Post #58
July 6, 2022
Claire Bodanis
Claire takes inspiration from tennis champion Rafael Nadal on the tricky subject of owning up to our mistakes.
Have you ever noticed how often we Brits say sorry? A passer-by, staring at his iPhone, barges us off the pavement – ‘Oh, sorry’, we say, as if we were the ones not looking where we were going. Or a fellow passenger on the Tube forgets the size of his backpack as he swings round, almost knocking us off our feet – ‘Oh sorry’, we say, as if the luggage had more right to the space than we did. We can go through a whole day apologising: to the person we sit down next to on the bus, even though we’ve barely touched them; to the person next in the queue, even though it’s taken us barely half a minute to buy our coffee.
Given that we’re such experts at this game, you’d think we’d be brilliant at saying sorry when it truly matters too. But think about it for a minute – how often, when we really are at fault, is the word ‘sorry’ followed by ‘but’? ‘Sorry I’m late, but I thought you said 4, not 3.30.’ ‘Sorry I didn’t reply to your email, but it wasn’t clear from the subject line that it was urgent.’ ‘Sorry I missed the meeting, but I understood from the invitation that it was optional.’ If you’ve been on the receiving end of a few too many ‘sorry buts’, you may be forgiven for thinking that we really aren’t sorry at all, but are, in a roundabout way, trying to hoodwink you into feeling responsible and taking the blame for our own shortcomings.
In the world of work, not least the world of reporting, where errors can have considerable knock-on effects, mistakes are particularly difficult to own up to. It’s a human reflex to try to find excuses, to push the fault onto someone or something else. After all, to pinch a phrase, everyone wants a share of victory, but no-one wants a share of defeat. And owning up, saying sorry, and meaning it, can not only be gut-wrenchingly difficult to do, but also has consequences. It requires taking responsibility – which should not, as our Prime Minister seems to think, be an empty phrase. Taking responsibility means bearing a cost yourself, whether that’s practical or financial or both. It means doing something to fix the problem, or otherwise making reparations in an appropriate way.
Having been in the reporting world for so long now, I like to think we’re quite good at owning up to, and taking responsibility for, our mistakes (although I also like to think that they’re relatively few and far between these days). And clients are generally pretty decent about it; after all, everyone makes mistakes sometimes, and how we go about fixing them is often, if not always, just as important. Nonetheless, apologising doesn’t seem to get any easier; no doubt because the more senior, the more experienced you are, the less excuse there is for getting it wrong, and therefore the greater the disappointment when you fail to live up to your own high standards.
But at least our mistakes – and our apologies – aren’t broadcast to a global audience of millions. When it comes to saying sorry from the heart, we Brits could learn a lot from Spaniard Rafael Nadal. Even if you missed his third-round match at Wimbledon on Saturday, you may have seen coverage of the spat with his opponent, Lorenzo Sonego. During the third set, Nadal called Sonego to the net, apparently to criticise some aspect of his behaviour. But in the post-match interview, while still on court, the first thing Nadal said was ‘I should not [have] called him to the net… I was wrong. [I] apologise for that.’
I hope, when next I make a mistake, I can be as gracious, and as speedy, in my apology.
No excuses, no buts. Just sorry.