BRX Pro Tip: How to Apologize
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tip. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, in your experience, what is the best way to apologize?
Lee Kantor: [00:00:11] How to apologize? That is an important thing that people should get good at because people make mistakes all the time. So, I think that having at least a framework for how to apologize is important. I think, number one, when it comes to apologizing is like you always say bad news fast. If something bad has happened, don’t wait until the right time to tell somebody. Tell somebody as quickly as possible so that we can kind of start taking action on how to deal with it. So, number one, a part of an apology is identify that something bad has happened and tell people quickly.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:49] Number two is take responsibility by acknowledging the mistake. It’s much better to take responsibility than to blame other people. And as a leader, ultimately, you are responsible. So, taking responsibility is an important component of an apology. The third part of an apology should be some sort of empathy and articulate the impact, the mistake or what you understand the mistake has caused. So, by showing this kind of empathy, by articulating the impact the mistake caused, is showing that “Hey, I’m aware I did something wrong. I am owning it and I feel like I understand that the impact that that mistake caused.”
Lee Kantor: [00:01:32] Now saying that is one thing. The next step is the acknowledgment from the party that you’re apologizing to, that you got that part right because you may not – you may be articulating an impact that you think you’ve caused, but the impact might be different than what you are articulating. So, get acknowledgment from the part of your apologizing to so that they understand and believe that you understand what you are apologizing for.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:01] And then finally, the last thing is explain how you are going to avoid making this mistake again. If you can do all of those things and you can really own the mistake, take responsibility for the mistake, show empathy around the mistake, and then have a plan of action so that you’re going to tell this person that this mistake is not going to happen again, then you have apologized effectively.
