Are You Sorry?

Our daughter was running down the hall this morning with an arm full stuffed animals. As she rounded the corner she slammed into our son and the animals went flying in every direction. In tears she turned and yelled,

"Stop making me drop my friends!" Startled and unsure what was going on, our son yelled back, "Sorry!" After checking to make sure both were uninjured, we sat down to talk about what had happened.

Watching this unfold it got me thinking about how often events happen to us and yet we are someone left apologizing for the inconvenience. This happens for three major reasons. 1) Sometimes we say 'sorry' to make the situation go away because we just can't deal with it. 2) Sometimes we say 'sorry' because we mean it as a way of empathizing with the client and 3) sometimes we say 'sorry' because we genuinely feel like we did something wrong and could have done more.

1 (Collin) find myself in category three all of the time. From apologizing to cars as I cross on the sidewalk, to apologizing for sending my food back at a restaurant because it was the wrong order. I tend to feel that I could have (should have) done something more to avoid the situation entirely. As people who are service and care oriented, our empathy muscle is well worked, we just want people to be happy, and not be a bother to those around us. So how do we move past that mindset?

We talk about personal responsibility when owning up to mistakes and accepting the results. Personal responsibility also means identifying when you had no control over the situation and accepting in your heart that nothing more could have been done. Start with the small things; the stop light turning red and YOU have to stop, making the person angry behind you. The restaurant getting your order wrong and you asking for it to be made right. Then work into the larger (possibly more confrontational) things of running a business and customer service. Not apologizing for being fully booked when they waited to the very last minute.

As we look to ahead, maybe it's the year we take back even more control over our businesses; accepting responsibility when it's due and stop apologizing when we did nothing wrong.