A Slice of Humble Pie

A CEO sat down with one of our coaches recently and led with these words, "I have to tell you what I did."  And then they told this story: They had written an email to an employee. An important one, the kind that needed a response. They typed and they sent it.  The hours passed. No response.They checked their inbox.

Nothing.

They waited a little longer.

Still nothing.And as the silence stretched, something started building quietly underneath the surface.

Irritation.

Not the dramatic, explosive kind. The slow kind. The kind that grows in the background while you're doing other things, feeding on the story your mind is constructing about why someone hasn't responded: 

• what that says about their professionalism, 

• whether they're ignoring you, 

• whether this is a pattern…

By the time the leader decided they had waited long enough, the irritation had been marinating for hours. And when they approached the employee, it showed. Their tone was sharper than usual. Their words carried an edge. The message underneath the message was clear, “I've been waiting. And I'm not happy about it.”

The employee was genuinely baffled. Caught completely off guard. "I'm sorry, what email? I don't know what you're talking about."

The leader, now even more certain they were right and even more frustrated, went straight to their computer to pull up the evidence.  They opened their sent folder.

It wasn't there.

They checked the drafts folder.  And there it was. Unsent. Sitting quietly exactly where they had left it: never delivered, never received, never anyone's fault but their own.

The leader had to stop. Take a breath. And reckon with what had just happened.  They had built an entire story about an employee, hours of growing frustration, a sharpened tone, a confrontational approach, based on something that was never true. 

The employee hadn't ignored them. 

The employee hadn't been unprofessional. 

The employee had simply never gotten the email.

And now there was an apology to make.

The leadership lesson is something worth sitting with. How often do we build stories about people based on incomplete information?  How often does an unanswered message, an unreturned call, a delayed response become, in our minds, evidence of something about that person's character, commitment, or respect for us?

We rarely leave the gap empty. We fill it. And what we fill it with is usually shaped by our mood, our stress level, and whatever narrative feels most available in the moment.

The employee in this story did nothing wrong. But they experienced the consequences of a story they were never part of creating.

That happens more than most of us would like to admit.

What the Humble Pie Moment Actually Requires

To this Self-Aware Leader's enormous credit, they did not deflect. They did not minimize. They did not quietly let the interaction pass and hope the employee forgot about it.

They went back and apologized. Clearly, directly, and without over-explaining.

That's not easy. Especially in a role where authority and credibility feel like things worth protecting.  Admitting when we are wrong, that we made an assumption, and that we took it out on you requires a specific kind of courage that doesn't get celebrated enough in leadership spaces.

But here's what that apology did, beyond simply being the right thing to do.

• It humanized the leader.

• It repaired the moment before it had a chance to quietly damage the relationship.

• It modeled for that employee what accountability actually looks like from the top.

  
  

And it reinforced something important: that even leaders, especially leaders, are not exempt from checking their story before they act on it.

A Few Things Worth Practicing

1. Pause before you pursueWhen someone hasn't responded and the irritation starts to build, it's worth asking, before approaching them, whether you've confirmed the message was actually received. A missing response is data. It isn't automatically a character statement about the other person.

2. Check the story before you act on itWhat have you decided about this person, and is it based on fact or assumption? The gap between what happened and what we decided it means is often where unnecessary conflict lives.

3. Apologize cleanly when you get it wrongNot with excessive self-flagellation. Not with a lengthy explanation of everything that led to the mistake. Just clearly, directly, and genuinely. "I was wrong about that. I'm sorry." Five words. Enormous impact.

4. Let it be a little funnySome of our best leadership lessons arrive wrapped in humility and a healthy dose of humor. The CEO who told this story was embarrassed and laughed while telling it. That laughter wasn't avoidance, it was humility and wisdom. The ability to see yourself clearly, including the moments where you missed the mark, is one of the hallmarks of a truly self-aware leader.

Reflection Questions

• When someone doesn't respond the way I expect, what story do I default to, and how quickly does it solidify?

• Have I ever acted on a story about someone that turned out to be incomplete or simply wrong?

• How do I handle the moments when I discover I was the one who made the mistake?

• Am I modeling for my team what a genuine, clean apology actually looks like?

Humble pie is rarely something we order on purpose. But when it arrives, and it will, the leaders who eat it gracefully, learn from it honestly, and don't let pride stand in the way of repair are exactly the kind of leaders people want to follow.

You matter. Especially when you're willing to go back and say, I got that wrong.