The Mystery of Apology

When was the last time someone apologized to you? And I don't mean one of those modern apologies that goes like, "If something I said happened by random chance to offend you...", I mean one that felt vulnerable and genuine. I don't remember the last time I got one. It is interesting because I seem to be someone that needs to apologize a lot. Whether it is an off hand comment or an unintended slight, I find myself quick to apologize to anyone I can when it is needed. But that is the point isn't it---that is the snag in the whole thing---"when it is needed." Nobody thinks it is needed anymore. I understand that in this day and age of "sue over anything" it is not recommended to apologize to anyone because that is seen as some admission of guilt. Doctors are especially careful of this even though studies now show that doctors who apologize for their mistakes are much less likely to be sued. I talk to managers all the time that say something too strong or loud to a worker (see my last blog entry for my own managerial outburst), but they are extremely reluctant to apologize because it will "make me look weak." So losing control of your emotions makes you look strong? I understand the cultural ethos of the male dominant society that says males who yell are stronger than soft spoken males, but does that yelling truly command respect from fellow workers? I don't think so.

A mysterious thing happens to people when they get a true apology. They become uncomfortable. I think the reason I see this so clearly when others do not is because I am doing it so frequently in my own life. There is a palpable discomfort people have that usually causes them to say in an almost reflexive way, "no...no really it is fine." To which I have to reply with my own "no" followed by, "no really I mean it, I am sorry." Now why is this? Why do they almost cut me off when I am apologizing to say it is alright and not to worry about it? I believe it is because the genuine act of apology carries a true power that is felt by those involved. The act of vulnerability by one brings forth a sympathetic vulnerability of another. This is felt so strongly that there is a reflexive attempt to stop the process mid sentence and move on so as not to feel its full force. The Mystery of apology to me is both the healing power of being vulnerable to another human being and the vulnerability it reciprocates from the other. It is not, as feared by many, some kind of loss of power by one, but rather an evening of power for both. Both parties are empowered by the act of vulnerability by one. That may be why I no longer fear the act itself because something strengthens within the relationship because of it.

Apologize sometime with true vulnerability and watch the other person try to cut you off from finishing by telling you, "No, it was nothing...no need for that." If they try to cut you off it was heartfelt, if they are mad at you afterward, it was probably one of those modern, protected kinds of apology.

No Failed Marriages

Since this site advertises both "personal and individual executive" coaching, let's get personal for a moment. I just heard about another famous Hollywood divorce after 20+ years of marriage. You have to ask yourself, "What the heck is going on here?" Twenty years? And if that marriage breaks up after all those years, what chance do I have? It is a reasonable question. Here is the irony: it is exactly for the fact that marriages are often successful in one area that divorces can occur. Strange, huh? Let me talk about one particularly positive outcome of marriage that can also lead to divorce: personal growth.

We enter marriage hoping we will live happily ever after. This is all good and well except that rarely do people realize the true power of the "cauldron" of relationship. Relationship, especially marriage, is such a powerful force in and of itself that it forces people to begin changing the fabric of who they were when they entered it.

Let me use the soup analogy. Let's say a carrot and a potato are the couple entering a marriage. The pot of boiling water is the marriage cauldron. The potato and carrot jump in and initially things are warm all over. What is happening though is that over time they begin to soften and infuse each other from their experiences within the marriage. Carrot and potato start becoming less distinct within themselves and start to become carrotpotato. Flavors mix and experiences are the added spice making what were two distinct beings and flavors into more of a blended soup. Add kids to the soup (peas or onions---your choice) and carrot and potato become even more infused with "flavor" changing the distinct nature of every participant involved. You see the analogy. What was once two separate items added to boiling water (marriage) is now a blended, flavorful soup, but all entities quite different from the original drop into the pot. The process can be so slow though that it is easy to miss the blending process and one day carrot and potato wake up to realize they are not who they were when they started. This is where the serious conflict usually starts. Carrot says to potato, "You are not who I once knew, you are totally different now." Personal growth has occurred and conflict can ensue.

It is my contention that when this change/growth within participants occurs it is precisely because the marriage WORKED. It was successful. It deepened you. It succeeded in bringing you to your next evolution and growth place and stands as testimony to the sheer power of marriage. I have so many clients start their session off by telling me about their past "failed" marriages that I want to stop them and say, "wait a minute, are you saying the only test of the value of a marriage is that it lasted until you died?" "Is there any other value in marriage other than its longevity?" How about spiritual or psychological maturation? How about bringing children to life and the lessons that brings? How about simply becoming more of who you are in life? All of these things are valuable, from my perspective, far beyond how long your marriage lasted. There are no failed marriages in my perception because they all contribute in some way to our learning about life, ourselves and relationship and are therefore invaluable to our soul's growth. All of that psychological, spiritual learning and growth trumps longevity in my book. "We grew apart" is the common line because we never know who we are going to be as we walk the relationship road with someone we love.


So what about divorce? There are many possible reasons, but divorce can simply result from a couple choosing not to re-contract with their newly evolved selves. Divorce is not relational failure, it is simply a change of the relational contract because rarely do divorces end the relationship totally, much to many couples' dismay. You may choose to live apart from each other, but you are still in relationship and still influencing each other's lives and decisions way after the legal and physical separation. Those of you who have had bitter divorces know what I am talking about. The spouse is STILL a part of your psychology even when you haven't seen them for years let alone sharing child custody each week.

By my definition, a marriage could only have failed if the people in it never learned one thing because of it, and I have yet to find that marriage. So I would have to say to that 20+ year Hollywood marriage that is re-contracting by divorce: I know this separation will be painful for a while, and at some point later in the future you will see the gift this relationship has given to you. The marriage was successful, and now you begin your new relationship with each other and the rest of the world.

Relationships are the most difficult Yoga of all.

(For further discussion of this topic please see Fundamental Five in my book)

The Blind Side

An apt title for this piece and an homage to Sandra Bullock's Academy Award for her part in a lovely movie. The Blind Side I am referring to is the one where managers are dealing with an employee who cannot seem to follow certain simple instructions/requests. These can be rules or protocols that are necessary for smooth office efficiency or more detailed protocols that are usually followed, but are now lagging or being forgotten. I am now going to share my worst/best moment as a manager.

I once had a counselor working for me who I had known for several years and got along with grandly. My managerial style was very informal and more of a collegial supporting rather than a "I'm the boss so do it" approach. Being in a psychotherapeutic milieu with recovering addicts made for a very different management atmosphere and allowed a much more "emotions heavy" tone between workers than one would normally see in a corporate setting. We dealt with patients feelings all day and we openly expressed our emotions to each other all day every day---it was necessary to keep your sanity in that kind of milieu. It was a very "in the mud with each other" atmosphere and we all accepted that.

One week in our regular patient staffing, I had asked this counselor to get one of his patients to complete a task necessary to move that patient toward graduating the program. He assured me he would. The next week it was not done. I repeated the importance of getting this task finished and I was again assured it would be done the next day. The next day I checked back with him and the counselor had not talked to the patient. "You realize we are just stuck here until this is done right?" I said to the nodding counselor, "Get it done by tomorrow." I was losing my temper for the first time in my managerial career and my voice reflected it. The next day at staffing I waited until the very end to ask the counselor the big question "Is it done?" expecting him to say yes and have all the rest of the staff cheer that the whole thing was finally over. Staffing ends, I ask the question, I get silence. "Let's meet in my office," I say calmly, but furious inside. It was so simple a task that I was furious that it had repeatedly not been done. We got to my office and I am not proud of myself in the least. I yelled at the top of my voice, "What the heck is wrong with you!?" I repeated this line four times in the same volume. I continued. "I ask you a simple request for two weeks now and you cannot get it done?" "What can I do here to get you to do what you say you will do?" I have never before or since yelled at an employee and I was actually yelling. I then blurted out a line before it was ever used in a movie showing my absolute desperation in the moment, "Help me here....what can I do....help me help YOU!" (I am sure some writer of Jerry Maguire overheard this exchange, but I cannot prove it) It felt very clever in the moment and true to my emotion. I fell into my chair, frustrated at the situation and embarrassed by my outburst. He knew I had never yelled at anyone before and we avoided eye contact. I apologized. "I'm sorry, I just don't know what to do and don't know how something this trivial has turned into something this big between us." We both stared at the floor for a while.

At this point, something amazing happened. He looked up at me and said, "I know...I know what happened." There were tears in his eyes. "I have been a counselor for fifteen years working with adolescents and having to deal with their anger and rebellion. I thought working with adults would be easier because they were less rebellious. When I felt resistance from my patient to get this task done, I buckled. I realize now that I made a decision not to push this guy to get his work done because I am tired of it, tired of it all!" His voice flared in anger. "I have done this stuff all my life, pushing and pushing people to do what is right, but being pushed back by them in defiance...I'm just sick of it!" The tears flowed more easily as his face got redder and his voice both angry and dejected. He looked at me straight in the eyes, "I'm just sick of it, Kevin, I can't do this anymore."

I was watching a huge awakening before my very eyes. We sat there together silent, both aware of the magnitude of what had just transpired. He continued, "I have money, I am just doing this to keep in the field, but I don't want to do it anymore." He stood up, we hugged in a long embrace, and he walked out. I sat back down stunned at what had just happened.

The next day, he came into my office. I apologized for my outburst again and he said, "No, no it was good that you did it. It was what I needed to jar me out of my head. I sat there asking myself, 'why', 'what is wrong with me'?" He told me that after a night of thinking it over he was resigning, but would stay until I got someone hired to replace him. He realized that he hated what he was doing after 15 years and wanted to do something else---anything else. Before he stood up to leave he said, "You know I would not have realized what I did if you hadn't yelled like you did." I still felt bad about it.

So there we are, my worst/best moment as a manager. What did I take from the experience? I realize there is a blind side in everyone, but as a manager we wish it were left at home from 9-5. As managers though, we have to deal with these blind sides in our employees from time to time. They can take the form of something simple as gum smacking or incessant pencil tapping, or move into more problematic areas such as repeatedly doing or missing something that disrupts the work day. Whenever an employee repeatedly makes the exact same mistake over and over again managers often scratch their head as to why this is happening.

I have one client who cannot get his employees to stop overbooking his morning appointments. It gets better for a week or so and then BAM overbooked again and repeatedly. Nothing seemed to get through to the office assistant for long. It is in these cases that managers need to know they are dealing with a "blind side" of an employee. Their subconscious takes over for some reason and rules/protocols are totally forgotten. Of course one has to rule out overt sabotage and the cases where the task is beyond the employee's skill set, but once those are ruled out we are back to the "blind side".

Interestingly, after interviewing the assistant, I was able to glean that the problem was her inability to say no to an angry tone of voice over the phone. She would schedule people efficiently until someone got angry at not getting an immediate appointment and raised their voice over the phone. As this happens all too frequently these days, she would invariably jam the person into the over crowded schedule anyway rather than stand her ground and schedule it the next day. The angry tone on the phone in the moment shut off her rational thinking, and she did anything she could to appease the person resulting in repeated schedule overbookings and anger from her boss. Talking about this in a collaborative, problem solving manner got the underlying blind side out into the light allowing a solution to be found for a seemingly inexplicable situation. Our solution was to have her transfer the angry person to her manager immediately so that she was taken out of the loop and her manager could handle it because she had no problem holding a line with angry people. Work problem solved.

Obviously in my own example, I was dealing with a seasoned therapist whose whole life was dedicated to searching out and explaining people's unconscious material, so his blind side was handed to me on a silver platter. Thank heaven for that because I had no idea why such a simple task was not getting done. My point here is that sometimes, even in the workplace, an employee's psychological material can get in the way of getting their job done effectively, and the only way around it is THROUGH it. Psychological exploration is the only way to get a grip on our blind sides. Thank heaven for coaches!

Betrayal as a Badge of Honor

Throughout the years I have had many clients, personal and executive, who were dealing with a devastating betrayal by someone close to them. Whether it was a business partner or a close friend or associate, they always described themselves as "blindsided", and that is what made the act particularly devastating. The initial shock, it seems, lasts longer than one would expect as the person keeps running over and over in their head the events leading up to the betrayal. They are often admonished by friends to "let it go" and move on, but for some reason that is difficult to do for most in this situation.

Why is this? Why do we take so much time and mental energy running the events over and over in our heads for weeks or months after the event is over? Part of the reason is because we may be constantly dealing with some aftermath consequence of the betrayal when another new fact or event materializes that we have to adjust to in some way. But even after the aftershocks subside, we often ruminate mentally, not knowing why we can't just shake it off.

I want to propose something rarely talked about because it seems too callous to discuss by most standards. I believe that it is precisely because this point is NOT discussed that the mental rumination goes on too long for most of us.
I propose that what makes these betrayals so hard to shake is the fact that we ALWAYS saw some signs this person was untrustworthy in some way--always--and this nagging subliminal realization silently feeds the common feelings of "how could I be so stupid" and "how could I have let this happen".
Sounds harsh, huh, but it is true.

They were small things, always small things, but little hints were probably there and they showed their tiny faces to us and we wrote them off each time as inconsequential. Maybe it was a passing comment that showed an insensitivity to someone, or an act of casual cruelty or dishonesty. Maybe it was a seemingly uncharacteristic act that seemed totally unlike how you believed them to be, small or large, it doesn't matter, you saw it and probably on several different occasions.
We wrote off each of these micro-events as "nothing" at the time, but later after the betrayal they all seem to fall into place like a jigsaw puzzle. I believe that it is the pain of realizing that we did see something and ignored it that prolongs our agony. This statement could evoke an anger response, and it is the reason I do not present it early in sessions because the emotional grieving/rage at the betrayal is a necessary and important phase. But after enough time has passed, and the people themselves ask why they can't stop ruminating, that is the time to deal with this aspect of the process of release. Once we can admit to ourselves, however humiliating or painful it can be, that we actually did see signs that were tiny red flags of this person's capacity to betray us, we can move out of ruminating and into wholeness again.

Once we can acknowledge that we actually did have a hint of the potential problem, we no longer have to feel as vulnerable to the same event happening again. The "total victim" mentality diminishes and an empowerment arises. We realize that we could pay attention to the flags in the future, and therefore need not be overwhelmed by the very real seeming possibility that it could happen the same way again. We will always carry the scar of the event, but in our trudging onward we will never be as naive. Betrayal, we find, initiates us into a deeper, more mature psychology that will serve us in many different ways in the future. Our scars serve as our badges of honor.