Notes on repair: a working framework

This is the framework I use in keynotes, workshops and coaching rooms. It is deliberately short, because it has to survive contact with a bad week.

First: name what happened. Not the interpretation, not the accusation — the sequence of events that two people could agree on. Precision is where most attempts at repair fail. Teams try to forgive an accusation they have never actually described.

Second: release the debt. This is the decision point. The ledger stops running. Resentment is retired as evidence. Practically, this means agreeing on what will no longer be raised in future conversations — and holding that line even when the old version is more comfortable.

Third: rebuild the agreement. Repair is not a return to the previous arrangement; that arrangement is what broke. Instead, the team states how it will work now: what changes, what is expected, what happens if it slips again. Write it down. A spoken agreement fades by Thursday.

The sequence matters. Skipping to the third stage produces rules without trust. Staying in the first produces description without movement. The second stage, on its own, produces relief without a plan.

Two things I insist on when I facilitate. No stage is finished in a single sitting, and no one is required to perform a feeling they do not have. The work is about decisions and agreements, not catharsis.

When leaders ask me how long this takes, I give an honest answer: the conversation is usually one meeting. The agreement is usually one page. The trust takes a quarter, and it is rebuilt by what people observe, not by what they promised.

That is the whole sequence. Name it. Release the debt. Rebuild the agreement. Then behave in a way that makes the agreement believable.