Has this ever happened to you?
Here’s the scene: My husband and I are standing at an elevator with a male tour guide . A woman is walking towards us. The tour guide sees her and says, “You look lost. Can I help you?” She looks at him awkwardly, drops her head down and says, “Oh. I’m sorry. I’m fine.”
What?!? Why was she apologizing? There was nothing for which she should apologize. She didn’t cause offense. She didn’t do anything but walk down the hall.
It made me think about a time I was in a coaching session with a client. She was kind enough to make dinner for me. In 40 minutes she apologized 8 times for little inconsequential things like not having the salt shaker on my side of the table. This was a mystery to me. She did not have anything to apologize for either and I told her to stop it.
There are times when an apology is warranted from a business or service provider such as when a grocery stork clerk drops boxes of Ramen Noodles on your head. I’m sure you can think of other examples too.
Over-Apologizing
What I’m highlighting here is over-apologizing. It’s annoying, but more importantly, I’m concerned that it undermines credibility in a business setting, particularly in female/male relationships.
There is a study out of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada that came out in September, 2010 in the Journal of Psychological Science. The scientific research concluded that the reason women apologize more than men is because women believe there are more things worthy of an apology than men do. In other words, the research shows that women are more easily offended than men. No big surprise there.
Speaking in generalities, the researchers speculate this could be because women are more relationship driven than men or because as a gender, women tend to be more intuitive about other people’s feelings than men. Regardless of the reasons why, male and female, we need to stop unwarranted apologizing.
Unwarranted, over-apologizing positions us as being subservient and hurts our brand. Did you know that according to dictionary.com, the origin of the word “sorry” means distressed and full of sorrow? Do you really have that many things to be full of sorrow about?
But, I could be wrong. What do you think? Is there such a thing as apologizing too much?
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- Mirror, Mirror on the Wall – Creating a Professional Brand
- 3 Reasons to Be Like Edward Cullen – What Businesses Can Learn from the Twilight Movies
Alicia Arenas is a business coach and corporate trainer. When she’s not singing or song-writing, she helps her entrepreneurs increase their sales through coaching and her business boot camp. Alicia is located in San Antonio, Texas, but coaches people nationwide.
Photo Courtesy of Iain Farrell, via Flickr
