Taking Responsibility for a Bad Situation

Sorry is a powerful word that can help to mend relationships and acknowledge mistakes but, even at its most heartfelt and eloquent, simply saying words is not a "Get out of jail free" card. Alone, what you say cannot address the consequences of your actions.

It takes humility to apologise when something has gone wrong. Whether or not you feel like you did the best you could in the circumstances, it's always valuable to acknowledge your part in a bad situation. Trying to say sorry can even undermine your sincerity, unless you also demonstrate your understanding of what went wrong, and accept responsibility for your own actions and the things that have happened on your watch.

Avoid making excuses or appearing to shift the blame onto others. If your remorse is genuine then, whether or not you are at fault, prove it by seeking to use your position, your skills and your influence to make the situation better. Taking responsibility is about being forward looking. It is about owning up and being willing to share the burden or take ownership of what has happened. That doesn’t make you any more liable.

People often shy away from taking responsibility because they confuse it with admitting liability, especially when there is legal action on the horizon. Taking responsibility is part of actively demonstrating the sincerity of what you say when you apologise. Liability is a legal concept that relates to fault and restitution. They can overlap, but they are not the same and they are not interchangeable. One won’t exempt someone from the other.?

Possibly counterintuitively, how early and willingly you have taken responsibility can still influence the perceived liability. If you have freely offered steps to improve or mitigate the damage, or even just owned up, then that might affect how much of your liability is already considered to have been discharged. In cases of medical negligence in particular, when clinicians accept responsibility early, compensation can end up being lower.

When talking about what has happened, use active not passive language. This is the time to talk about yourself! Unlike most advice about making conversation and building relationships, here you should emphasise yourself as the subject of what you are saying: “I dropped the ball” (active: you are the subject) not “the ball was dropped” (passive: the dropped ball is the subject).?

Avoid using a passive voice because otherwise the focus remains on the thing that has happened, rather than drawing attention to the reason that you are apologising. An active voice is refreshingly clear and direct, and it puts the emphasis on the actor or subject responsible, not the events, circumstances and (in some cases inanimate!) objects. "The car hit the boy" suggests nobody was at the wheel. To say “the boy was hit with the car” implies somehow that the boy’s actions contributed. Even if the car was faulty or the boy had done something which did not prevent the accident, it would be the driver who would be taking responsibility, and neither the boy nor the car.

When you are dealing with guilt and potential consequences, it can be tempting to make somebody else the active subject of your explanation, and instead of taking responsibility, it can start to look like you are shifting the blame.?

Using the first person instead of the second or third acknowledges your own role in the situation without implicating others or making excuses. Be very wary of using "you," because it can easily come across as accusatory. Even “we” can sometimes seem like you are blaming the others in your group who you speak on behalf of, so if “we” is definitely the correct pronoun, then craft the phrasing around it carefully. By using "I," you are expressing ownership and accountability for your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. Being open like that leads to better communication and understanding between all parties involved.

Be cautious that you don’t slip into making it all about yourself though: “I was sad that I dropped the ball” is fine as an expression of your regret, but overdo it and it starts to look a lot like you are seeking pity and prioritising your needs above the others affected. In your forward-looking, responsibility-accepting apology, there is no place for dwelling too much on suffering, least of all focusing on your own! Regret that you feel should be very clearly directed towards the other person’s experience, not your own emotional response.

Practising continued and determined empathy can help you to keep focus away from how you personally have been affected by what has happened. Ask yourself what it would be like if it was the other way round? How would you feel? Understand and share in the feelings and perspectives of the other people and attempt to put yourself in their shoes to imagine what they might be experiencing. The best clues for this come from them directly. In preparing your apology and in delivering it, actively listen to the other parties and pay attention to their words and their nonverbal cues.?

By seeing things from their perspective, you can better understand and predict their emotions, motivations, and behaviours. That can help you deliver your apology in a more compassionate and understanding way to a better reception. An apology that takes responsibility can build stronger relationships and promote greater trust and cooperation as you all seek to learn from the situation, and together repair damage that has been caused.?

Collaborative and empathetic apologies can be more difficult when the person accusing you seems unreasonable. Your first response, I’m afraid, needs to be to empathise harder. Nobody ever believes themselves to be irrational or unreasonable. We all draw our conclusions from the facts, information and perspective that we have ourselves. If you consider someone else to be unreasonable, then you have not understood how they see things. That’s not to say that you have to agree with them, but if you don’t understand the terrain your apology will be landing on then you risk it falling on stony ground.

If you really cannot find accord, and nothing you say is acceptable to the other person, it’s valuable to remember that taking responsibility is ultimately about your own personal integrity, rather than placating the other person. Aim that you will be able to look yourself in the mirror and know that you have nothing to be ashamed of, even if before the apology you felt some shame.

We can't control how others react or respond to us, but we can control our own actions, how we respond to others and how they will want to respond to us. Saying sorry demonstrates humility, empathy, and accountability, but shifting responsibility can lead to negative consequences in personal and professional relationships. By taking responsibility for our actions, even in difficult circumstances, we can demonstrate our commitment to improvement, sincerity and integrity, and ingrain it in our patterns of behaviour.?

If your apology falls on deaf ears, you can still take responsibility for your own actions by committing to learn from the situation and make improvements in the future. Reflect on your own behaviour, seek as much feedback as possible from others, and use what you learn from this situation to actively work to improve your communication and decision-making skills for the future.