I like people who apologize
Against the classic business power play
I began my career in the vaunted halls of McKinsey & Company, and then I founded a startup and served as CEO for five years. During that decade, when I was operating in the realms of the powerful, there was one piece of advice that was so ubiquitous, so consistent, so oft-repeated, that it appeared to be an eleventh commandment:
Don’t apologize.
Don’t say “sorry.” Don’t say it in emails, don’t say it in person, don’t say it when you’re late for a meeting, don’t say it when you accidentally called someone by the wrong name, just don’t say it. Baked into this advice is the presumption that the person who does not say sorry is the more important, the more powerful, the more alpha person, and the person who apologizes is less commanding. She is subservient, she is not going to make it.
Research shows that women apologize more than men, around twice as much. Like many women in business, I have often written emails and then gone back through to edit out the “sorrys.” I have arrived late to a meeting and blurted, I’m so sorry, I was stuck in traffic blahblahlalala…before I cut myself off, admonishing myself silently to stop apologizing, for goodness sake.
Don’t say sorry. For the first ten years of my career I took this advice as truth. The sorry-sayer is the loser. The sorry-sayer is the one who will not succeed. The sorry-sayer is weak.
Learning the game
It’s scary how many early career directives I received and believed without question. I was, after all, twenty-two, insecure, and suddenly surrounded by people who proclaimed themselves the best in the world. The best in the world? I too could be the best, if only I followed the rules. Sit up straight. Take up space. Talk louder, talk sooner. Say fewer words. Be fifty percent less bubbly (this is real feedback that someone really gave me).
Adopt more executive presence. That euphemistic phrase showed up in every single one of my reviews at McKinsey. I was lacking executive presence, whatever it was, and I suspect it had something to do with saying sorry too much. People at McKinsey used to joke that the company loves to hire undergraduates directly out of school, right at the tender age of twenty-two, right when we are still soft balls of clay that can be fully molded into the McKinsey form. I was indeed molded—I did try to sit up straighter, I did try to be fifty percent less bubbly, I did try to stop apologizing. My education in this type of so-called “executive presence” continued as I crossed into the gauntlet of Silicon Valley, slogged through the haunted forest of Y Combinator, entered the dragon’s lair of venture fundraising and swam in the shark-infested ocean of sales. Reinforce your armor, cadet. Don’t show weakness. Don’t say sorry.
Unlearning the game
For most of my business career I was in various states of moral distress, which is the discomfort caused when you make a moral judgment about the right course of action but are unable to act upon it. Apologizing when I feel like I’ve inconvenienced someone is something I want to do, because I feel like it’s the right thing. It is my way of showing that person that I care about them, that I care that I wasted some of their time or forgot the name of their kid.
Sure, I don’t want to be someone who apologizes for every little thing—”sorry I accidentally brushed your shoulder! Sorry my house is a mess! Sorry I’m breathing in your air!”—that would be diminishing to my self worth. Research shows that the reason women apologize more than men is that women perceive more offenses in our daily lives than men do, and this suggests to me that there is a delicate balance to strike. I certainly don’t want to go through my day thinking everything I do is an offense. But I do want to be someone who is aware of ways I might have put someone out. I want to be someone who apologizes, even for little things, even in business. I’m sorry I just moved this meeting for the second time. I know you set aside time in your day to speak with me, and, who knows, maybe you turned down other plans in order to make this work. For me, saying “sorry” acknowledges all that. It reaches out to the other person and lets them know I care, that I’m not just blowing through their day with hurricane force on my way to my own goals.
Another way to put it is that I’m done thinking of “caring” as a beta characteristic. In her book, Talking from 9 to 5: How women's and men's conversational styles affect who gets heard, who gets credit, and what gets done at work, linguist Deborah Tannen posits that women use apologetic language more often in order to maintain social harmony and avoid appearing aggressive. In my case, that sounds about right. And you know what? I’m fine with that. I like the idea that my actions aim to maintain social harmony. I like that I tend to try not to come off as aggressive. I think that makes the world nicer for everyone, and I personally would have been happier in the business world if more people around me held those goals.
In my ideal world, the act of saying sorry at appropriate times would be a hallmark of power rather than a marker of weakness. I think many women would feel more comfortable among the powerful if it were.
So here’s a little shout to the sorry-sayers, the carers. I think we’ve gotten a bad rep. I hope we can unapologetically say our sorry’s, loud and proud.
✏️ I’ll see you in the comments! I’d love to know…
Are you a sorry-sayer? How do you feel about it?
Are there any other habits you have that people have told you to stop doing in order to look more powerful?
"Be 50 percent less bubbly" that makes me sick but does not surprise me. As a solopreneur I have been told far too many times, mostly by men, that my laughter and smiles make me seem less professional. F- that, this is me and if people want to work with me they'll have talk to me, lol. I also started my business in my late 40's. In my early 20's I tried on many other ways of acting. None of them worked. I would also come through them. Thank goddess for that! Great post as usual.
When I got my first management job, I remember that my dad told me that the best advice he could offer me was to never say "sorry". Over the years since,I have found that to be terrible advice. When you truly owe someone an apology, and you hold power in the relationship, to have the maturity and self-awareness to offer a genuine apology does more to foster loyalty than almost anything else you can do. I try not to let my apologies be cheap though; I don't apologize for everything. Hurt feelings on their own are not a good enough reason - the yardstick is harm. Big harm, big apology; small harm, small apology. No harm, no apology, even if the other person has feelings. I can listen to and acknowledge the feelings and empathize, and sometimes that's more meaningful than the apology anyway.