The magic of apology

Emmanuel is a Chief Executive Officer in a multinational corporation. While he was presiding a meeting, he offended a subordinate by berating her in-front of her peers. Having realized his arrogance Sean immediately apologized to her. 

Have you been in a situation where you offended a subordinate or an officemate? What did you do? Did you simply ignore your arrogance? You are the boss anyway! Or you immediately apologized because you’ve realized your mistake.

Many of us may not know this but offensive words hurt more than a knife being thrust into one’s body. That’s how demotivating and morale downing arrogant and offensive words are. However, there is a saving grace whenever we display our arrogance and offensive behavior. And this saving grace is to apologize.

But not everyone is willing to apologize because many of us have a selective method of apologizing. We usually immediately apologize to our superior but not to our subordinates many of us would say, “My subordinates are my underlings, why should I apologize to them?”

When we are not willing to apologize, we open ourselves to retaliation. Retaliation that will come to us when we least expect it. Retaliation that will certainly diminish our standing in our organization. Therefore, we have to humble ourselves whenever we offend anyone in our organization. And this we can do best when we apologize regardless of the status of the person we have offended.

Believe it or not the magic of apology is real, it heals strained organizational relationship and it renews broken friendship. – Marino J. Dasmarinas