what they need from you to move forward.
Third, lay fresh brick. This is where you rebuild the specific part of the fortress that failed. Do not just feel bad; build better. If you lost your temper in meetings, create a new protocol: “I will not respond to criticism in the moment. I will take twenty-four hours.” If you micromanaged out of anxiety, build new muscle around trust. Identify what mechanism in your decision-making process broke down and strengthen it. The goal is not guilt. The goal is architecture. Fourth, set a double guard. After a breach, the repaired section is vulnerable. The enemy knows where the wall was weak. Nehemiah posted guards day and night (Nehemiah 4:9). Your guard is accountability. Tell someone about your failure and your repair plan. Ask them to check in: “How did that meeting go? Did you keep your cool?”
Nehemiah’s workers rebuilt with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other (Nehemiah 4:17). They were simultaneously building and defending. That is the posture of repair. You are not just laying brick; you are staying vigilant. You are rebuilding while watching for the next attack. This is not paranoia. It is realism. The same pressure that caused the first breach will come again. The difference is whether you are prepared for it this time.
God is in the repair business. The entire arc of Scripture is a repair story. Adam and Eve breach the covenant; God promises a Redeemer. Israel violates the law repeatedly; God sends prophets and eventually His Son. Peter denies Jesus three times at the moment of greatest pressure; Jesus restores him three times by a fire on the beach (John 21). Your failure is not the end of your story. It is the setup for the next chapter. The question is whether you will treat the breach as a demolition notice or a repair order.
Back to that meeting. You lost your temper. You hurt someone. Here is what repair looks like in practice. You go to the junior developer privately. “I owe you an apology. What I said was wrong. There is no excuse. How are you doing?” You do not explain. You do not justify. You own it. Then you identify the trigger. Were you tired? Hungry? Frustrated by something unrelated? You create a new standing order to prevent it from happening again. You tell a peer or mentor what happened and ask them to follow up with you. The repair is not instant, but it is real. The breach becomes a testimony to what you are building, not a tombstone marking what you destroyed.
The rubble in your leadership is not permanent. It is a construction site. The question is whether you will see it that way and do the work of repair, or whether you will let it sit there until everyone, including you, forgets what the wall was supposed to look like in the first place.
What breach in your leadership needs repair today?
I write about leadership at the intersection of timeless principles and modern workplaces. Follow for weekly insights on building teams that actually work. For more articles like this consider subscribing to my Substack at: https://christianleadership.now