Apologizing can feel a lot like humiliation. Like surrender, defeat, loss, or giving something up. Putting yourself beneath another person and handing over all your power.
Especially when you still believe you were right and your position is valid.
I mean, if you stand by the decision you made, disagree with their version of events, never intended to hurt them, all the while they also contributed to the mess and haven’t acknowledged their part - why should you apologize?
Right?
Well, not really.
Because owning your part doesn’t require you to surrender your position.
What I mean by this is that an apology simply acknowledges something you said, did, or influenced and the impact it had. At its core, it’s an act of integrity - saying what you mean, meaning what you say, and taking responsibility for what your behavior produced.
And sometimes, it’s the one thing that begins clearing the space between two people so they can finally see and deal with what’s actually going on.
Let’s say you’re arguing with your partner and they make a decision you strongly disagree with. During the argument, you raise your voice and call them irresponsible.
Later, they tell you that you’re mean and vindictive.
You still disagree with the decision. You still think it was irresponsible. And apologizing might feel like taking all of that back or admitting they were right and you were wrong.
So you defend yourself.
I wouldn’t have said it if you hadn’t done that.
You know what I meant.
I was angry.
Well, you hurt me too.
I’m sorry, but you were being irresponsible and immature.
You hold your ground, preserve your position, maybe even double down and refuse to let them “win” because you know that you’re right.
Ok, now what?
The original disagreement is still there, plus the hurt created by how you handled it, plus all the defensiveness surrounding that hurt. You’re no longer discussing the decision. You’re fighting about whether they’re allowed to be affected by what you said and vice versa. And before you know it, you’re pulling evidence and previous allegations from the archives to prove your point.
Withholding the apology may feel like self-preservation. But in reality, it may be preserving the exact tension, distance, and pain keeping both of you stuck.
You don’t need to agree with someone else’s entire interpretation of an event to look honestly at what happened and your contribution to it.
You can say something like - I still disagree with the decision you made. I also raised my voice and called you irresponsible. That wasn’t ok. I’m sorry.
Both can be true!
You haven’t surrendered your position, nor have you agreed that the other person did nothing wrong. You haven’t even accepted responsibility for the entire conflict.
You’ve simply isolated what belongs to you and you owned it.
That’s agency.
You’re choosing how you want to operate instead of treating your behavior as an inevitable consequence of what someone else did. (No one made you do anything even though at times it may feel that way.)
Let’s say you’re a department head at a tech company and you had to change the team’s priorities midway through a project to align with a new strategy. You still believe the change was necessary. New information came in, the business needed to respond, and continuing with the original plan no longer made sense.
The decision itself may have been completely valid.
But you told your team without giving them enough context. You didn’t account for the work already completed, clarify what should stop, or acknowledge the additional pressure the change created. People scrambled. Work had to be redone. Needless to say, the team became incredibly frustrated.
You don’t need to apologize for the decision if you still believe it’s the right one.
You can apologize for how you communicated and handled it -
Changing direction was right for the business. I made that change without giving you enough context or accounting for the work already underway. That created unnecessary confusion and a lot of rework for the team. I’m sorry. I’ll make sure we clarify what stops, what changes, and what support you need before the next shift is implemented.
You owning it and acknowledging it to your team doesn’t make you weak. Quite the opposite. It shows your team that you own your sh** and clean up your messes. And that’s a critical characteristic of an effective leader and high-performing teams.
Again, both things can be true.
The change may have been necessary, and the way you handled it may have created a mess.
Using “and” rather than “but” in your apology matters by the way. There’s no room for a but in an apology.
“I’m sorry, but the change was necessary,” uses the decision to diminish the apology and invalidate the experience of others.
"The change was necessary, and I didn’t communicate or implement it well” allows you to hold your position while still taking responsibility for your part.
A genuine apology doesn’t contain a “but.” The moment you add one, you begin taking back whatever you just offered.
When something happens between people, a lot can accumulate in the space between them - what happened, what each person experienced, what they think it meant, what they assume the other person intended, and everything they’ve felt and done since.
It gets super mucky and clunky in that space.
A real apology won’t magically resolve all of it, and it won’t guarantee forgiveness, reconciliation, or trust.
The other person may not even be ready to hear it or receive it. They may not accept it. They may decide they no longer want a relationship with you.
An apology is an offering, not a transaction.
You acknowledge what’s yours without making the other person responsible for relieving you of your guilt or giving you the outcome you want.
An apology simply makes one part of that mucky, clunky space a bit clearer -
This is what I did. I see how it affected you. I’m sorry. This is what I’m willing to do now.
That clarity gives both people something more honest, more real, more tangible to work with. It may open the door to a conversation, a repair, a boundary, a different way of interacting, or even a clearer ending.
Those possibilities may have existed before, but neither person could access them through all the defensiveness, hurt, and unacknowledged impact sitting between them.
If you’ve been reading my content for a while now, you’ll know how passionate I am about this topic and how integral it is to my perspective.
I’m not suggesting that you offer an apology every time someone demands it.
Why? Context, context, context.
If someone routinely distorts what happened, makes you responsible for everything, or uses demands for apologies to force you into submission, or anything like that, then another apology may reinforce the dynamic that needs to change.
I'm not suggesting you always apologize.
I'm encouraging you to look honestly at what happened and own what is actually yours. Isolate the observable behaviors (content) from any judgments, verdicts, interpretations, or meaning given (context.)
Ask yourself:
What specifically did I say or do?
What impact did it have?
What part of this situation did I contribute to?
What can I honestly acknowledge without defending or explaining away?
What might it take to repair what I disrupted?
Keep the observable event separate from your interpretation of it. Do the same, as much as possible, with the other person’s version. Their interpretation isn’t automatically the whole truth, and neither is yours.
Then own your part.
An apology isn’t the same as repair. It doesn’t necessarily fix anything.
Sometimes the mess can be cleaned up through one honest conversation. Other times, repair requires returning the credit, correcting the information, replacing what was damaged, changing how decisions are made, or showing up differently over and over again.
Trust is consistency over time.
If your behavior repeatedly produces the same harm, another apology won’t mean much. The repair has to include new behavior that gives people different evidence about what they can expect from you.
Still, the apology matters because it marks the moment you stop defending yourself long enough to acknowledge what your behavior produced.
Withholding an apology can feel like preserving your power. But many times, all you’re really holding on to is the distance, confusion, or pain already sitting between you.
A genuine apology doesn’t give your power away.
The apology allows you to use the power you actually have (over your own behavior) to own what’s yours, clear what you can from the space, and change what becomes possible next.
That’s not surrender. That’s what using your power well looks like.