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Forgiveness
"I'm NOT Sorry" - Why Ambitious People Don't Apologize
"Why apologize when I haven't done anything wrong?"
Posted August 13, 2016
- When you’re a hammer, the world is a nail;
- When you’re ambitious, the world is a competition;
- When you’re competitive, the world is about winning and not losing
Much has been made about the fact Donald Trump says so many things that are offensive and rarely and never remorsefully apologizes. Perhaps the reason Trump doesn’t do that is that he doesn’t believe he has done anything wrong.
From his POV, that is easy to understand regardless of whether you like it or not.
It may be that he doesn’t intend to hurt anyone. What he does and how he does it is solely focused on winning. To Trump everything comes down to winning and not losing. That’s not such an unusual position when you’re ambitious and competitive. He and others like him with a similar mindset, follow the reverse of Grantland Rice’s famous quote and turned it into, “It doesn’t matter how you play the game, it’s whether you win or lose.”
When he says or does something that offends or hurts someone else, to him it's collateral vs. intentional damage. If it's not his intention to cause harm, but rather to defeat an opponent, he actually can believe that it must be the other person’s problem when they feel hurt and not his.
If he believes that all he was doing was trying to win at all costs, which is his right, then it’s possible to see how in his mind he hasn’t done anything wrong.
This phenomenon where people expect to be judged by their intent instead of their actions is widespread. From the wife who criticizes her husband in order to make him a better person, or the husband who answers honestly that his wife does look heavy when she asks him, or the parent who criticizes and punishes a child to help that child become stronger, if the intent is never to hurt, then it’s the offended person’s problem if they react as if they have been intentionally hurt.
Is there a way to cause an unintentionally hurtful person to take responsibility for the hurt they cause?
Using an analogy is a helpful approach that I described in Taking to Crazy: How to Deal with the Irrational and Impossible People in Your Life when you can’t get a person to understand and take responsibility for their actions or at least show compassion for how you have been hurt by them.
In essence if you can’t get a dismissive or demeaning person to understand how they made you feel, get them to feel how you feel. An example of this might be to ask someone like Trump or that un-remorseful, unrepentant person in your life, how he or she would feel, react and respond if they had terminal cancer and an oncologist told him or her about an experimental procedure that had only a 10 % chance of working.
Then after agreeing and having that procedure that didn’t work and which meant there was nothing left to be done, what if the oncologist stated in a flat, matter of fact manner, “The treatment didn’t work because you were not in the 10% of patients that it works with. Because of that there is nothing more to be done except palliative care, I can refer you to a hospice if you’d like. Think it over and you can tell me your decision when I come back tomorrow.” Then imagine that oncologist just walking out of the room without an, “I’m sorry” or even a “Good bye.”
In reality you would have no legitimate reason to get angry at that doctor, since he or she didn’t hurt you or intend to communicate with you in a hurtful manner. After all it was the cancer that did it to you. Having a lousy bedside manner does not a hurtful person make. Get disappointed or angry at the diagnosis but you wouldn’t have any right to get angry at the doctor for his actions or what he or she said.
If that happened to you or you heard that happened to your son or daughter, would you believe you had a valid right to protest and even lodge a complaint to the hospital or a medical society for his or her insensitivity?
If you don’t agree, then many people would find that there is something wrong with you for not being offended. If you do agree that you had such a right, then perhaps you could understand how people could take you to task and report you to your company, community or political party.
A final point. Many people especially in business or public life, have been warned against apologizing or saying, “I’m sorry,” by their attorneys. It’s not that lawyers lack compassion, but they often advise their clients to not apologize or say they’re sorry. That’s because in the mind of the offended or hurt party, doing that can communicate “wrong doing” which in their mind – and possibly a jury’s – can translate to damages.
Saying you’re sorry that someone feels offended or hurt is not synonymous to admitting guilt, wrongdoing or owing them compensation in return, however that distinction is lost on too many people.
Sadly, it’s unfortunate that there are so many admonitions against saying, “I’m sorry,” because it is often what’s required for the injured party to let go of anger, resentment and grudges that only continue to cause them hurt and pain.
