For Whose Benefit is an Apology?

January 23, 2024 – 12:43 pm

There are two main parties to an apology: the offender (the one who apologizes) and the victim. There may also be a third party, an indirect victim of the offense. So when the offender apologizes, who benefits?

In a Pittsburgh court a few years ago, two men were sentenced after pleading guilty for their roles in stealing numerous rare books and artifacts from the Carnegie Library’s rare book room over a period of years. At the start of their sentencing hearing, they each apologized – to their families, to the Library, and to the city of Pittsburgh.

But the president and director of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Mary Frances Cooper, said, “Sometimes victims say they want an apology. We do not want an apology. Any apology from these thieves would be meaningless. They are only sorry that we discovered what they did.”

Does it do any good for an offender to apologize when the victim doesn’t want to hear it?

Speaker: An apology may be for the benefit of the offender, to restore the offender to community and “to regain moral integrity.” Jennifer Gerarda Brown, “The Role of Apology in Negotiation,” 87 Marquette Law Review 665, 666-667 (2004). From a spiritual perspective, Christians are exhorted to confess their sins, both to God (I John 1:9) and to one another (James 5:16). These commands are not conditioned on the victim’s interest or acceptance; they are essential to restoring the relationship between the offender and God.

Recipient: A good apology can be a tremendous benefit to the victim recipient. It can assure the recipient that it was the offender, and not the victim, who bore responsibility for the harm that occurred. It can remove the obstacle hindering a good relationship and offer the potential for a better future.

Community: The community of which victim and offender are a part may also benefit from a good apology. While not suffering direct loss, the community suffers the rupture of the relationship and may need the apology to begin restoration. Even if the victim cannot fully accept the apology, the community may benefit from it.

When convicted criminals apologize at the start of their sentencing hearing, we can question their sincerity and assume it’s to procure a lighter sentence. But it could also be their last best chance to declare publicly their remorse. If these men are to recover from their crimes and regain any moral integrity, they must acknowledge the full extent of the wrong they did, and repent of it – whether or not the victims accept it. A person who is truly repentant will seek to learn what more needs to be done in order for a victim to accept the apology.

It may take time for a victim to accept an apology. Victims may first need to absorb the full extent of the harm done. In the Pittsburgh case, the Library director is apparently not seeing remorse, and she probably would like full restitution, before she can accept the apology. But even if she cannot accept it now, it may still help her that the offenders expressed it. It may be the little ray of light in the darkness of her pain, that offers hope.

Even if the victim cannot receive the apology, it may benefit the wider community that was negatively affected by the wrong. If these thieves are ever to be restored to their families and communities (in which they’re living, since they received only probation with no incarceration), they will need to repent fully. The community may be currently skeptical, but there may have been some small bit of satisfaction in hearing these men publicly state their remorse and regret.

A good apology is never wasted.

 

By abfifer | Posted in Apologies | Comments Off on For Whose Benefit is an Apology?

Have You Really Forgiven?

January 23, 2024 – 12:39 pm

Forgiveness is challenging. One of its challenges is that people think that they have forgiven, when they really haven’t. Christians know they’re supposed to forgive, so they convince themselves that they have, but their heart is still unforgiving. The problem is that then they stop working on forgiveness, telling themselves they’ve already taken care of that. They are deceived. In my work as a conflict coach, I frequently encounter people who insist that they have forgiven, although it doesn’t really sound like it to me. It can be challenging to help them see that they haven’t quite arrived.

I recently heard author Lysa TerKeurst speak on Moody Radio about a way to discern whether you’ve truly forgiven. She said you should listen to the story you tell yourself, and others, about the incident or event. How are you describing it? Is it about you, and the details of what happened, or is it about the life lesson you learned from the experience?  If you’ve forgiven, your focus is on the experiential wisdom that you gained along the way. She reminded us that forgiveness is not a feeling; it’s an act of obedience. As many have noted, if you wait until you feel like forgiving, you will never forgive. But, even after you’ve resolved to forgive, it can be hard to discern whether you’re there; this is one way to assess that.

This and other nuggets on forgiveness are in Lysa TerKeurst’s book, Forgiving What You Can’t Forget.

By abfifer | Posted in Peacemaking | Comments Off on Have You Really Forgiven?

Apology, Take Two

January 22, 2024 – 7:14 pm

We don’t often get a chance to see a weak apology improved by a second one, but the CEO of Kyte Baby offered just that recently. Kyte Baby is a Texas-based company known for its baby apparel. A new Kyte Baby employee named Marissa Hughes adopted a baby who was born prematurely last month. Hughes asked to work remotely while staying with her baby in the NICU, but the company determined that was not feasible given her duties, and terminated her. Apparently Marissa Hughes’s sister posted this news on Tik-Tok, prompting a backlash from people who saw this action as inconsistent with a company that promotes parenting.

So the CEO of Kyte Baby, Ying Liu, posted an apology to Hughes last Friday in a TikTok video. Liu apologized for how her parental leave was communicated and handled, noting that Kyte Baby “prides itself in being a family-oriented company.” Liu said, “It was my oversight that she didn’t feel supported,” and that she would be reviewing the company’s HR policies to “avoid hurting our staff and community in the future.” This was apparently a public apology that was viewed – and critiqued – by others on social media. They complained that the apology appeared disingenuous and canned.

A few hours later, Ms. Liu posted a second apology on TikTok, acknowledging that the first video was scripted and that she now wanted to go “off script.” In the second apology, she said, “I was the one who made that decision to veto her request to go remote…. This was a terrible decision. I was insensitive and selfish … I cannot imagine the stress that she had to go through, not having the option to go back to work and having to deal with a newborn in the NICU. I fully realize the impact of my decision in this. Thinking back, it was a terrible mistake.”

In effect, she apologized for her apology.

Because we have video of both apologies, it’s a wonderful opportunity to see what makes a good apology, and what doesn’t. It’s not the words alone. I think Ms. Liu might have gotten away with her first apology if she had said it like she meant it; but it did indeed appear that she was reading a script. One wonders if she consulted with anyone before posting the first video; if she had run it by a trusted colleague, would they have recognized and informed her how insincere it sounded? I also know from experience that scripted apologies can work — if the recipient is prepared for it and understands why it needs to be read by the offender. Those conditions never hold for public apologies, so it’s a real challenge to pull off a scripted public apology well.

Even the second apology was not enough for the employee, Marissa Hughes. She posted on Facebook that she would not be returning to the company, although she was encouraged to hear that it would make changes for current and future employees. And customers are now encouraging a boycott of Kyte Baby, proving that even a good apology cannot always fix things.

 

 

By abfifer | Posted in Apologies | Comments Off on Apology, Take Two

When an Apology is not an Apology

December 19, 2023 – 4:18 pm

As part of their plea deals, lawyers Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro were required to apologize for their roles in interfering with the elections in Georgia in 2020. They both pled guilty and were sentenced in October 2023. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution used an open records request to obtain the apologies that were offered at their plea hearings, and reported this week that they are each one sentence long, hand-written on notebook paper:

“I apologize to the citizens of the State of Georgia and to the citizens of Fulton County for my involvement in Count 15 of the indictment,” Kenneth Chesebro wrote.

“I apologize for my actions in connection with the events in Coffee County,” wrote Sidney Powell.

These are not apologies. They do not include enough of the elements of a good apology to meet the basic definition. When analyzing public apologies, I try to note what is good about the apology before zeroing on its deficiencies. Here, the most I can say is that the statements don’t shift blame to others. But neither do they really accept responsibility, an essential element of an apology. Often at sentencing hearings, the defendant does the opposite of what these two did — the defendant apologizes so profusely that their sincerity is tainted by the appearance of winning favor (a lighter sentence) from the judge. No worries about that here. No effort to take responsibility, acknowledge the harm done, articulate the specific actions that were so egregious, express remorse, or identify how they hope to behave differently in the future. One wonders why the judge accepted these as “apologies.” They’re not.

By abfifer | Posted in Apologies | Comments Off on When an Apology is not an Apology

Stop Asking About Mental Health

November 11, 2023 – 3:02 pm

Michigan’s State Court Administrative Office took some steps recently to align mediation rules regarding parties’ mental health with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Mediators were previously encouraged to screen for mental health issues that might contribute to domestic violence, as part of the Domestic Violence Screening Protocol. For example, in assessing a party’s ability to negotiate, the Protocol used to recommend that a mediator ask a party, “Do you believe mental health (illness) issues or emotional problems have ever caused difficulties for either of you?” (Section 6). That question has now been omitted. The Protocol used to suggest “mental illness” as a reason a mediator could give to decline mediation without mentioning domestic violence; that too has now been deleted. (Section H.4.) The ADA – which applies to mediation – protects the privacy of an individual with a psychiatric disability, and leaves disclosure up to that person; it cannot be required. Omitting these questions from the DV Screening Protocol brings Michigan practice more in line with the ADA.

In conjunction with the changes to the DV Screening Protocol, SCAO also revised the Mediator Standards of Conduct. Standard VI, “Safety of Mediation,” used to include “mental illness or other mental impairment” as one of several examples of an impediment that would make mediation physically or emotionally unsafe for any participant. That phrase has now been deleted from the Standard.

I served on the SCAO-convened committee to update the Mediator Standards of Conduct in 2011-2012. At that time, Michigan’s Standards of Conduct were just two pages long, and did not address domestic relations mediation. There were ABA Model Standards of Conduct for general civil mediators, and Model Standards for Family and Divorce Mediation, so we decided to merge the two into one set of standards that would cover all types of mediation. What is now Standard VI, Safety of Mediation, is the sole provision that had no corollary in the ABA Model Standards of Conduct; while the “safety” concept came from the family mediation standards, they contain no mention of mental illness. Omitting this phrase lines up the Michigan standard with other national standards. The Association of Professional Family Mediators Standards of Practice permit a mediator to suspend or terminate the mediation, among other reasons, “when a participant is unable to participate due to … a debilitating physical or mental condition.” (Standard X.A.3) That seems less intrusive than asking about mental health  ahead of the mediation.

Although the screening protocol was designed for domestic relations cases, it’s a wise practice to use it in every case. Skipping the questions about mental health will take some adjustment but will better respect the privacy of parties to mediation.

By abfifer | Posted in Mediation | Comments Off on Stop Asking About Mental Health