“I’m sorry. The last time we talked, I lost my cool. There is no excuse for that behavior. I was reacting from a place of stress and was far from acting my best.”

He sat and watched the river flow by, letting my words sink in. Then, with watery eyes, he turned to me and accepted my apology. He said, now that I had apologized, he wanted to tell me the other side of the story.

2008 was a challenging year in the electricity supplier business. Major storms had wrecked the homes and businesses of thousands of our clients in and around the Gulf Coast, and a shift in market dynamics caused some of our trading positions in West Texas to become major financial drains overnight. Over a few months, we moved from growth mode to a potential bankruptcy. Every move we made would either drive us further into the hole or help us to turn it all around slowly.

At the same time, our largest commercial client was shopping for a new broker, which meant we would likely lose this marquee account. We scrambled to help the existing broker by producing the best reports, marketing, and outbound messaging in hopes that they would retain the client’s trust and renew their electricity contract through our team once again. Alas, it was all in vain, as the old broker did not take action, and the client informed us that they were officially working with another broker.

In a heated exchange with the outgoing broker, I said things I regretted, and my approach was unbecoming of a leader. The outgoing broker had accused us of feeding information to the new broker, which was not true. Rather than work through the communication appropriately, I lost my temper and made harsh comments about the broker and his team. In the heat of the moment, I decided to give him a completion bonus for having bought us that client in the first place and requested that we never work together again.

Weeks later, we flew to meet the new broker and brought our top analysts to share some client insights and position ourselves as the best option for their smaller accounts, over 8,000 meters in total. Our plan worked, and the new broker selected our company to serve these accounts on a long-term contract. The new client contract was the largest in our company’s history, and the contribution we made to the company that day served as one more nudge in the necessary turnaround of our finances.

But the damage to my other relationship was done. I couldn’t rewind the clock and take back the things I said. Over a year later, I finally mustered the courage to request a visit with the previous broker, and we met at his new cabin on the riverfront property he recently purchased. He was moved by my apology, and I felt that we reconnected at that moment. What he told me next blew my mind.

Years earlier, when he was a young father, he had gone on a short canoe trip with his son, and that turned into a nightmare. Several days into the adventure, they realized they were nowhere close to the exit point and had run out of food and water. He eventually parked the canoe under an old oak tree that could serve as a good landmark and set off on foot to find help with his son. A nearby family was able to call the authorities and alert his wife, as this man found rest in the shade of this tree.

Here we were many years later, and he pointed to the tree from his story. He had gone twenty years without seeing it again, yet it was here on his new riverfront property. He had always wanted a little retreat house but didn’t have the means until I paid him the completion bonus and asked him to stop working with my team. The ugliness of our fight and the subsequent “go away” payment led to this moment where I was standing underneath that same oak tree that had given him hope years ago, and we both thanked God for how our stories were intertwined.

And get this—when he made the offer to buy this land and the cabin by the river, he had no idea this was the same property where he and his son had found refuge years earlier. He had written a poem about that tree, never expecting to see it again, and now it was a part of his retreat on the riverbank.

We continued to do business together after that apology, which was a bonus to the story, but I was far more grateful just to have a glimpse into the bigger plan that was unfolding.