There is nothing bad in apologizing about an inconvenience or mistake you’ve done. I think it’s a great trait for a person to recognize their mistakes and taking ownership. What I’m proposing is to move away from over-apologizing, and to reframe that message to a much more productive sense—maybe focus on the being grateful.
In the workplace, over-apologizing can backfire on you. It may reflect lack of confidence, incompetency, and low self-esteem. Worse, it can accelerate their lack of confidence in you.
I’m not saying to never apologize. Choose those instances wisely. Don’t apologize for things outside of your control. Don’t apologize for anything that doesn’t even warrant an apology from you or from anyone. For instance, emails.
Today’s workplace is no stranger to seeing a tsunami of correspondence in email inboxes. Not to mention all the other points-of-communications—text messaging, instant messaging, project apps, or our work landlines. You don’t have to apologize for not responding immediately to an email. Unless it’s clearly marked as urgent—specifically to you—with a clearly communicated deadline or expectation. Regardless, don’t start your email with, “I’m sorry for the delay in my response…” I receive similar emails from others in the company when they responded to emails I sent them just a few hours prior.
I don’t (and no body should) expect everyone to be watching their inboxes, eagerly anticipating emails to respond to. If that’s you, you should read Deep Work, by Cal Newport. I’m not an expert at this, but I work hard everyday to achieve clusters of deep work, removing the excess of shallow work that is not as important. Of course, if you’re in customer service with a clear SLA (service-level agreement) to respond quickly to correspondences, that’s a different situation.
If you made an honest mistake, and someone pointed it out to you. Sure, it’s probably okay to apologize, but let’s try to move past that initial protocol of response. Instead of apologizing, thank the person for taking the time to correct you or for giving you that learning opportunity. You shouldn’t apologize for honest mistakes (In contrast to lazy is takes) or for pursuing learning moments.
Crowdsourcing FTW
To close this post, I’d like to suggest different ways to do a #sorrynotsorry moment. Please add-on some other ways to reframe an apology context. “Instead of ________, say _________.” I look forward to seeing other ways to apologize without being sorry about it!
Sorry for being late. Sorry for the delay. (Thank you for your patience.)
I’m sorry for the mistake. (Thanks for pointing that out, making the updates now.)
I’m sorry that I misspoke. (Thanks for clarifying that for me.)
I’m sorry that you have to do ____ for me. (Thanks for doing that for me.)