“When you realize you've made a mistake, make amends immediately. It‘s easier to eat crow while it's still warm.” (Dan Heist)
In communities or in any relationship, people will make mistakes that hurt others or even intentionally hurt one another. Apologies are one way that we try to repair the relationship after those hurtful actions. My thoughts have been on apologies because I’ve seen quite a few really awful ones lately.
Apologies are often seen as the first step towards being forgiven for mistaken or intentional hurtful behavior. We can probably all call to mind ineffective apologies from politicians and celebrities. Or friends or loved ones or acquaintances. Apologies that just didn’t ring true.
What IS an apology? We often use the words “I’m sorry” to mean two different and overlapping things. I’m feeling sadness (sorrow/sorry). Or to express regret. The dictionary says it’s “an expression of regret for having done or said something wrong.” Or “an expression of regret for not being able to do something.”
I believe that there are therefore four elements in effective apologies, implied or explicit. And I’ll say it in “I” language, to make clear that an apology is from the perspective of the maker of an effective apology:
Acknowledgement that the other person experienced hurt or harm.
Acceptance that my action was a trigger for the hurt. (Words are a kind of action, and words can hurt, despite that childhood “words can never hurt me” rhyme.)
Indication I have had a change of heart.
Indication that I will not do it again and, ideally, even will work to repair the harm. Some kind of restitution or restoration or repair.
Some think of apologies as saying, “I was wrong.” I actually prefer not to use the idea that the person making the apology was “wrong.” Wrong can mean incorrect or can imply that the person who is wrong is a morally stained person. The former is just fine, and the latter can play into a culture of blame. “I’m wrong” is also static, as if you can’t change. Communicating that you’ve had a change of heart is actually more powerful.
So some version that carries this sense to it: “I see that you’re hurt, and that what I did led to that hurt. Seeing that, I will not do that again, and I’ll do xyz right now to try to make up for what I did.”
What's the problem with so many apologies?
Most of what I’d call either non-apologies or ineffective apologies don’t use those steps.
Let’s go through some celebrity examples and see why and how they don’t work. I’ll develop some simple rules as well that avoid the errors. I won’t use names today even though some incidents may make the name obvious – the names of the celebrities or politicians and their identities and affiliations aren’t the topic. The topic is “the problem with apologies.”
Here’s the first example: "What occurred was unintentional and completely regrettable, and I apologize if you guys were offended."
Notice how the language separates the actions from the speaker. “What occurred” as if it was a random happening with no agent of choice. Instead: “What I did was….” And then “unintentional” – okay, let’s remember that you can apologize for what is intentional OR what is a mistake. So this example comes off as an excuse by mentioning that it was unintentional in the apology.
“Completely regrettable.” More distancing language. It’s regrettable, but is it regretted? How about “I completely regret doing it.”
And then about that hurt? “I apologize if you guys were offended.” If you’re not sure anyone was offended, then don’t bother to apologize, it’s not a genuine accepting that you harmed others.
Are you convinced this person won’t do it again, when they haven’t accepted that their actions were the trigger for harm, and they are distancing themselves by such indirect language from having even done what was done?
So that helps us to some rules about apologies, to see if they were authentic.
Rule 1: actually say what the action was: “what occurred” doesn’t do that
Rule 2: actually say YOU did the action: “what occurred” doesn’t do that
Rule 3: actually acknowledge that the other is hurting or harmed, even with other words like “was offended.” "I didn't express myself properly" doesn’t do that.
Rule 4: don’t include an excuse. An excuse isn’t an apology. Instead say something more like “Wow, I can completely understand that you were offended when I said abc. I regret that I said that. Does it help for me to say instead that what I believe is xyz?”
Here’s another example from real life: "I'm sorry I diverted my campaign from the real issues by singling out a young man working for my opponent, I was wrong to do that. My family had to endure many insults because of my mistake."
Background to this one: the politician, at a campaign event, called out a young man of Indian ancestry filming the event, and called him “macaca” – a Portuguese word for female monkey – a term that is used, in the country the politician’s mother was from, as a racial insult.
The politician’s remarks led to considerable outcry for his using that term.
What did he say he did? Singled out the young man. Not that he used that controversial word, which was in his own family history a racial insult. He broke rule 1: say what the action was.
What is he acknowledging as harm? That he diverted his campaign and that his remarks led to insults to his own family. Not that he called a person of color a monkey. Also note: this subtly makes the people who objected to his characterization of the young man as a monkey into the ones doing the harm.
His apology is to whom? His own campaign and his own family. This is not an apology to the young man, or to others like him who realized the candidate thought of them with this racial term. Nor to the general public. So, violates rule 3. If he’s apologizing to his staff and supporters and family, then maybe this is relevant. But it was his public apology.
Rule 4 broken: that the young man was “working for my opponent” seems stuck in there to provide an excuse for the behavior. Highlighting that some people reacting to the comment insulted his own family shifts the blame.
Another rule broken, a new rule: Rule 5: don’t minimize. He did this twice. First, by his comment about distracting from the “real” issues. The racial insult isn’t real to him. And second, by saying that the mistake was singling out the young man, not the word he called him.
And then there’s this very common faux apology: "I'm sorry you misunderstood."
This is an apology for the OTHER person making an error? That’s not an apology. What does this violate?
Breaks rule 1, because he doesn’t acknowledge the action. Breaks rule 2, as he doesn’t acknowledge he’s the actor. Breaks rule 3, acknowledges no harm (maybe implies he’s himself the victim, in this case of being misunderstood). Breaks rule 4 or 5, minimizes or excuses (almost always saying “misunderstood” is minimizing or excusing).
Same with “I’m sorry you feel that way.” It breaks all the rules, too. Both of these (“I’m sorry you misunderstood” and “I’m sorry you feel that way”) are essentially gaslighting. There’s no regret at all for the actions of the person speaking these words, so using the language of “sorry” is contrary to their actual intent.
Recently, someone reacted on Facebook to a post that a “friend” had made about her beliefs. “I’m sorry but that’s nonsense and it makes you a conspiracy theorist” was the general form of his response. “I’m sorry but” is not an apology in advance – it’s gaslighting. If you were already sorry for expressing that opinion, you’d refrain from it. (The same person, when told the response hurt, then responded “I’m sorry you feel that way.”) This is also gaslighting, breaking all the rules of apologies. This guy did, in the comment thread, at least say “That wasn’t an apology.” Yet he chose the words typifying apologies, “I’m sorry,” twice. That’s why I’d call that gaslighting.
Next faux apology, from Twitter when it was still Twitter and had a very short character count limit. It’s hard to apologize with those limitations, if you decide to only use one message, but let’s look at this one anyway. Context: the tweeter had originally revealed personal information of the so-and-so mentioned.
“My retweet. My Mistake. My apology to (so-and-so).”
Violates rule 1, because the action at issue was the revealing of personal information, not that he retweeted. At least he did acknowledge he did it, without distancing.
Rule 3 -- what harm do you hear he’s acknowledging there? None.
Another faux apology, from a few years ago. You may know who this is if you pay attention to the news, but let’s try to stick with analyzing the apology and not the person involved. The context is that a recording was revealed, with this person claiming in the recording that he has groped and kissed women without invitation or consent. In the recording he also talks about a married woman he tried to seduce, and he talks about another woman by talking about her body parts. This is his public apology for his words revealed by release of the recording:
“I didn't say that at all. I don't think you understood what was said. This was locker-room talk. I'm not proud of it. I apologize to my family. I apologize to the American people. Certainly I'm not proud of it, but this is locker-room talk. You know, when we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads, where you have...”
Okay, now we get a whole slew of rule-breaking.
Rule 1 - Acknowledge the action: First he begins by saying “I didn’t say that at all.” So, he’s denying any action. Then he proceeds to mention the action (words) obliquely, referring to it as “what was said”and “it.” He never mentions what he said that he’s supposedly apologizing for saying.
Rule 2 – Acknowledging you did it: Saying “what was said” rather than “what I said” distances from acknowledging himself as the actor. Watch for that passive verb formation! And then “I didn’t say that at all” is about as distancing as you can get from acknowledging self as the actor. Denying you did it and then saying you’re not proud you did do it is really confusing. Perhaps intentionally.
Rule 3 – There is no acknowledgement of any specific harm, neither to family or “the American people” – and no acknowledgment that the women in question were harmed.
Rule 4 and/or 5 – excuses and minimizing. “Just locker room talk” implies that it is common for men to say these things in a setting where women can’t hear, and therefore it’s not a big deal.
Rule 5 – it’s also minimizing to compare the behavior to some bigger issue (ISIS), implying that this is a small thing in proportion.
These examples haven’t included the violation of another rule that makes it almost instantly apparent that something’s a non-apology apology:
Rule 6: don’t immediately attack the other person as part of the presumed apology.
After all these examples, several of which were from politicians, I do want to acknowledge that it’s very hard for a politician in today’s world to take full credit for doing a hurtful action, and to retain trust. It’s almost built into the system that politicians will make these sorts of apologies.
So, to be fair, almost all politicians probably feel forced to avoid acknowledging credit too clearly to avoid further quoting. Thus they avoid statements of harm and minimize and give excuses. And that’s a problem with how we the public judge politicians, as much as a problem with politicians. One mistake and they’re out. A genuine apology can be used against them.
And yet it is also likely with these apologies so far that the makers do not really regret the harm of what they said or did. Instead, they regret that they said it out loud or did it publicly, and that they got caught or that someone’s trying to hold them accountable. That attitude makes it difficult to really apologize.
Maybe these speakers don’t really regret their harm, or only see as harm the pushback to their actions. In such cases, an “ineffective apology” was the best they could do and be honest.
It’s a dilemma for any of us: If we don’t really regret what we said or did, then it’s not going to be an authentic apology, and people are likely to pick up on that.
Should you try to find a way to apologize even if you don’t have regrets? It depends on the relationship. Is the person someone with whom you have had, and want to continue having, a relationship of some kind – family, friend, someone in the work place? If so, it is important to find some way to address the hurt and harm without taking back what you said. Repairing the hurt is the main reason for any apology, anyway.
If it is a relationship worth healing, then ask: what is the harm or hurt? I can be very regretful of saying a truthful thing that hurt someone, but what I’m regretting is that it hurt them, and that I didn’t find a better way to communicate, or that I didn’t think about whether it was something worth saying. As a trivial example: it might be very hurtful for me to say to someone, uninvited, “I think the shirt you are wearing is ugly.” I can apologize for saying that. I can’t apologize for thinking it.
But what if I’m your work supervisor, and your annual performance review says that I think you are not performing up to the standards required to continue in the job. Wow, that is going to be painful! In that case, I can give the review compassionately, and regret if I say it with any meanness – but the impact even so will be negative.
Now, if I discover I’d made an error on the performance review – an apology and repair IS due. But if more evidence doesn’t convince me I’m inaccurate, then we’re not in apology territory. I can regret how I tell someone hard truths, but not that I think them, and not that, when necessary as part of feedback, I tell them.
Another problem with apologies: The purpose of an apology is to heal, especially to heal the person who was hurt but also to heal the relationship. I think that demands for apologies are often part of a different agenda than getting healing to happen. They come out of the culture of blame, and further than culture. They come from the false belief that the other person has to regret and repair anything we believe to be hurtful.
An example from my own experience. I had, in setting up a meeting of 5 people, asked everyone to tell me dates he could make it, I wrote them down, and then repeated them to check my notes. There was one member of the group, I’ll call him Mike, who I especially wanted to be sure he was available, because he tended to have strong opinions in the group. I was surprised when the meeting happened and he didn’t show up. He didn’t respond to any of my phone calls or messages before the next meeting.
At that next meeting, he opened by saying we couldn’t proceed until I apologized for deliberately excluding him from the previous meeting.
Despite my own defensiveness that immediately kicked in – because I had not deliberately excluded him and had gone to some lengths to be sure he was included – I said that I was sorry he hadn’t been there and that the meeting was on a date that he couldn’t be there. When I tried to acknowledge that he must be troubled or even angry about that, he said that it wasn’t about him, it was about me – and repeated that I needed to apologize for deliberately excluding him. He said it wasn’t really an apology unless I admitted my intention was to exclude him. So I tried to repair the situation anyway. Intention isn’t the issue in repair, impact is. When I asked how we could go forward with including him in the decisions that had been made then – could we rethink the decisions? – he replied yes, he wanted us to unmake any decisions made in that meeting which he had not attended. But he also demanded that before we continue, I apologize for deliberately excluding him from the previous meeting.
I couldn’t. It would have violated some kind of integrity for me to do so. And he was not interested in repair, only in my accepting blame. And while I wouldn’t have used this language before I had further learning much later, if I had accepted blame that didn’t belong to me, I would not have repaired anything. (Further interactions with the same person, and seeing the interactions of others with him, add to my confidence of this conclusion.) Could I, if more skilled, have done better? Probably. But not, I think even now, by apologizing for intention that I did not have.
So ... I would say don’t apologize when the only purpose is to assign blame or to shame someone. Blame is different from responsibility. The difference is that responsibility is about recognizing harm and finding a way to move forward – ability to respond, responsibility. Blame is just about making a person bad as part of their identity – and so is shame. Blame and shame simply say “I’m bad” or “you’re bad” and don’t leave room for change and growth, as responsibility does.
This is a excellent reason to avoid raising children to think that apologizing is always required, and especially required quickly. We do want to teach our children to have the compassion and insight to understand the harm they sometimes do, and to try to heal and make repairs, and apologies are one way to do that. But forcing apologies will produce inauthentic apologies.
Forcing apologies from children will also tend to lead to them, when they are grownups, to apologize without meaning it as the way to try to calm a disagreement. If apologizing becomes a formula, then the child may not really regret what they did. Learning to empathize, regret what’s hurt another, and then repair, is what we want, really. Not magic words.
Inauthentic apologies are insincere apologies, and they won’t ring true. This may be another large factor behind all those political and celebrity faux apologies. If anyone is forced to apologize, if they don’t really regret what they did, they are unlikely to be or sound authentic. And in politics, you’re expected to apologize if a whole lot of people say “ouch.”
So here is another real life example from a politician, somewhat paraphrased: apologizing for saying that half the opposition’s supporters was a “basket of deplorables” (try to pretend you don’t know who said that about whom as we look at whether it’s really an apology):
“Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong. But let’s be clear, what’s really ‘deplorable’ is ….” (and then a statement about the other campaign’s actions).
Was it an apology? The word “regret” is the sign of that. She regretted saying “half” not “deplorables,” so it’s likely that those she was talking about won’t think it was a genuine apology, if they heard themselves called “deplorables.” The apology is more about misnumbering the percentage, not the description itself. “That’s never a good idea” isn’t really an acknowledgement of hurt, and kind of implies that those feeling insulted are unjustified. And indeed, those included in the group she called that, were not satisfied with the apology. And rule 5: it’s minimizing when you compare your actions to what is really a problem.
When you still believe in what you revealed by your words, what do you do? You try, at least, to listen to the pain, and hear the pain, and understand that it is painful to the person – even if you do not agree that the pain is caused by your statement.
If people aren’t going to apologize until and unless they change their heart or mind, then we also need to remember that we may not always get the apologies we want. We also are wise to learn to go on in life, even forgive a person, if they cannot or will not apologize. One last political example.
Here’s an apology for a campaign’s staffers searching the opponent’s files, files that were accidentally revealed but then actively looked at. When the candidate was asked if he apologized to the other campaign: "Yes, I apologize. Not only do I apologize, I want to apologize to my supporters. This is not the kind of campaign that we run. If I find anybody else involved in this, they will be fired.”
Closer than some of the other examples, maybe as close as you’ll get from a politician. Because the question asked specifics, it’s clearer what the speaker is apologizing for and that there’s personal responsibility for what happened in his organization. There was little question that he did the accessing, but as head of the campaign he takes responsibility for that done in his name, too.
There are two apologies, if you listen carefully. The first apology is, as asked by the questioner, to the other candidate. Then he moves to apologizing to his own supporters, which could be heard by the target of the first apology as minimizing. Or, could be heard genuinely by his own supporters who were disappointed to hear of this action. Unfortunately, there was no mention, no explicit acknowledgment of the harm done.
Here for the first time in these example, we hear about repair, seeming to be directed to the implied harm to both the other candidate and to his own supporters. We hear a commitment not to be the kind of campaign that does this, and even the specifics of what the speaker will do if others in the campaign are involved. So, at least an attempt to repair.
To review:
Apologize by including, most of the time, some words that do these four things.
Acknowledgement that the other person experienced hurt or harm.
Acceptance that my action was a trigger for the hurt. (Words are a kind of action and can hurt.)
Indication I have had a change of heart.
Indication that I will not do it again and, ideally, even will work to repair the harm. Some kind of restitution, restoration.
And remember these rules in doing this, which will help make an apology ring true and be true:
Rule 1: include what the action was
Rule 2: actually say YOU did it
Rule 3: acknowledge that the other is hurting or harmed and what that harm is
Rule 4: don’t include an excuse (especially that they did something to “cause” you to do what was done)
Rule 5: don’t minimize (which includes comparing this hurt to some other hurts that are imagined as larger)
Rule 6: don’t include an attack on the other or blame them for the outcome
If you hear nothing else from this, it’s simple: an apology is regret, and needs to recognize the action taken and the hurt it caused, without excuses or minimizing or distracting. If you add what you’ll do to heal and repair, all the better.
I’ll close with this quote by G. K. Chesterton:
“The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.”