A couple more public apologies in the media recently:<\/p>\n
Donald Sterling<\/strong>, owner of the NBA basketball team the Los Angeles Clippers, made racist comments to a girlfriend last month that became public. His attempt in a CNN interview last week<\/a> to apologize ended up making things worse\u2014as bad apologies will do.<\/p>\n It started out well: \u201cI made a terrible mistake. I\u2019m here to apologize. I\u2019m asking for forgiveness. I\u2019ll never do it again.\u201d These are essential components of an effective apology. But he made a mistake common to many of us when we attempt to apologize: he kept talking. The best thing to do after a good apology is to stop talking and\u00a0wait. In fact, Peacemaker Ministries <\/a>recommends that the apology end with\u00a0a question rather than a statement; the question is, \u201cWill you forgive me?\u201d<\/p>\n Yesterday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye<\/strong> apologized<\/a> for her government\u2019s role in the ferry disaster last month that killed over 300 people. “As the President who should be responsible for people’s life and security, I am sincerely apologizing to the people for having to suffer pain,” she said. “The final responsibility for not being able to respond properly lies on me.” Taking responsibility is an important component of a good apology. Another is to do something to ensure the offense won\u2019t happen again\u2014as Peacemaker Ministries calls it, \u201cAlter behavior<\/a>.\u201d President Park\u2019s speech included her decision to dismantle the Coast Guard, recognizing that its current structure impeded the search and rescue process. So her apology isn\u2019t bad \u2013 although probably not enough for the grieving families.<\/p>\n The benefit of critiquing public apologies is to reflect on what makes an effective apology \u2013 and what doesn\u2019t — so that our own apologies will be effective. There’s just\u00a0no substitute for a good apology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A couple more public apologies in the media recently: Donald Sterling, owner of the NBA basketball team the Los Angeles Clippers, made racist comments to a girlfriend last month that became public. His attempt in a CNN interview last week to apologize ended up making things worse\u2014as bad apologies will do. It started out well: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}