Apologizing doesn’t mean you intentionally harmed someone. It means you regret that someone was harmed. You may or may not have been able to do anything about what caused the harm. However, you can show empathy, meet that person where they are emotionally, and say “I’m sorry.”

I’ve seen multiple cases where good employees get harmed by a decision management made. The employees felt overlooked or underappreciated by management’s decision(s). Management disregarded the employees’ reaction rather than expressing empathy. Management chose to ignore rather than to simply say “I’m sorry you feel this way, this is why I did what I did.” The result is that moral declined, multiple team members left, and the team has a general mistrust of management. Management remedies this by bringing in a new face to oversee the team. Over time, this might work, but that new face has to take some abuse and will never be able to meet management’s expectations because they have to fix a team that management broke.

The unwillingness or lack of awareness to simply apologize for unintentional harm cost this business hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in revenue. Never underestimate the power of simply saying “I’m sorry.”