I’m sorry: Six elements to make your apology optimal

Originally published by Douglas Keene.

The phrase “I’m sorry” always reminds me of then 15-year-old Brenda Lee and her hit single. (That is, in psychology circles, called a tangential aside.) We haven’t written about apology here for a while now and a new study has just published that lists six elements to make your apology optimal. This post is to help you stay informed about the latest findings on how to make an apology most effective.

First a bit of background on the apology research. These researchers tell us that apologies typically arise in an effort to repair trust. They identified “six structural components of apologies” from prior research and presented them single and in combination to research participants to see which elements were more effective in restoring trust. Here’s a little of what they found:

Not all apologies were equally effective—those with more components were more effective than those with fewer components and certain components were more effective than others. (In other words, keep talking…and make sure you focus on everything you need to say. )

Apologies after competence-based trust violations were more effective than apologies following integrity-based violations. (One is an issue of disappointment with your actions and the other is an issue of your character.)

The six elements of apology culled from prior research were:

Expression of regret

Explanation of what went wrong

Acknowledgment of responsibility

Declaration of repentance

Offer of repair

Request for forgiveness

The authors say that the best apologies contain all six elements but the most important elements are acknowledging your responsibility and making an offer of repair for harm done. The next three elements are tied (expressing regret, explaining what went wrong, and a declaration of repentance). The least effective element may surprise you. A request for forgiveness is the least effective element of the apology and the researchers say you can leave out the request for forgiveness if you need to do that.

From a litigation advocacy perspective, it seems famous people are apologizing almost all the time (we’ve written about a number of them here) but the quality of those apologies varies dramatically. When your client needs to issue an apology—encourage them to include all these components (although they can skip the last one if it is too awkward or would be seen as insincere).

Lewicki, R., Polin, B., & Lount, R. (2016). An Exploration of the Structure of Effective Apologies. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 9 (2), 177-196 DOI: 10.1111/ncmr.12073

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Related posts:

1. Apology redux: Doing it right (and doing it wrong)
2. A carefully crafted apology doesn’t mean we think you are sincere
3. “There will be no apology from me!”

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