Making Apologies

One part of keep­ing lots of balls in the air is that some­times you drop one, and at times the dropped ball doesn’t just affect you but it affects some­one else per­son­ally or pro­fes­sion­ally. And when you screw up, you need to apol­o­gize and try to make amends. Best is face to face so they can see you’re sin­cere and will­ing to make this con­tact and try to mend any dam­age done when you screwed up. If you can’t meet face to face, then do it over the phone. And if you can’t do it over the phone, do it by way of a well thought out and expres­sive email.

I had an inci­dent where I backed out of a film­ing event for Man­a­Na­tion, leav­ing the event orga­nizer in a lurch. It was my fault for not fol­low­ing up prop­erly and let­ting it drop. Thank­fully the cost to him was min­i­mal and he is a very good guy. But I screwed up and I needed to con­tact him and make amends over it.

He lives a fair bit away and this apol­ogy was so far over­due that expe­di­ency took prece­dence over meet­ing him face to face, so I sat down with my cell and called him.

The phone is not an ideal medium for me, I’m not good at focus­ing on what I hear. I am one of those guys that if I am going to really lis­ten over the phone I need to close my eyes to be sure I don’t get dis­tracted. So I turned off the TV, sat in the liv­ing room away from the com­puter, and made sure I was free of dis­trac­tions for the call.

I rehearsed what I wanted to say in my head, I wanted to be to the point with­out being rude. I also know he is usu­ally quite busy, so I wanted to make sure now was the time to poten­tially have him on the phone for what could be a long phone call. And I wanted to clearly state my apol­ogy first, then an expla­na­tion of what hap­pened (not an excuse.)

Me: “Hey [name], it’s Patrick, how are you doing?”

Him: “Hey Patrick, I’m fine, what’s up?”

M: “Lis­ten, do you have a few min­utes to talk? If you’re busy I can call back.”

H: “No, I’m free go for it.”

M: “Well I just wanted to call and apol­o­gize about the event last month.

And off we went. I began the con­ver­sa­tion politely, giv­ing him an option to have me call later if needed. As I men­tioned above, this call was greatly over­due. This was for an event that hap­pened a month ago, and I held off on the call ini­tially to give him time to travel back home, but in doing so it fell off my radar and I didn’t want to make this call.

The con­ver­sa­tion was shorter than I expected, he was recep­tive and we ended on decent terms. Not as high as they once had been, but at least the com­mu­ni­ca­tion is open and we’re on the path to recovery.

Who likes admit­ting they screwed up?

No one.

But you have to do it, and you have to do it to them.

Not doing so costs you cus­tomers, clients, friends, and more.