Do we say sorry?

It happened in the early part of my career in the manufacturing industry where I stared my career. All management trainees and Graduate engineer trainees were provided with guest house facility and we used to have our food in the executive mess there. The evenings were always exciting since we used to catch up with all the colleagues, share jokes and have fun.

It happened in one of such evenings wherein I was a cracking a joke, may be slightly a practical joke, on my colleague who is still my good friend. May be I crossed the line or maybe he was not in his usual good frame of mind. He got really irritated and what happened in the next few seconds was really unthinkable.

He took the glass from the table that was filled with ice water and without any hesitation, he just poured it right across my face and walked away. The force with which the water hit my face made me realize how irritated he was. For a moment, I was gasping for breath. Suddenly, there was a pin drop silence in the hall and all were looking at me for my reaction. It was little embarrassing but I was really laughing at what happened. After a few moments, my friend came back and said sorry. I am sorry too, I said.

Both of us were colleagues and it’s not a big deal to say sorry to each other. How about workplace situations wherein the boss over-reacts to his team members? Would he care to say sorry?

In one of the IT/ITes organizations that I worked for, a Sr. Executive reacted to me stating that I did not forward an important mail that he was expecting. But I did forward that mail on time and when I checked up with the IT team, they double checked and confirmed the mail delivery to him. May be he deleted it by mistake. But, he did not change his stand and I re-forwarded the mail that forwarded before.

Points to ponder.

# No human is error-proof. When you are at fault, do say sorry. This applies to everyone including “leaders” and “managers”

# When you say sorry, it means that you are realizing your mistake and you are committed to minimize the damage that has happened in the relationship.

# Only a confident person can say “sorry”.

# Sorry is a powerful word than can bridge the broken bridges and relationship, if done genuinely, to a reasonable extent.

# When you refuse to say sorry, it means your ego is stopping you and you are just feeding your ego.

# Don’t refuse to say sorry.  It’s detrimental to healthy relationship, team work, boss & team member relationship at workplace.  

# Don’t let your leadership role feed your ego.

So, next time, if you are at fault, can  you say sorry?

diD yOU enJOY ReADinG ThIS ArTIcLE? 

                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO