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Tiger’s Apology, Part II
By Lauren | April 5, 2010
Tiger Woods said some pretty remarkable things earlier today. For the first time since his carefully-orchestrated public apology earlier this year, Woods took questions from the press at a conference so packed with reporters that media outlets were asked to send no more than one reporter each. He handled himself pretty well, and admitted that he had “acted just terribly” and made “some incredibly bad decisions.”
Good going, Tiger.
People who need to make an important apology frequently make the mistake of thinking that they have to get it exactly right the first time they open their mouths. That might be nice, but putting that kind of pressure on yourself can backfire in at least two ways. First, you can get so anxious that you end up blurting out something you really wish you hadn’t, ruining the apology. Or you can delay for so long trying to polish your apology to a perfect gleam that you end up offending the person you injured all over again because you took so long just to say a simple, “I’m sorry.”
Important apologies often require more than one conversation, and that’s okay. Once you’ve made an initial apology, it usually becomes a lot easier to admit that you were human and did something dumb, so a follow-up conversation can be more relaxed and lead to greater forgiveness. Woods’ first apology wasn’t perfect, but it was enough to start the healing process. His second statement strengthens the first, and I’ll bet that a lot more people will be prepared to forgive and forget this time.
When it comes to making an effective apology, it’s important to do it right but rarely (if ever possible) to do it perfectly. Most important, it’s a bad idea to delay too long. When in doubt, just get it out.
Topics: Apologies, Business Ethics, Personal Ethics, business communications, customer relations, ethics |
April 6th, 2010 at 10:09 pm
Let’s give Tiger a chance to redeem himself and move on because we all make mistakes and need forgiveness from time to time.
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April 7th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Character Counts! . Character Counts! said: Need to apologize? How about taking tips from Tiger? http://ow.ly/1vch5 [...]
April 9th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
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