Not too long ago, I got a name wrong in a newsletter for a client. The name just happened to be my client’s “featured customer of the month.” First, I apologized to the client, then to the person who’s name I’d gotten wrong. The next month, I published an apology in the newsletter. AND GOT THE NAME WRONG AGAIN!!! There was no excuse for it, even if I had wanted to make one. Apologies were made all around again, except not in the next newsletter. It was terribly embarrassing, but the client still pays me to write his newsletter, and the customer has complimented him on the newsletter and made purchases as a result of it.

This one has different answers for inside and outside the cube. Inside: absolutely keep your communication (in my case dealing with store managers) short, to-the-point, concise. No groveling, no “I’m soooooo sorry for the eight extra hours you may be putting in over this one.” Store managers are basically just looking to know what to do – honor their incorrect flyer retail (which I missed) or not, and what to do about instore signage. No need to throw yourself on their mercy. (Even when you cost a department $50K because you let an item go to print two bucks cheaper than it should have been.)

On the outside, as on the inside, full accountability. But you have the luxury of time to formulate your words and their weight. Thus, I would take advantage and come up with something better than “I was so busy I didn’t watch the video I was sending out, and therefore endorsing, and sorry to anybody that might have been offended (i.e. everyone).” Depending on the person and situation, I often try to defuse the situation with gallows humor. Doesn’t always work, but it’s a human approach. I often think of NY Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who once said “I don’t make many mistakes, but when I do, it’s a beaut!”

Of course there’s no such thing as a mistake if you’re willing to learn from it (and apologize appropriately)…

It’s a no-brainer to always apologize. But there’s a difference between acknowledging a mistake and demonstrating intent to amend the behavior that led to it.

My general rule of thumb when apologizing is to keep it as simple as possible. I try not to explain why I screwed up, unless I can also realistically promise to avoid those circumstances again in the future.

Your colleague’s mistake wasn’t that she was too busy. We all get in the weeds from time to time. It’s one of those things that’s beyond our control. So mentioning it in an apology comes off as evasive and insincere – as though she too was a victim.

It’s generally a better practice to apologize only for things over which you have control. In this case, it was a failure to check every link in the newsletter before it went out. That’s a practice that she can reasonably expect to amend in the future. Lesson learned.

And bottom line: No matter how sincere or gracious an apology, there may still be people who don’t accept it. That’s just life. If we had that much control over how people responded to our words, we’d all get paid a lot more money as writers.

No excuses.

Receiving an email stating a mistake happened/link was passed on without viewing because someone is “too busy”, to me, is a slap in the face. That’s not an apology, it’s an excuse, and that would just anger me more. A simple, “I’m sorry, I made a mistake” is much more effective if I’m on the receiving end, and, if I’m the one making a mistake, I apologize, own it, and do whatever I can to correct it.

A huge mistake I made on set once had to do with continuity, where another crew member offered to check on a pair of actors, didn’t, and they had a coat in a shot where they shouldn’t have. It cost tens of thousands of dollars. yes, the person offered to cover continuity, but, ultimately, it was my responsibility to make sure the continuity was intact. I apologized and offered to leave the production. I was kept, and the person who didn’t keep his word and then blamed me was fired.

This doesn’t mean there can’t be forgiveness. In fact, the causes of mistakes need to be looked at, but not for finger-pointing. Mistakes happen to everyone and we need to learn to move on. I don’t know the person involved in this case, but it sounds as if she’s well respected and has a history of high-quality workmanship. As Dawn says, this single mistake has to be taken in context with her other work. If she had a history of purposely directing people to politically charged videos, then I think it would be fair to be highly critical.

She made one bad decision among many good ones. She apologized for her mistake. It’d be nice if people could just move on.