They’re enumerated in a pop-up on our home page and expounded upon in our book (along with lots of entertaining examples, celebrity anecdotes, historical nuggets, and social science sprinkled hither and yon like environmentally friendly glitter!) but we thought we’d reiterate them for you here.
The six and a half steps are relevant whether you’re a spouse who has yet again failed to unload the dishwasher, a second grader who has chased a classmate with a booger; a friend who has been caught gossiping horribly about another friend; an athlete who finally confessed to doping after lying for years; or a government that perpetrated racist medical horrors upon unknowing citizens. Here they are:
- Say you’re sorry.
- For what you did.
- Show you understand why it was bad.
- Only explain if you need to; don’t make excuses.
- Say why it won’t happen again.
- Offer to make up for it.
Six and a half. Listen.
To elaborate:
#1: Use the words “I’m sorry” or “I apologize.” Not “I regret,” which is about YOUR feelings. Big whoop. A good apology is about the OTHER PERSON’S feelings, the feelings of the person you hurt. Don’t say “I’m apologetic,” or “I’d like to apologize” or “I feel terrible about what happened” or “I feel shame about the situation.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. YOU, YOU, YOU.
#2: What you did: Say it. Don’t apologize for “that thing last week,” or “about our argument.” A good apology takes ownership, and you can’t own a thing you don’t name.
#3: You’re apologizing for the hurt you caused — so why did what you did cause pain? Use your emotional intelligence. We know you have it. We believe in you! Say it aloud. Again, this is key to taking responsibility, which is a thing people really want in an apology.
#4: Explanations can all-too-easily become excuses: “I’m sorry I’m late; my train got held in the station” is an explanation for lateness; “I’m sorry I’m late; you scheduled this at a really bad time and rush-hour traffic is impossible and I had to stop to pick up the cupcakes you insisted I bring and I was under a ton of stress and there’s a lot going on in my life” is a litany of excuses. (And if you were supposed to get the cupcakes, you should have budgeted that into your travel plans, friend.) You might not want to offer an explanation at all, because are you sure it’s NOT an excuse? (This is why Snarly always test-drives her apologies to Sumac; Snarly tends to make excuses. She’s ashamed of this tendency…but that’s no excuse.)
#5: What steps are you taking to ensure this issue won’t recur? Maybe you resolve not to have more than one drink at lunch. Maybe you’ve now learned that “lame,” “Jew someone down,” or “gyp” is a slur, and you should have known, but you vow to eliminate that term from your speaking and writing vocabulary. Maybe you’re scheduling a training session for the entire staff (including the C-suite, and not just the lowest paid or customer-facing people) so the racially insensitive thing or misogynistic, illegal thing you did won’t ever be repeated.
#6. What’s an offer of repair? If you spilled coffee on their sleeve, offer to pay for the dry cleaning. If you ate their yogurt out of the office fridge, buy them a six-pack of their fave Fage. If you regularly created a hostile workplace for female employees, offer a hefty settlement (in tandem with making systemic changes so this doesn’t happen again, which falls under Step #5). On a much larger level, if you unjustly put an entire group of people in an internment camp during wartime, offer reparations (our book, for instance, compares the U.S. and Canadian responses to each country’s shameful history of rounding up its citizens of Japanese heritage).
#6.5. Let the other person have their say. Don’t protest. Don’t interrupt. Hear them out, even if it’s hard.
Look, real life is complicated and full of nuance, and that’s why we wrote a book and not just a list. To be clear, a good apology doesn’t erase terrible behavior. A bad, gaslighting apology can be a further insult. There are people who refuse to accept even good apologies, and people who use flawed-but-well-intentioned apologies as weapons rather than teachable moments.
Apologies are part of good-faith efforts to build a better world, and they require work.
