How to Apologize

This post has been percolating in my head for yonks, but several tales of botched and ineffective apologies lately have led me to finish it up.

Social behavior is not intuitive - we all know that it's learned, so what surprises me is how rarely it is consciously taught. Unlike many people, I had the benefit in my youth of several honest-to-god courses and workshops in life skills and communication, instead of just trying to intuit this stuff from context. Sure, it felt a little cheesy at the time, but the skills I learned that way have been invaluable to me.

One of the ones I have needed most as an adult is how to apologize effectively. Easy, right? You say, "I'm sorry." You mean it. What else is there? Well, that's an apology, true. A good one for, say, bumping into someone with your shopping cart and making them drop something, or forgetting someone's name in a social situation. But what I'm talking about is how to apologize effectively about more complex things, so that the other person really hears your regret and you can both do your best to move on.

1. Take responsibility. If you're apologizing and you don't mean it, everyone can tell. Effective apologizing is not a "trick" you can use to spin your actions and win forgiveness without remorse. You have to mean it.
   • Know what, exactly, your transgression is. Not what you feel most sorry about, but what hurt the other person or people involved the most. "I'm sorry I forgot to call and say I'd be late" is a much less effective apology than "I'm sorry I wasn't respectful of your time."
     
   • Don't make excuses. If you did it, own it. "I read your personal correspondence, and I never should have done that." Even if there are real mitigating reasons or circumstances, now is probably not the time to bring them up, or if you have to, you should then return to what you did and reiterate your responsibility. "...but I still should have checked with you to see if it was all right."
     
   • Focus on the things you can control. Apologies should never, ever take the form of "I'm sorry you aren't happy with me" or "I'm sorry you're mad about this." Those statements are implicit denials of responsibility. You can only apologize for yourself and for what you have done or failed to do.
2. Acknowledge the consequences of your actions. Even if you don't think your actions "should" provoke the reactions they do, this is an important step.
   • Emotional consequences. "I know you get frustrated with me." "I didn't mean to make you worry." "I can tell you're really angry at me right now."
     
   • Other consequences. "This means that the budget is going to come up short by several thousand dollars this quarter." "I know you needed this data to write your report, and that this puts you in a crunch." "I know that pissed her off and she took it out on you." "I know you were waiting."
3. Make it better. Clearly, this is easier for some transgressions than others. Some things you can, in fact, fix after the fact, and then the apology serves only to address the fact that they happened in the first place. Some things you can never, ever fix. What is important is that you do your best to try. A focus on preventing your mistake from happening in future is frequently helpful, in addition to other fix-it efforts.
   • Start with what you've done or can do. "I've paid the late fee and set up automatic withdrawals." "I can call her and tell her I misunderstood and re-schedule." "I re-did the spreadsheet so that the error won't happen again, and drew up a plan for making up the lost revenue." "I've thought of several options that would go part-way toward fixing the situation, and here they are."
     
   • Ask what (else) you can do. "What can I do to help regain your trust?" "Can you think of something I can do to make sure this doesn't happen again?" "What would make you feel better about this whole situation?" "Was there a better way I could have said that?" (NB: The phrase, "What do you want me to do [about it] [now]?" is not a good one to use here.)

Those are the three most basic steps. Once you've got those, you can improvise a bit more, and negotiate, explain, or dialogue in addition to your apology, using the same basic structure.

• "I know you feel terrible when I do this, and I don't want to make you feel terrible. But this is really important to me. How can we compromise?"
• "I'm sorry I've made such a mess of this. I can see that it's making you miserable, but when I made my choices I wasn't aware of some really important facts. Now that I know, I can make better choices; let's work on our communication to make sure it doesn't happen again."
• "I'm sorry I did that. I didn't know it would make you so angry, and I apologize. But I'm not sure I understand why you are so angry. Can we talk about this a little more so I can keep from doing that inadvertently in future?"

As long as you're still taking responsibility, acknowledging the consequences of your actions, and trying to make it better, you should still be able to craft an effective apology.

Of course, there are people who are harder to talk to than others; even the best apology doesn't reach some people, and never will. There are things people can't forgive (which doesn't mean you shouldn't apologize for them, just that it might be a dead end anyway). There are times when you will have to apologize when you don't mean it, in which case I suggest sticking with the good old, "I'm really sorry," and leaving it at that. There's no magic fixit for mistakes, and until they invent one, we're all just going to have to bumble through as best we can. This is the best way I know how.