How Your Bad Apologies Hurt You, Your Leadership and Your Relationships

Part of Kathy Caprino's Series “Healing And Thriving Through Life’s Challenges”

Over the years of working as a family therapist and career coach, I’ve seen my clients grapple with a vast array of betrayals and wrong-doings that either they’ve perpetrated, or that others have done to them. And I’ve witnessed the tremendous healing powerful of a true, heartfelt apology, as well as the damage a bad apology can cause.

To learn more about why we resist apologizing and how to do it correctly, I was thrilled to catch up with Dr. Harriet Lerner, one of America’s most respected relationships experts and the author of numerous scholarly articles and popular books, including the New York Times bestseller The Dance of Anger, which has sold over three million copies. Her new book Why Won’t You Apologize? Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts shows us how much the apology matters and why we so often mess it up.  She provides a unique perspective on what the good apology requires and how we can restore compromised and broken relationships.

Kathy Caprino: Harriet, what inspired you to write about apologies?

Harriet Lerner: “I’m sorry” are the two most important words in the English language. Without the possibility of restoring trust and mending broken fences the inherently flawed experience of being human would feel impossibly tragic. A good apology is deeply healing while an absent or bad one can compromise and even end a relationship.

It’s important to know how to decode bad apologies, both on the giving or receiving end. “I’m sorry” won’t cut it if it’s vague, insincere, blame-reversing, or a quick way out of a difficult conversation. And obviously an apology is empty if you keep repeating the very behaviors you’re apologizing for.

Caprino: Can you give a couple of examples of bad apologies?

Lerner: One apology I share in the book was so sleazy and shaming that it will forever stay etched in my memory. A man I call Leon was in charge of promotion for a conference where I was to speak, and I sent him a recent photo to use both in print and online promotion. The organization had a photo of me taken a generation ago, and when I showed up I wanted to resemble myself. Leon posted the wrong photo online and again in the printed brochure and failed to correct the online photo when I requested this.

In our final conversation during which I felt like putting a stake in his forehead, Leon made several “apologies” that went like this: “I’m sorry but I can’t pay attention to every detail. I’m not perfect.” “I’m sorry that the photo is so important to you. I don’t think that the participants are as involved as you are in how you look.” And finally, “Okay, I apologize. I didn’t know this was such a sensitive issue for you.”

I would have much preferred that Leon didn’t apologize at all because a false, blame-reversing apology only repeats and deepens the original injury. While Leon’s particular combination of disrespect, incompetence and defensiveness may seem extreme, all of us can ruin an apology without even intending to.

Caprino: What are the most common everyday apology mistakes?

Lerner: Little add-ons like "but" (I’m sorry I forget your birthday, but I was stressed out with work”) or "if" (“I’m sorry if that joke I made at the meeting offended you”) will turn your sorry into a not-sorry-at-all.

Bringing up the other person’s crime sheet (“I apologize for yelling and now you apologize for provoking me”) is another common apology error.

A heartfelt apology means accepting responsibility for our mistakes without a hint of excuse making or evasion, even if the other person can’t do the same. Sure we may be convinced that we’re only 37% to blame, but we can save our different perspective for a future conversation where it can be a subject of conversation and not a defense strategy.

Caprino: Your book Why Won’t You Apologize? also deals with apologizing for serious betrayals, injustices and injuries, past and present. Obviously, a sincere “I’m sorry” isn’t enough, right?

Lerner: Often I hear something like, “I told you I was sorry about the affair ten times so let’s drop it already.” That won’t cut it. High-stakes situations calls for an apology that’s a long distance run—where we open our heart and listen to the feelings of the hurt part on more than one occasion. There’s no greater gift, or one more difficult to offer, than the gift of wholehearted listening to that kind of anger and pain when we are being accused of causing it.

It’s not the words “I’m sorry” that soothes the other person and allows them to feel safe in the relationship again. More than anything, the hurt party wants us to listen carefully to their feelings, to validate their reality, to feel genuine regret and remorse, to carry some of the pain we’ve caused, and to make reparations as needed. They want us to really “get it” and to make sure there will be no repeat performance.

Caprino: Why is listening so difficult for so many of us?

Lerner: It’s easy to listen if we like what the other person is saying. However, we don’t listen well when we’re under fire because we are hard wired for defensiveness. Defensiveness is automatic and universal, but it’s also the arch enemy of listening, the arch enemy of the apology.

When we listen defensively, we automatically listen for what we don’t agree with. We listen for the exaggerations, errors and distortions that will inevitably be there. A real apology demands that we listen differently—that we make an effort to listen for the essence of what the person is trying to tell us, to listen for what we can agree with, and apologize for that piece first.

Let’s face it. Almost all of us are more invested in improving our talking skills than in improving our listening skills.

Our desire to be understood is far stronger than our desire to understand the other person. Yet listening without defensiveness is the heart and soul of the good apology.

Caprino: What about the person who needs and deserves the apology and isn’t getting it? What drives the non-apologizer?

Lerner: As my title Why Won’t You Apologize? suggests, I devote considerable space to addressing the excruciating pain of the hurt or angry party who will never get the apology they need or deserve. Some people who hurt you will never apologize and the worse the harm, the less likely an apology will ever be forthcoming.

In order to apologize for a serious harm, a person needs to have a big platform of self-worth to stand on. 

From this higher vantage point they can look out at their mistakes and see them as part of a larger, complex, ever-changing picture of who they are as a human being.

But people who do serious harm stand on a small rickety platform of self-worth. 

They can’t allow themselves to really experience the harm they’ve done because to do so would flip them into an identity of worthless and shame.

The worse the harm, the greater the shame, the more the wrongdoer will wrap himself tightly in a blanket of rationalization, minimization and denial. The inability to listen, to orient to reality, to take responsibility, has nothing to do with how much that person loves you. It has to do with how much self-worth that person has to draw upon. We can’t bestow this upon anyone but ourselves. 

The non-apologizer walks on a tightrope of defensiveness above a huge canyon of low self-esteem.

Caprino: Your two chapters on forgiveness are especially interesting because they challenge the notion that we need to forgive the wrongdoer even if he does nothing to earn forgiveness.

Lerner: Perhaps my most challenging chapter is called “You Need to Forgive and Other Lies that Hurt You.” In keeping with the work of psychologist Janis Abrams Spring, I want to help my readers resist rushing into a false and premature forgiveness because they believe that forgiveness is the royal road to inner peace, or the only way out of a life mired down in bitterness and hate.

Here’s what’s true: 

You do not need to forgive in order to let go of the corrosive effects of negative emotions. 

And it’s not our job to encourage others to forgive. Pushing forgiveness can traumatize the hurt party all over again. (“What your dad did to you happened a long time ago, and he was a sick man. Don’t you think it’s time that you forgive him and move on?”). It’s the last thing the injured party needs to hear.

We do need to find ways to protect ourselves from the burden of carrying anger and resentment that isn’t serving us, and to grab some peace of mind. We can achieve this with or without forgiveness.

Caprino: Can you share another example of a forgiveness myth?

Lerner: Forgiveness is talked about as an all or nothing thing like being pregnant. In fact, you can forgive whatever percentage you choose, or not at all, and you do not need to give away all your anger to continue in the relationship.

A couple I saw in counseling worked hard on re-building their marriage after the husband’s affair came out in the open. At the end of a long and rocky journey, they were clearly very committed to truth-telling and to each other. The wife trusted that there would never be a future infidelity.

At the end of the treatment the husband asked if she had forgiven him. She was thoughtful for a moment and responded that she forgave him ninety percent. “I forgive you for having the affair,” she said in a manner that conveyed considerable assurance. “But I will never forgive you for the time you slept with her in our bed.” She forgave him 90% and that was enough for them to continue to move forward in their marriage with love and respect.

Caprino: How important is the apology for leadership in the workplace?

Lerner: 

Our ability to lead, whether at home or at work, rests on our ability to orient to reality, and to take responsibility for our mistakes, and to apologize for them.

The level of respect we earn from others, as well as our own level of maturity, rest squarely on our ability to see ourselves objectively, to take a clear-eyed look at the ways that our behavior effects others, and to be fully accountable for our mistakes without blaming others.

The courage to apologize and the wisdom to do it wisely and well is at the heart of friendship, leadership, marriage, parenting and being grounded in maturity, integrity and self worth. It’s hard to imagine what’s more important that that.

For more information, visit HarrietLerner.com and her new book Why Won’t You Apologize? Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts.

For more from Kathy Caprino, take her Amazing Career Project online course, and watch her TEDx Talk “Time to Brave Up.”