When I worked for a Japanese company, my ability to apologize, sincerely, and politely, was good for my career.
The Japanese respect and work with apologies. They accept it, and then expect you to help make it right. It is usually not brought up again.
Americans, on the other hand, tend to take them as admissions of weakness, and try to pile more abuse on you. You are punished for apologizing, and they never let you forget it.
The best managers I've seen are the ones that, following a failure from staff, can detect a real apology and earnest promise to learn and do better next time, and then never mentioned it again.
The worst ones will detect that same apology and crowd that person out of their own mind with unresolved guilt, completely disabling them with their own emotions. Give them long enough and they can create monsters out of the nicest men.
I found this difficult when I was a young professional. Later I realized I was surrounded by mostly bad managers. They didn't want a real status update so that they could help manage the changing risk landscape. They just wanted to be told everything was OK.
After about a decade I got wise to this pattern. Their first reply would be passive-aggressive: "What are you going to do about this?" (Why just me? Are we not a team?) The old me would be unnecessarily courageous: "Get it done, of course!" If I had anything less enthusiastic to say they might follow with, "What do you want me to do about it?" This is a very different question from, "What can I do to help?" I was emotionally exhausted.
Of course when I alone couldn't mitigate the risks and things went south it was my responsibility and my apology was expected.
Once I realized these managers were a one-way street I started simply telling them, "You're the manager. You manage it." Good managers get more from me, but good managers usually are actively ahead of things previously raised and the need to occasionally pull things over the line occurs with lower frequency. Who doesn't want higher throughput with lower stress?
> Americans, on the other hand, tend to take them as admissions of weakness, and try to pile more abuse on you. You are punished for apologizing, and they never let you forget it.
For this reason, sincere apologies can probably only work in very private situations, with those rare people who are overly generous and forgiving and won't take it as an invitation (if not a moral imperative) for endless retribution, bullying, and public shaming.
Mostly because I get a lot of practice. :P
When I worked for a Japanese company, my ability to apologize, sincerely, and politely, was good for my career.
The Japanese respect and work with apologies. They accept it, and then expect you to help make it right. It is usually not brought up again.
Americans, on the other hand, tend to take them as admissions of weakness, and try to pile more abuse on you. You are punished for apologizing, and they never let you forget it.