Great article! A lot of times articles like this fail to include realistic examples, which this one had a lot of.
I've beaten this drum here before[1], but Dialectical Behavior Therapy, an evidence-based therapy program, has a framework for making requests of people with the acronym DEAR that can also be used for apologies. I think a good DEAR-apology would hit most of the techniques in this article:
* Describe the situation: "Accept responsibility".
"I didn't do X that you asked me to do, even though I knew I should have."
* Express feelings: "Express regret"
"I feel bad about it because I promised I would, and I had time to do it, I just didn't, and I don't have an excuse."
* Ask: "Ask for forgiveness"
"I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?"
* Reinforce: This could be restitution or repentance. I'd argue it's situational depending on whether it's a recurring thing (I'll do it in the future!) or in the past (I didn't defrost the chicken and ruined your dinner party, so I'll cook for the next one!)
Anyways, DBT has a few gems[2], and DEAR is one of them. I use it all the time for both asking people for things and apologies.
[2] Another one: panic attack or extremely anxious? Get a bowl of cold water and stick your head in it for around 30 seconds. Make sure your whole face, especially your cheeks, are submerged. You can use ice water or just cool water. Take a breath, and repeat until calm. It's based on the dive reflex and is a biological function, it will always work.
The dive reflex thing is fantastic. I find that it works even with warm water for me - in the shower, just inhale, hold your breath and let water run directly over your face. A wave of calmness just washes over, the feeling is quite strange and amazing, and I am constantly surprised by its immediacy.
When I worked for a Japanese company, my ability to apologize, sincerely, and politely, was good for my career.
The Japanese respect and work with apologies. They accept it, and then expect you to help make it right. It is usually not brought up again.
Americans, on the other hand, tend to take them as admissions of weakness, and try to pile more abuse on you. You are punished for apologizing, and they never let you forget it.
The best managers I've seen are the ones that, following a failure from staff, can detect a real apology and earnest promise to learn and do better next time, and then never mentioned it again.
The worst ones will detect that same apology and crowd that person out of their own mind with unresolved guilt, completely disabling them with their own emotions. Give them long enough and they can create monsters out of the nicest men.
I found this difficult when I was a young professional. Later I realized I was surrounded by mostly bad managers. They didn't want a real status update so that they could help manage the changing risk landscape. They just wanted to be told everything was OK.
After about a decade I got wise to this pattern. Their first reply would be passive-aggressive: "What are you going to do about this?" (Why just me? Are we not a team?) The old me would be unnecessarily courageous: "Get it done, of course!" If I had anything less enthusiastic to say they might follow with, "What do you want me to do about it?" This is a very different question from, "What can I do to help?" I was emotionally exhausted.
Of course when I alone couldn't mitigate the risks and things went south it was my responsibility and my apology was expected.
Once I realized these managers were a one-way street I started simply telling them, "You're the manager. You manage it." Good managers get more from me, but good managers usually are actively ahead of things previously raised and the need to occasionally pull things over the line occurs with lower frequency. Who doesn't want higher throughput with lower stress?
> Americans, on the other hand, tend to take them as admissions of weakness, and try to pile more abuse on you. You are punished for apologizing, and they never let you forget it.
For this reason, sincere apologies can probably only work in very private situations, with those rare people who are overly generous and forgiving and won't take it as an invitation (if not a moral imperative) for endless retribution, bullying, and public shaming.
I like this article a lot. I am just concerned that it doesn’t deal with the number one issue with apologies: the feeling that I’ve done nothing to apologize for. Substitute yourself for “I’ve” if you’ve offended me instead of the other way around.
It’s wrong to tell lies designed to manipulate people. An apology should never be a lie. So, someone being asked or expected to apologize must not turn it into an empty ritual. Doing so lights a fuse that will blow up the whole relationship.
I have apologized for being a source of pain or irritation, for instance, without claiming that my behavior was actually wrong. Sometimes that’s all I can do.
That feels out of scope for OP. I've learned that there is such a thing as apologizing too early, when I don't actually feel sorry yet. I need to take some time to make sense of what happened and apportion responsibility in my own head for precisely what I caused.
Once I arrive at that moment, though, OP feels like it might be priceless.
In my worldview this is the difference between apology and repentance. Both are necessary in different contexts but it's also important to recognize the difference and indicate at least to yourself which one you're doing or receiving.
There are probably ways to phrase "repentance" that are less religiously charged but it is a moral issue so this language works fine for me.
It’s a very important issue. And you should apologize to me for hurting my feelings just now! How dare dismiss my concerns!… unless, of course, you think you have nothing to apologize for.
aaannd scene!
Do you see what I did, there? I am demonstrating the dynamic. I don’t really think you owe me an apology. But surely you have noticed that there is very frequently a disagreement among people about who owes who an apology and for what reasons.
So the first thing in any article about apology should be what it means and why give one. A much lesser priority is how to give one.
The person I was responding to did, by omitting any discussion of this problem from his writing. Don’t play dumb and then gaslight me about what I am reading.
It’s possible I misread it, of course. On the other hand, perhaps you did.
A good exercise might be to practice apologizing without using the word "sorry", unless it's a truly trivial matter.
People use the word "sorry" all the time in fake, shallow ways. As if it's some kind of magic word. People don't want to hear a magic word. Like the article says, they mostly want to know:
1. That you know what you did
2. That you know why it hurt them
3. That you're not going to do it again
4. That you're going to fix things (when it's possible. sometimes it can't be fixed)
5. They want to know that you care
Of course, don't say any of the above unless you are being honest.
You're correct. It is impossible to know the future.
I'd hoped it would have been obvious that yes, it's not realistic to flawlessly predict the future, and that "That you're not going to do it again" meant "They would like some level of confidence that you're not doing to do it again" and not "Assure them that you are a god-level creature with the ability to make definitive statements about the future."
I'll try and be 100x more verbose next time to see if I can't close up some of those loopholes.
Whether this line is appropriate or not hinges entirely on its context. In the correct context, when it is truly meant and its surroundings reinforce it, it is truly magical and can work miracles. In the wrong context... well, it comes off as dismissive and puts blame on the listener for being offended.
So, like every other thing in life having power, use carefully.
I've beaten this drum here before[1], but Dialectical Behavior Therapy, an evidence-based therapy program, has a framework for making requests of people with the acronym DEAR that can also be used for apologies. I think a good DEAR-apology would hit most of the techniques in this article:
* Describe the situation: "Accept responsibility".
"I didn't do X that you asked me to do, even though I knew I should have."
* Express feelings: "Express regret"
"I feel bad about it because I promised I would, and I had time to do it, I just didn't, and I don't have an excuse."
* Ask: "Ask for forgiveness"
"I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?"
* Reinforce: This could be restitution or repentance. I'd argue it's situational depending on whether it's a recurring thing (I'll do it in the future!) or in the past (I didn't defrost the chicken and ruined your dinner party, so I'll cook for the next one!)
Anyways, DBT has a few gems[2], and DEAR is one of them. I use it all the time for both asking people for things and apologies.
--
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31859266
[2] Another one: panic attack or extremely anxious? Get a bowl of cold water and stick your head in it for around 30 seconds. Make sure your whole face, especially your cheeks, are submerged. You can use ice water or just cool water. Take a breath, and repeat until calm. It's based on the dive reflex and is a biological function, it will always work.