Reverb 21: Repairing After You’ve Misspoken: Turning Missteps into Opportunities

Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast

Andy Stanley

Business

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

What do you do when your words—intended or not—hurt someone on your team? In this REVERB episode, we dive deeper into last week's discussion on The Words that Make or Break Your Leadership. Every leader will eventually say something that lands wrong, what matters most is what happens next. Discover how leaders can use these moments to deepen trust and reinforce a healthy culture.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast Revert, a conversation designed to help leaders go even further faster by digging deeper into this month's episode. I'm your host, Susie Gray.
0:14.8	Andy, last week in our episode on the weight of our words in leadership, we talked about why some words weigh more than others,
0:21.4	especially in leadership. Because as a leader, every conversation you have, every sentence you say,
0:27.5	and even what you don't say is shaping your team, your culture, and ultimately your organization,
0:32.9	which is a really big responsibility. Especially when you're running an organization, because the words you use
0:39.2	might not be top of mind when you're focused on organizational progress, which I get. Leaders are not
0:45.3	going to be perfect. I mean, sometimes we're going to misspeak. So, you know, what do we do when that
0:49.8	happens? How do we get back in the driver's seat of shaping a positive culture after a
0:54.9	communication misstep? Because as we discussed last week, when you're a leader, your words
0:59.5	just don't matter. They linger. They do linger. That's a good way of saying it. Yeah. When we
1:05.9	misspeak and we all do it, even unintentionally, in fact, hopefully it's unintentionally. Yeah.
1:12.0	It's sort of like stepping on someone's foot in the dark. I mean, you didn't mean to, you really
1:16.3	didn't mean to, but it hurt. I mean, they hurt. And just saying, hey, I didn't see you there,
1:20.0	doesn't really make their foot stop hurting. This goes back to what we talked to last time,
1:24.0	that intent is oftentimes irrelevant, right? Again, last week we talked about as it relates to
1:29.2	the words we use we talked a lot about clarity and intentionality but today you know this whole
1:33.9	question of what do you do when you said something you didn't mean to or it wasn't taken the way
1:37.5	that you meant it following up is such a big big deal because and I want all of our podcast listeners to hear this,
1:46.4	the folks who report to you and work with you, let me tell you what they're most attuned to.
1:51.6	They're attuned to the same thing you are.
1:53.6	They're not expecting you to be perfect, like you don't expect them to be perfect.
1:57.0	What they are expecting, especially if you're the leader that they, again, last week, look up to,
	...

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