Sometimes in a communication it is necessary to apologise with who we are speaking with. Apologies are an act towards oneself, we excuse oneself for not having behaved as we wanted and wanted to communicate. Apologies should be done in a certain way otherwise they become useless.

In various articles I have found the following suggestions:

• Apologies must be a total assumption of responsibility otherwise it loses its value. If there is a but, we are trying to move the fault on another person.
• It is ok to make an analysis of the situation we are apologising about, but it should be used only to improve and not as a justification.
• Be specific describing the event you are apologising about.
• Let go concerns about who was right or wrong and try instead to truly understand the other person’s experience.
• Promise to try to be more sensitive and avoid the behaviour that caused the conflict in the future.
• If possibile, apologise face-to-face rather than through an email or a message.
• Right timing is a controverse aspect. Someone believes that apologising shortly after the conflict increase the apology’s effectiveness, someone believes that is better late than early because the victim is felt heard and understood because there was time to the offender to think about what happened. However too late apologise are ineffective. It seems that for minor offenses, early apologises (0-24 hours) are more effective than delayed apologises. Instead for serious offenses, delayed apologies (2-3 days) are more effective because where time to reflect and process emotions.

Related Questions:

Related Topics:

• Communication

References

• The art of a heartfelt apology | 2023 | Julie Corliss for Harvard Health Publishing
• How to apologise | MindTools
• Better late than early: The influence of timing on apology effectiveness | 2004 | Cynthia McPherson Frantz, Courtney Bennigson