Sphiti was leading a
team of content writers working on a project to develop academic content for a government-aided educational institution. A content developer,
under the supervision of the project leader and content team leader,
would get the client as well as the subject expert to verify the draft content. Then the content developer would revise the content based on the client’s feedback. Nita, a member of the content development team,
sent her draft to the client for review. The client marked few major changes in the content to which she immediately replied highlighting the suggestions in red that she could not make the changes because those points were from the subject expert their team was referring to. Sphiti,
immediately replied to Nita’s email, marking it to the Project Manager and the Project Leader. In her email, she explained to Nita that it was impolite to highlight the client’s comments in red and that, she had overlooked the fact, the client had provided the raw content and was subject-expert too. She requested Nita to directly discuss the matter with the client in the presence of the Project Leader. No sooner had
Nita read Sphiti’s email, she approached her desk along with Parvesh,
the Project Leader. Nita, openly accused Sphiti of deliberately marking the email to the Project Manager, for she intended to accuse Nita of any lapse in the process. Sphiti pointed out to the two of them that all project-related email communication was marked to the Project Manager.
Spurred by Sphiti’s response Parvesh retorted, asking Sphiti why she had not removed the Project Manager from the list of addressees. Sphiti replied that she had kept the internal customers of the project in the loop while she had removed the external customers, the clients from her email. Nita and Parvesh were not satisfied with her reply and insisted she apologises to Nita in public. Sphiti, without a moment’s hesitation,
apologised to the duo. Then she wrote an email addressing the two of them and the Project Manager on the incidence and sought them to acknowledge both the email communication that she had addressed to Nita and the one she was addressing to them now. She then met with The Project Manager, in a lackadaisical manner, asked her whether she really had apologised to Nita and asked her to forget about the incident.
While reading the case study you must have tried to recall when, how and why and to whom you have apologised. You may or may not have felt good about it. Often you must have had people asking you and supporting your act of apology, or you must have had people insisting you refrain from apologising, citing the reason: if you do, you will accede to people wrongfully demanding an apology from you. Often, we find ourselves in a dilemma, whether we should apologise or not. In fact, the act of apology, how we apologise, defines our character: Whether we apologise habitually or it is really genuine. It shows how much we are aware of ourselves #selfawareness.
What do we mean by habitual acts of apology?
1. Apology as a formality: When we teach a child right from wrong and to apologise to anyone we have wronged, we often ignore explaining to the child why it is necessary to apologise. Therefore, it merely becomes a dead habit; the child begins to believe a mere word or note of apology is enough to make amends for our mistake. We ignore to make the child aware of the fact, rectification of mistake is essential for self-development. Often we hear a girl or woman complain about a man or a woman touch her inappropriately or make offensive remark in public, when she gathers the courage to object to such action, the eve teaser merely utters the word “SORRY” or defies her objection with the intimidating presence of his or her friends.
2. Apology as an act of vengeance: When a person thinks he has been willfully wronged and asked to apologise, then he will look for an opportunity to make the person concede to any mistake he makes and apologise to him too. As in Sphiti’s case, she could have retaliated in the same way, stalking for an opportunity to catch her colleagues, Nita and Parvesh on the wrong foot and could have coerced them to apologize to her in public.
3. Apology as a duty: Many of you, while reading the point, ‘Apology as a formality’ must have mused, ‘As a kid, I used to apologise to my parents for any small mistake I committed. It has now become second nature to me.’ When parents, guardians, mentors, and educators insist their child or learner apologise for any small mistake he commits. They miss out on encouraging the child to understand the fallacy and amend it, invariably making the act of apology habitually more important than comprehending and valuing the lesson learnt from the mistake.
4. Apology as a clash of ego: When our experience, circumstances, religious, cultural and social association, economic status influence us to value and believe in our prejudice and bias as an integral part of our identity; then we also fall prey to our misconceived self-awareness. We begin to discriminate against who we should and should not apologize to. We refrain from apologising for any act that we commit based on our bias and prejudice, or any mental block.
Pushpesh was a Senior Sales Executive. Deepak was his colleague, who was more aggressive and outspoken than Pushpesh, who was a middle-aged man, in need of employment to support him and his parents. Deepak was half his colleague’s age and his wife was a Senior Officer in the same organisation. With a more stable socio-economic background, Deepak was more confident and assertive, at times aggressive worker than Pushpesh. Deepak had a positive influence over their reporting head. One day, when Pushpesh asked Deepak for access code to certain official files, the latter hollered it at him. Pushpesh requested Deepak to write or approach his desk and share the information, which made Deepak lose his cool and accuse Pushpesh of being a weakling, who could not stand up for himself and always was compromising for wrong reasons. Pushpesh, conscious of the attentive eyes of all his colleagues on him, quietly approached Deepak, apologized to him in what he thought, was the right way to make peace with his colleague bristling with anger. Their reporting head approached the duo and commented, “Pushpesh, to me, you are the twenty-five-year-old youngster and Deepak is the fifty-year-old senior member of the team!”
5. Apology as part of a blame game: Intra-team and inter-team conflicts arise when the team members and teams lack collective responsibility and shared service vision and mission of the organisation. The leadership does not encourage open discussion, sharing of thoughts, ideas and team spirit based on compassion, appreciation for every member’s unique potential and how all the team members complement one another to make a strong and efficient team. On the contrary, the leadership encourages negative comparison, deliberately cause a rift between team members, teams and departments to gain favour and functional power. This gives rise to the toxic environment of office politics. The teams and their members resort to blaming one another for any failure rather than compassionately understand each other’s challenges and problems to make a collaborative effort in solving them. Such blame games in a negative environment result in a clash of ego with teams demanding an apology from one another instead of appreciating the diversity and uniting for the common objective: collective responsibility towards the organisation’s vision and mission.
While reading the case study you must have tried to recall when, how and why and to whom you have apologised. You may or may not have felt good about it. Often you must have had people asking you and supporting your act of apology, or you must have had people insisting you refrain from apologising, citing the reason: if you do, you will accede to people wrongfully demanding an apology from you. Often, we find ourselves in a dilemma, whether we should apologise or not. In fact, the act of apology, how we apologise, defines our character: Whether we apologise habitually or it is really genuine. It shows how much we are aware of ourselves #selfawareness.
What do we mean by habitual acts of apology?
1. Apology as a formality: When we teach a child right from wrong and to apologise to anyone we have wronged, we often ignore explaining to the child why it is necessary to apologise. Therefore, it merely becomes a dead habit; the child begins to believe a mere word or note of apology is enough to make amends for our mistake. We ignore to make the child aware of the fact, rectification of mistake is essential for self-development. Often we hear a girl or woman complain about a man or a woman touch her inappropriately or make offensive remark in public, when she gathers the courage to object to such action, the eve teaser merely utters the word “SORRY” or defies her objection with the intimidating presence of his or her friends.
2. Apology as an act of vengeance: When a person thinks he has been willfully wronged and asked to apologise, then he will look for an opportunity to make the person concede to any mistake he makes and apologise to him too. As in Sphiti’s case, she could have retaliated in the same way, stalking for an opportunity to catch her colleagues, Nita and Parvesh on the wrong foot and could have coerced them to apologize to her in public.
3. Apology as a duty: Many of you, while reading the point, ‘Apology as a formality’ must have mused, ‘As a kid, I used to apologise to my parents for any small mistake I committed. It has now become second nature to me.’ When parents, guardians, mentors, and educators insist their child or learner apologise for any small mistake he commits. They miss out on encouraging the child to understand the fallacy and amend it, invariably making the act of apology habitually more important than comprehending and valuing the lesson learnt from the mistake.
4. Apology as a clash of ego: When our experience, circumstances, religious, cultural and social association, economic status influence us to value and believe in our prejudice and bias as an integral part of our identity; then we also fall prey to our misconceived self-awareness. We begin to discriminate against who we should and should not apologize to. We refrain from apologising for any act that we commit based on our bias and prejudice, or any mental block.
Pushpesh was a Senior Sales Executive. Deepak was his colleague, who was more aggressive and outspoken than Pushpesh, who was a middle-aged man, in need of employment to support him and his parents. Deepak was half his colleague’s age and his wife was a Senior Officer in the same organisation. With a more stable socio-economic background, Deepak was more confident and assertive, at times aggressive worker than Pushpesh. Deepak had a positive influence over their reporting head. One day, when Pushpesh asked Deepak for access code to certain official files, the latter hollered it at him. Pushpesh requested Deepak to write or approach his desk and share the information, which made Deepak lose his cool and accuse Pushpesh of being a weakling, who could not stand up for himself and always was compromising for wrong reasons. Pushpesh, conscious of the attentive eyes of all his colleagues on him, quietly approached Deepak, apologized to him in what he thought, was the right way to make peace with his colleague bristling with anger. Their reporting head approached the duo and commented, “Pushpesh, to me, you are the twenty-five-year-old youngster and Deepak is the fifty-year-old senior member of the team!”
5. Apology as part of a blame game: Intra-team and inter-team conflicts arise when the team members and teams lack collective responsibility and shared service vision and mission of the organisation. The leadership does not encourage open discussion, sharing of thoughts, ideas and team spirit based on compassion, appreciation for every member’s unique potential and how all the team members complement one another to make a strong and efficient team. On the contrary, the leadership encourages negative comparison, deliberately cause a rift between team members, teams and departments to gain favour and functional power. This gives rise to the toxic environment of office politics. The teams and their members resort to blaming one another for any failure rather than compassionately understand each other’s challenges and problems to make a collaborative effort in solving them. Such blame games in a negative environment result in a clash of ego with teams demanding an apology from one another instead of appreciating the diversity and uniting for the common objective: collective responsibility towards the organisation’s vision and mission.
6. Trickster's Apology:
You may ask, what is apology and why should I apologize? Now let’s answer your questions:
What is apology? When I say, ‘I apologise…’ for any speech, expression, writing or action that may have hurt or had a derogatory impact on someone; I acknowledge the negative effect of my action. I may not or may be aware of the wrong I do to someone. The truth is, through apology I accept the negative influence of my act. I may unknowingly or deliberately physically hurt someone, harm someone’s dignity, disrespect someone, and damage someone’s asset deviate from certain norms or rules.
The most important question is, whether I am a habitual apologiser? Do I apologise to pacify ruffled emotions, or I genuinely reason out my act of apology before committing to it. This leads to your next question, “Why should I apologise?”
Why should I apologize? Sphiti had apologised not with the intention of pacifying Nita and Parvesh. She apologised because she was aware of her colleagues’ perception that made them misunderstand her intention. She apologised because she wanted to make it clear to them that she had no such intentions that they had accused her of. She did not indulge in acts of apology as part of any blame game that is usually an inherent part of a negative culture.
In the case of Pushpesh, he habitually apologised to Deepak to pacify his irate colleague. Such a habitual act of apology shows that the person lacks self awareness (#selfawareness). He unconsciously contributes to the pessimist work environment. He should be assertive and confident enough to think of a solution to resolve the cause of his conflict with Deepak. He could have involved their reporting head in resolving the issue, instead of relenting to his pessimist thought, ‘Boss, will not listen to me, because he favours Deepak.’ When employees relent to such untold bias and prejudice in the workplace, they unconsciously encourage the negative work environment and hesitate to even approach the organisation’s Human Resource personnel, with the firm belief, they too will not ‘listen’ to them and ‘redress’ their problem. This may make you ask, ‘Why should not Pushpesh apologise to Deepak?’ May I ask you ‘Why Deepak should not apologise to Pushpesh?’ Pushpesh had explained to Deepak the reason why he requested him to approach his desk to share official information that was confidential.
When a person genuinely apologises, he proves he is aware of himself. To offer genuine apology he:
1. Checks on the facts, his action, whether he has broken any rule, hurt someone.
2. Checks whether he is giving in to someone’s bias, prejudice and relenting to habitual apology that he does not believe in. On doing so, he will fall prey to the habit and always give in to it under duress. Such compromise, if not sacrifice causes stress, anxiety and frustration resulting in ill physical and mental well-being.
3. Checks any rule or regulation that he has unknowingly violated in rule or regulation, then we apologise with due diligence and gives the authority the scope and support to analyse whether the rule is helping the people or is causing any problem for the people, who are invariably ignoring or violating it. He is aware of the fact, rules and regulations are to help the people to easily avail their rights and benefits. Rules and regulations are not meant to stalk and prey on the mistakes people make. Such a negative thought then makes him willfully break the rules. That results in Apology as an act of vengeance.
4. He considers the act of apology as a chance to assure the concerned person or people his positive emotions towards them. To him, it is a scope to understand the people and harmonise with them. Believes in resolving conflicts for sustenance rather than indulging in them.
5. He considers the act of apology as a chance for him to know himself better, a scope for self-improvement by making amends and evolve both intellectually and emotionally instead of falling prey to negative emotions that may disrupt his growth and development.
When a person genuinely apologizes, he exhibits these traits of his character that he certainly is aware of:
1. Be true to oneself
2. Honesty
3. Integrity
4. Conviction
5. Courage
6. Compassion
7. Resilience
8. Clarity of thoughts of an open mind (sans bias, prejudice or any mental blocks)
9. Mindfulness
10. Humility
11. Dignity
12. Self-worth
13. Self respect
14. Assertively positive attitude
15. Compatibility (Flexibility)
16. Emotionally intelligent
17. Social awareness and intelligence
18. Focus
19. Confidence
20. Ingenious to innovate solutions
21. Ethical
It is equally true, though it is a cliché, “To Forgive and Forget”. It becomes relevant when it is a genuine cause for a genuine apology. Then this thought becomes relevant: “Forgive, not because you have to, but to prove your strength to heal your wound without allowing it to hold you down and obstruct your growth, progress, development, peace and sanctity.”
