HOW TO APOLOGIZE

We all make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes let other people down, or hurt them. What’s the best way to deal with the people we’ve disappointed or hurt?

It matters how you apologize, and Heidi Grant Halverson, author of Focus, has some great advice about this. It’s personally useful, but can also help us understand a dynamic that affects political differences with friends and neighbors.

The most important thing to remember is that when you have let somebody down, or done them harm, they don’t care very much about how this affected you. When you start by explaining why you did or didn’t do the act that you’re apologizing for, you’re telling them about yourself, and not addressing the effect you’ve had on them.

"I’m sorry, I was pressed for time…" or "I didn’t know the traffic would be so bad…" or "I wasn’t able to proofread the report because I couldn’t find my glasses…" all exemplified in this great scene from the Blues Brothers Movie. None of these excuses speak to how our actions affected the person we’re apologizing to. None of them speak to that person’s experience.

The best way to apologize is to start with the other person in mind, based on realizing that person will have different expectations depending on your relationship with them.

The main priority for a stranger or acquaintance is this: they want to have things the way they were before you came onto the scene and did whatever you did. They want to be compensated. They want the stain on their shirt where you spilled your coffee gone; they want their car back to the state it was in before you crashed into it; they want their money back for a product that doesn’t work or a service that doesn’t perform.

The main priority for somebody you know well – a friend or colleague, or your mate – is to know that you empathize with them. They want to feel understood and valued. They want to hear that you understand the effect you’ve had on them, and that you understand their perspective. You can "fix" things all you want, but it won’t mean much; what they really want to hear is something like, "I’m so sorry, you must feel so disappointed (or hurt, or scared, or angry, etc.)."

The main priority for a business team that you’ve let down (or sports team, or any other group that you’re working together with), is to have an acknowledgement that you’ve broken the code of behavior, that you’ve done something or failed to do something, and that this is not the way a teammate is supposed to function.

You need to re-establish their confidence that you will hold up your responsibility as a team member. The rest is pretty much meaningless.

A stranger or a teammate doesn’t want empathy; a teammate or somebody you’re close to doesn’t want compensation; and a stranger or somebody you’re close to doesn’t want you to fess up to having broken the code of conduct. Each situation has a different priority.

Think of your own experiences when you’ve hurt someone or let them down.  What do you feel like saying? The most emotionally compelling path – the path that might be most attractive if we went purely from our feelings – is usually to get out of this humiliating situation fast; that road leads to excuses, and deflection, and wanting to "move on."

But that road doesn’t lead to any good place, because when we head down that road, the people we hurt or disappointed don’t feel any different; they haven’t been acknowledged and our offense toward them has not been redeemed. We might "move on." They might "let it go." But we leave a bit of their trust and confidence behind when we move on, and they drop of a bit of their trust and confidence in us when they let go. Our reputation with them stays compromised to some degree.

Much better to seek to repair our transgression, which starts with a focus on how we have affected them, and using the above guidelines, how we can best repair the damage we have done.

This can be immensely important to our personal relationships.

Understanding this may also make some sense of our varying reactions to the apologies from different politicians or other public people.

For example, listen to this apology from President Clinton (or don’t, I’ll understand) for his lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinski. He mostly talks about himself. Why he did what he did, how this should be his private business anyway. This serves to defend and deflect and protect himself from feeling the full brunt of humiliation.

But within his apology is also some talk that speaks to having empathy for what he has put his family through, and how his actions may have hurt people he cares about.

Who does this speak to? To his friends, to the people who feel close to him; I would argue that this also includes his supporters. We have a friend who likes Bill Clinton so much she refers to him as "Billy." Don’t laugh, be honest, aren’t there a couple of public figures with whom you resonate and feel a kinship? That sense of personal connection is part of what makes them attractive to us. It’s not rational, but it’s a fact of life.

That is why his supporters felt like his apology was complete, there was nothing more that needed to be said or done on the issue, time to move on. They felt his empathy for them, and that was all they needed from him to make it right.

But for those of us who were not his supporters, his empathy was completely irrelevant. It meant nothing, because we, as strangers, weren’t looking for empathy, we needed compensation for his wrongs – something tangible, like impeachment. He lied to our face, wagging his finger at us as he did so. That was a personal insult, and for an apology to be effective for a stranger, that insult would have to be rectified.

How could he have apologized to us? By stating clearly what he would do to ensure that he never would never lie to us again:

"I will tell you that how I misled you about this involved deflecting and redirecting your attention to something else, kind of like a magician redirects his audience’s attention with a slight of hand. I invite the press to call me on this whenever they may see it, so that you, the American People, can know that I am being straight with you…." Or something like that.

Of course, that’s what he would have to do if it mattered to earn our forgiveness; and for a politician of any stripe, that probably is not a very high priority. He knows that a certain percentage of people won’t support him anyway, so he focuses on those who matter most politically: his supporters.

I’m picking on Bill Clinton here, but I could find examples all over the place, among all political persuasions. This dynamic is as common to political apologies as exaggerating is to fishing stories.

But it can help us to understand our friends and neighbors who seem so quick to forgive the transgressions of a liberal politician. This can also help us to understand why our liberal friends and neighbors are so mystified at our willingness to forgive a conservative politician for things they cannot forgive.

When politicians are forced to apologize for some misdeed, while they focus on themselves and try to explain or excuse their behavior, they will also often express some kind of empathy, which appeals to and resolves the transgression for those who feel close to them, while leaving those who do not feel close to them wondering how in the world these scoundrels can get away with this.

Of course, we can argue about the facts and the merits of the actions taken, we can take apart the political stances themselves, but that is not my focus here today. I am not trying to help you understand and have empathy for statist true believers or political leaders.

This is about understanding how the form these politician’s apologies take affects the people in our personal lives who hold different political beliefs.

Through understanding this, we can open up much more interesting, and effective, political discussions with the real people in our lives with whom we disagree. We can understand them better, and understand ourselves better, as well. It is at this, more personal level, that most of us have our greatest impact.

It’s also good to know, on a personal level, what’s genuinely helpful to do when we’ve blown it.

 
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