How to Apologize

 

Did you mess up? Blow it? Let somebody down?

We’ve all been there. “I’m sorry”—I know it feels terrible to drop the ball or disappoint somebody. I often hear people say, “You could be angry with me, but please don’t be disappointed in me.”

It’s a horrible situation, but it happens to all of us. Now, if you’re an accountable person and you care about your performance, your failures, or your trip-ups, you have an important thing to do next: you’ve got to apologize.

But what does a good apology look like? I’m sure you’ve seen bad apologies. By watching the person’s body language, you know it’s not real; they don’t really believe it. It’s like when your parents force you to apologize to your sibling, and you’re just like, head down, “Sorry.”

A good apology can rebuild trust. It can absolutely secure your reputation as an accountable person. So what’s in a good apology?

1. Be Direct

A good apology is direct and straight to the person’s face. It’s a chin-up, chest-out, arms-out, vulnerable version of “I am so sorry.” That’s where it starts—that agonizingly painful, vulnerable position.

Interestingly, when you hold your arms out in front of you, it says, “I get this. I’m going to make myself totally vulnerable to you. I know I messed up.” So that’s where you start. But that’s just the start.

2. Be Descriptive

The second thing is objectively describing what you did or didn’t do. “I committed to get that to you on Tuesday, and it’s Thursday.” Describe what you did or didn’t do as cleanly and objectively as possible. For example: “I jumped in during that meeting and promised to let you present and take the questions. And in the heat of the moment, I interrupted you. I took the floor. I took the attention.”

You want something as objective and observable as possible, something that when you say it, the other person will say, “Yeah, you did!” You want to get their head nodding in this conversation as an important way of starting to rebuild the relationship.

3. Understand Your Impact

Describe, and better yet, ask about the impact on the other person. For instance, you might say, “I interrupted. I took the floor when I had said I was going to let you take the floor. How did that feel? What do you think was the impact of that?” or “I got that to you on Thursday instead of Tuesday. What dominoes fell because of that?” Asking is a great way to be impactful.

If you have a clear sense, you might start the ball rolling by saying, “I get the sense that that brought all the attention back onto me when this was your hard work. I think all the eye contact in the room that came to me will make it a lot harder for you to be the clear leader on this.”

So, start the ball rolling, and then you can say, “What else? How are you experiencing this? What did this create? What hassle did this create for you?” But you need to feel the full pain of the impact of your behavior and the consequences.

4. Learn From Your Mistake

The next thing you need to do is talk about what you learned. For example, “I realized that I need to do a better job of inhibiting and staying out of the way and keeping my mouth shut.” Or, “I learned that I take on too many things at the same time, and I can’t deliver because I want to say yes to everybody, and I need to do something differently about that.”

It’s important to state clearly what you learned, and then you can also open it up for questions like, “Do you think there are other things I need to learn from this?” or “Am I missing part of the equation here?”

Again, that extra question, which says, “I’m not trying to run out of here, and I’m not trying to minimize my discomfort; I’m trying to learn,” whew, that’s going to do so much to rebuild trust and secure your reputation as somebody who’s like, “Wow, this person is really serious about how they contribute.”

5. Make Changes and Act

The last thing you need to do is talk about what will be different next time. You could say, “I’ve decided that next time, I’m not even going to go to the meeting. It sends an even stronger signal that I have full confidence in you if I stay out of the room. I’m very confident you can handle it, and I think that’s a better way to do it.” Or you could say, “I’m going to do a better job with what I take on, what order I put them in, and how I communicate what’s a realistic expectation.”

So, what are you going to do differently? It’s what you learned and then what you will do differently as a result. When you do something differently, you probably need a few little milestones or checkpoints that show the person, “See, I’m doing it differently.”

For instance, the deadline — and maybe they haven’t even asked you—is a Tuesday again, but on Monday, you’re saying, “Just wanted to let you know everything is on track for delivering tomorrow.” So they go, “Whew! Okay, good.”

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When you mess up, don’t deliver, fail, stumble, screw up in one way or another—doesn’t matter, that’s okay. Accountable people mess up all the time. The difference is accountable people know how to give a great apology that includes both that vulnerability and a clear description of what their behavior was, a conversation and dialogue about the impact, some insight, and definitely soul-searching around what they learned from the situation, and a plan for how they’re going to make things different the next time.

And then, of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Did you behave differently the next time?

It’s okay if you mess up. We all do it. If you don’t from time to time, you probably aren’t pushing things hard enough. But when you do mess up, it’s all about how you handle it. That’s how to give a great apology.

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