Lead On Podcast

On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses how leaders can effectively handle mistakes. He outlines four key steps: taking responsibility for your actions, admitting you were wrong, accepting the consequences, and moving on.

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Host
Jeff Iorg
President, SBC Executive Committee

What is Lead On Podcast?

Ready to hone your leadership skills and unlock your full potential? Tune in to the Lead On Podcast, where Jeff Iorg dives deep into Biblical leadership.

Hosted by SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg, this dynamic podcast provides insight for seasoned executives, aspiring leaders, or those in ministry who are simply passionate about personal growth. The Lead On Podcast offers actionable, practical tips to help you navigate the complexities of ministry leadership in today's ever-changing world.

From effective communication and team building to strategic decision-making and fostering innovation, each episode is packed with valuable lessons and inspiring stories to empower you on your leadership journey.

Put these principles into practice and Lead On!

Jeff Iorg:

Welcome to the lead on podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. One of the inevitable realities about ministry leadership is, you will make mistakes. Leaders make mistakes. They are inevitable.

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You may say, well, I'm going to be very careful. I'm going to work really hard. I'm gonna pray much. I'm sure you will, and you will still make mistakes. The real challenge for leaders is not necessarily avoiding mistakes and being perfect.

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It's handling their mistakes well. So today, I wanna talk with you about some principles for overcoming leadership mistakes. And I wanna talk about these in 4 headings

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that will help us to lay out a framework for what to do when we make an inevitable leadership mistake. The first step is this, when you make a mistake, take responsibility for your actions. Take responsibility.

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That may sound too basic for lofty spiritual leaders like us. We we're in significant roles. Surely, there must be more to solving a leadership mistake than taking responsibility. Well, there is a little bit more, and I'll talk about that

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on this podcast, but it all starts here. No matter your stature, you still have to take responsibility for your actions. Now the devil likes to whisper, pass the buck. Let someone else take the fall. You're the victim here.

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It's somebody else's fault. The devil likes to whisper those things, but wise leaders know that dealing with a mistake requires us, first of all, to take responsibility. Now some of

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you are already thinking, I dialed into the podcast to hear that. I've been hearing that since kindergarten.

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Right. That's how basic it really is. And this issue

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of how important it is to take responsibility is known clearly by every one of us who's a parent. I remember an incident many years ago with one of my children. A golf ball went flying out of our backyard and wound up hitting a neighbor's house and breaking a window. The neighbor called down and asked, did I know anything about a golf ball that came up from our area and broke a window in his house? I called in my son and asked the question, and my son looked at me and said, no.

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I I don't know anything about that. Wrong answer. I knew he fully was aware of what had happened because I knew he had been out in the backyard with his golf clubs just a

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few minutes before. He refused to take responsibility. That was not a happy day.

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However, same child, few years later, walked in the door once, tossed his car keys on the on the, kitchen counter, and said, hey. I need to tell you something that happened at school today. He laid it out for me. I said, man, that that's not good. He said, no.

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It's not, but it was my fault. I've owned it. I gotta go see a principal tomorrow about it. I remember my next words were, okay. Let me know how that turns out.

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I was perfectly content that it was going to be resolved because my son had taken full responsibility.

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See, blaming others is a surefire recipe, not only to lose your reputation and not only

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to lose the respect others have for you, but also to lose your leadership effectiveness and sometimes, even your leadership opportunity. Few years ago, I was involved with 2 ministers in separate incidents. These happened fairly close together, which is why they've stuck in my mind for all these years. 2 ministers that were both guilty of moral failure. But the responses of these 2 men were diametrically opposite.

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1 man came forward, took full responsibility for his actions, blamed no one else, offered an immediate resignation, and asked for nothing from his church. The other man, however, blamed his wife for his sins, stonewalled his resignation process, created a what I'll call a gossip backdrop to try to undermine the church leaders who confronted him, and he threatened legal action if he was terminated. He refused to make any public statement about his departure from his leadership role, and he even opposed those who rightly confronted him and ultimately had to remove him from his position. Unfortunately, his marriage ultimately failed, and not only was his leadership role lost, but so was his future ministry opportunity. Now while there were differences in the incidents with these two men, the biggest difference between them was not what they did, but how they responded to it.

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The first man took full responsibility for his actions, demonstrated humility by moving through the resignation process appropriately, and as a result, his church responded with significant support for him, and his family. In fact, that support extended to some insurance benefits, counseling benefits, and other efforts for accountability to try to help them salvage their marriage. And today, that former minister is a committed lay leader, still married to his same wife, and having completed years of effective service after his restoration, not to ministry, but to Christian living and to church membership. Now, one key decision made the difference in defining these two outcomes. The first minister admitted his mistake and took full responsibility for his actions.

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The second did neither. This was the predominant determining factor in how their followers responded to them and ultimately, in the conclusion that was reached about their situation. You you know this is true if you're a parent. If your child is confronted with a mistake and they take full responsibility, own what they did, admit it, ask forgiveness, etcetera, you know that you're ready to move on quickly. But if they lie, cheat, stonewall, and blame, you know you have more issues to deal with.

Jeff Iorg:

Listen, good leaders take responsibility for their actions, all of them. I know this is countercultural today in a society where people blame others for every mistake or problem. In our culture today, it's never my fault. It's always someone else's fault,

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but real leaders. Real leaders take responsibility for their actions, resist the temptation to blame others. They own what belongs to them. When they

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do this, anger is often diffused, and forgiveness and restoration actually become possible. So, step 1 in dealing with a mistake is to take responsibility for your actions. Now the second thing I want you

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to do is admit you were wrong. Admit you were wrong. While taking responsibility is foundational, owning up to what you've done by admitting you were wrong, or if you've sinned, by confessing your sin is the essential next step. Now,

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when you've made a mistake, you admit you were

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wrong. But when you've also sinned in the context of making that mistake, then confession is required. Now confessing your sin to God may be sufficient, but but sometimes it isn't. For leaders, public confession

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may be required to repair a damaging situation. Now that doesn't mean you have to tell everyone, each and every one of your sins or your shortcomings, but it does mean you sometimes confess to an appropriate circle of people impacted by your actions

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that you were wrong, that you've sinned, that you've changed your mind, or repented about your behavior, and you're ready to

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go in a different direction. Let's be honest, too many leaders today are excessively image conscious. We want our followers to believe we're always right, always in control, always accurate in our judgments and decisions. We're often driven by our insecurities to present what I call a facade of competence. In other words, we fake it.

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Our humanity cannot be displayed. We can't be honest about who we are because we're afraid we'll lose the loyalty, and respect, and trust of our followers. Getting past all this and learning to take responsibility and admit wrongdoing is, however, essential for developing those authentic leadership relationships.

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You know, I think I love you are the 3 most important words in any romantic relationship. If that's true, the 3 most important words in establishing leadership credibility might just be, I was wrong.

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Your followers know something about you. They know you're not always right. They see it. They live with your bad decisions. They put up with your mistakes.

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The issue isn't if you will make mistakes, it's if you will be transparent enough and humble enough to admit your flaws, handle the consequences, and then continue

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to lead. What am I talking about here? What kind

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of bad decisions am I referring to? Well, one time, for example, I insisted that our organization adopt a budget, that was larger than was being recommended by the financial leaders in our organization. Now my reason? Well, we had to have faith. We had to be bold

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and trust God to provide. So

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we adopted the larger budget, and 2 months into the fiscal year, we were making cutbacks and revisions.

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Now frankly, in terms of

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a leadership mistake, that one was relatively easy to overcome. We could fix it with some revised financial planning,

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but some decisions aren't so easily resolved. When you hire the wrong person, or you commit to the wrong long term strategy, or you build a building that's designed, incorrectly, man, those are a lot harder to deal with. But even beyond that, there are those mistakes that we make that are also involve sin. Doing something that's not just

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a mistake, but it's also a sinful choice.

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Sometimes we're full of pride, arrogance,

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self promotion. We have some holier than now leadership mantle that just won't let us admit that that we've sinned, that we've done something that was not only a mistake, but was also morally or ethically wrong.

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Now most of the time, confession is a private matter, but for leaders, it can also be a public responsibility.

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A part of taking a spiritual leadership role is having to take and assuming that you will take public responsibility for your actions. The the public responsibility of leadership, however, can be very painful when a leader sins and has to confess that to their followers. Number of years ago, when I was the president at Gateway Seminary, I lost my temper in a committee meeting one day. The chairman of the meeting was, I thought, being insensitive and not doing a very good job and really inappropriately being negative about the seminary. And after listening and interfacing for a little while, I exploded in anger.

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I said some things I shouldn't have said, and I got up and walked out of

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the room and slammed the door on my way out. Wasn't my best day.

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Walked down to my office, sat down, and reflected on what

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had just happened. Didn't take much to realize that I had made a pretty serious mistake, but also to realize that my mistake had gone beyond that and moved over into the category of sin. I had expressed my anger inappropriately. I had said things that were hurtful. I'd behaved in a disrespectful manner,

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and I had to confess that. So I did. I bowed my head and I confessed to God what I had done and asked him for his forgiveness, and as God promises he will do, he forgave me. But in this particular situation, I had sinned in front of and against some people that were in that meeting, and so I knew what I had to do next. I had to confess what I had done to each one of them and ask for their forgiveness.

Jeff Iorg:

There were 5 or 6 people in the meeting that day, and so the next day at work, I had to reach out to every one of them either in person or in some cases by phone and admit to them that I had not only made a mistake, but I had sinned by being angry and disrespectful and asked them each one for forgiveness. Now while that was a difficult thing to do, it was the right thing to do. Now notice though that I did not get up in chapel and ask for forgiveness, nor did I write a blog and ask for forgiveness, nor did I advertise to anyone else what I had done. No. I went right to the people involved, and I asked them each one for their forgiveness.

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So when public confession is required,

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keep these principles in mind. 1st, confess your sin without including others. Remember, you're confessing your sin and not the sins of others. 2nd,

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confess the sin only in the scope it was committed. In my case, to only those persons who were on the committee and in the room when the event happened. So if your sin impacted a class or a choir or a a deacon's group or a committee, confess it to them, not the whole church. If it only impacted 2 or 3 team members, go to them personally and confess it. Don't do it openly in

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a staff meeting. 3rd, confess the sin as personally as possible.

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Do it in person. Make a phone call if you can't do it in person, but only write an email or a text or a letter or some published statement if it's the only way

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to connect with your constituency. I I

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I've spent a good bill bit of time studying the impact of nonverbal communication body language, and it's pretty significant. I won't go into all that today on the podcast, but people can see in your eyes, sense in your tone, see in your facial expression, the genuineness the genuineness of your confession, and there's something powerful about that. That's why I advise you to do it as personally as possible rather than write simply something in writing. Now let me go also on to say that public confession is not a common event for a leader, but it can be an important spiritual discipline for repairing damage and relational trust. When you say to someone, I'm wrong and I've sinned, most Christians will forgive you, and amazingly, they will continue to support you as a leader.

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In fact, genuine confession leading to forgiveness and restoration is the purview of the Christian community. It's who we are and what we do. So we should not be afraid

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to make a public confession when one is needed, Meaning, that we confess our sins only in the scope

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in which it was committed and as personally as possible. And when we do that, we model genuinely, effectively, and powerfully the power of confession and the resulting forgiveness and restoration that's possible. And it has been my experience that when I do this, the esteem that people hold me in as a leader goes up, not down. A lot of leaders think, well, if I admit my mistake and confess my sin, I'll lose leadership stature. The opposite is true.

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Here's the hard reality. Your followers already know you've made the mistake. They already saw you sin. They're wondering how you're gonna handle it. And when you handle it appropriately, their trust and respect for you only goes up.

Jeff Iorg:

Well so take responsibility, and then, secondly, admit you were wrong. Now, 3rd, accept your consequences.

Jeff Iorg:

You know, only in Hallmark movies does everyone live happily ever after. Leadership mistakes always have consequences, and sometimes those consequences can result in a termination from a leadership position or maybe disqualification from any leadership role like the illustrations I used at the beginning of the podcast. But frankly, most mistakes, including those that are sinful, can be overcome, and most negative consequences can be managed or mitigated. Leadership change in in in any organization is difficult, and most people want their leaders to stay in place and succeed. They are not looking for ways or reasons to make a change.

Jeff Iorg:

They're looking for ways and reasons to keep you in place. So this means that when you do make a mistake, and you've taken responsibility, and you've admitted

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it, and you've confessed it, that you may still have some consequences you have to live with. What do I mean by that? Well, perhaps public embarrassment is one consequence. Your leadership influence, because of what you've done, may be, diminished. Followers

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can be emotionally deflated, maybe not quite so willing to support your next decision or your your next initiative. And some bad decisions have costly consequences. Your your ministry may have to reallocate money to recover from your bad decision, and donors may stop or diminish their support. You may also suffer some personal financial setbacks, like loss of compensation while your ministry recovers, or you may have to contribute money to offset the losses of that you've caused, or you may have to make some restitution. You know, it's a funny story now, but it wasn't funny when it happened.

Jeff Iorg:

Many years ago in my first church, the facility had been remodeled, and they had installed padded pews in the sanctuary, and they had moved the older pews that were there from the founding of the and their building of the first church building down into the basement fellowship hall. And those pews were in the fellowship hall, were moved around quite frequently. They were used for seating, but they were also, frankly, just in the way. Now Now this wasn't a big problem when the church was small, but as our church started growing, we needed more and more space, including the fellowship hall, to be able to be divided up for some temporary classroom space. So I had a brilliant idea.

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Let's get rid of the pews, and I did. I called a junk dealer, asked him to come by, he looked at the pews, and I said, we'd like to get rid of these, and he said, well, I'll give you a $25 a pew. I thought he was gonna ask me to pay $25 to have them hold off, so I was thrilled. I sold those pews for $25 a piece.

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Must have been about 10 of them. Pretty excited.

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I got my

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$250. The following Sunday, the church was filling up, and some of the deacons came

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to see me, and they said, pastor,

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what happened to the pews in the fellowship hall? And I smiled and said, oh, fellas, I sold those. Got rid of them. They said, why? So when

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we needed more room for the classes that were starting that need that space for Sunday school. And one of

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the men said, how much did you sell those for?

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And I was really proud. I said, I got $25 a piece for them. Them. Well, after we called 911 to resuscitate the deacons, well, not quite that bad, but almost, they said, pastor, those were antique church pews. They're worth about 1500 to $2,000 each.

Jeff Iorg:

Ouch. Yes. I really did that. Not a good day.

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So I had to accept the consequences. The consequences first were I had to make restitution. So I called the deacons meeting, and I confessed what I had done and apologized for my, bad choice and my, decision making process. And I said, I will find a way to pay back what's owed. And the deacon said, well, no, you won't because we know what we we pay you, and you you don't have the money to be paying back for church pews.

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But you need to understand something. You don't have the authority to just decide what gets sold around here. And I realized in that moment that one of my consequences was I had to get permission before I made decisions like that going forward. And then, I needed to curtail some of my zeal for growth of the church and temper that with some respect for what existed when I got there, and ask some people for permission to move forward on some key things like that. All I'm saying is that decisions have consequences, and when you make a bad one, it's going to have some consequences.

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I remember once that, we had a person at the seminary

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that overspent their budget, and the CFO called him in

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and said, you've overspent your budget, and the person accepted their responsibility for what he had done and explained why. And the CFO said, well, I understand your explanation, but it's not it's not an adequate explanation. So here's what's going to happen going forward. We're gonna cap your spending authorization at a certain amount, and anything above that, you need to come and get my permission before you spend it, so so that we can help you to learn how to manage your budget more effectively. Now, in this particular case, the employee was very responsive and said, I understand what I've done and how I need to change, and

Jeff Iorg:

I'll be glad to work with that system. That's what

Jeff Iorg:

I mean by accept the consequences. When you've made a mistake and you've owned up and you've owned up to it, and you have, taken responsibility and admitted that you were wrong, now you just have to accept what comes and trust that it can be managed or mitigated, but it can't be avoided. Now, you can mitigate or manage the pain of these consequences by really several steps. 1st, accept the consequences are just natural and normal part of the recovery process. You know, trust has been damaged, credibility undermined, and momentum lost, and nothing you can do will make that magically disappear.

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So just accept that consequences are a part

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of the situation. 2nd, trust

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to God to restore your leadership. You know, God limits damage from painful circumstances, and he delights in restoring rep repented people. Now we're not sure, like, for example, of all the reasons, but remember Mark in the Bible, he was demoted as a young leader and dismissed from Paul's team. You can find that story in Acts 15. But later, Mark was restored to leadership, and in first Timothy 411, Paul wrote and said, send him to me.

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He's useful to me for ministry. So, whatever mistakes Mark made as a young leader were overcome by God's grace and his continued record of effective service. So, God does restore us when we've made mistakes. 3rd, when you're accepting your consequences, allow some time for healing to take place. Wounds heal, but not instantly.

Jeff Iorg:

Scabs form, but scars remain. And leadership scars may not be visible, but they're nonetheless real, and they remind us of past events and how God has worked through those events to sustain us and to change us. Allowing time for healing and for the resulting scars to become assets in your ministry is essential to understanding the consequences of your action. You know, my leadership scars, not my successes, are the source of most of my leadership books and many of the teachings that I do. I'm thinking about a situation right now.

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Early in my pastoral ministry, I made a mistake. I terminated a person in a very inappropriate

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way. And when I went back to, the team, that supervised me in my church and

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I explained to them what I had done, They communicated very clearly to me that I had behaved inappropriately. I terminated the person wrongly, and they wanted me to make it right. Now I couldn't rehire the person, that wasn't on the table, but I could try to restore the relationship. And so I went out to visit the person that I terminated at her home, and her husband greeted me at the door. He did let me in, and I said, I've come to tell you today that how I treated you and your termination was wrong, and I'm asking you to forgive me.

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And even though I can't restore you to your position, I'm asking you that we can I'm asking if we can restore our relationship. And she looked up and said, it's easy to forgive, but not to forget. Now, she ultimately did forgive me, and this couple ultimately did restore relationship with me, but it took a while. It took a while. Several weeks of working together to get back to where we had once been because of my mistakes and sinful choices toward them.

Jeff Iorg:

All I'm simply saying is that when you accept your consequences, one of those consequences is that you're going to have to allow some time for healing and recovery to take place. Now finally,

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take responsibility, admit you were wrong, accept your consequences, and now finally, move on. Move on. For some leaders, the most perplexing part of a leadership mistake is how to put it behind you and move on when you take responsibility, admit you were wrong, confess your sin, receive forgiveness, you should be finished with the issue. While you may have to live with the consequences for a while, the mistake has been addressed and resolved. It's time to move on.

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Now, bigger mistakes take longer to recover emotionally

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and to put in your past, but you got to put them in the past. Reliving past mistakes

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only undermines future effectiveness. Leaders must learn the discipline of what I call failing fast. When you miss, when you make a mistake, own it.

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Move on. Work through this process I've described in the podcast and do it quickly. When you make a mistake, don't gloss over it, but don't dwell on it either. Take responsibility. Admit you made

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a mistake. Confess sin if required. Accept your consequences, and then say, let's all move on. And, by the way, if you're leading people, give them that same privilege. Let them move on and you move on with them.

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Failing fast doesn't mean you just make more mistakes. It means when you've made a mistake, you own it quicker, move on from it faster, deal with it and put it in the past, without holding on to it, resisting it, or denying it for very long. Now, when you move on, it means you stop talking about the mistake, release yourself from false guilt, and take the initiative to head in a better direction. It means you move on. The Bible says there is, therefore, a little bit of condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus.

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That is not what the Bible says. The Bible says, there is now therefore no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus. If you are carrying around condemnation from a past leadership mistake, that you know you have taken responsibility, you know you have admitted your mistake, you know you confessed sin if necessary, you've managed the consequences and lived with them, you've done all those things, and yet you still feel a sense of condemnation, of shame and burden hanging over you that is demonic. Rejected. And realize that God forgives.

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People forgive. Restoration is possible, and it's time for you to move on. Well, leadership mistakes are inevitable. You will make some. It doesn't matter who you are, how long you've been at this, how good you think you'll do, you will make mistakes.

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And when you do, if you'll own them, admit them, confess them, and move on from them, then your leadership mistakes can be a part of your story as you lead on.