Written By Bart Berkey | Founder of Most People Don't

"I'M SORRY YOU'RE HERE"

The Fault Line Between Empathy and Guilt

"I am sorry you're here," Chelsea, the ER Nurse said.

She was standing beside my bed in the emergency room a few days ago, while I lay there with a back that had been hurting for four months, and then escalated to a level where I could not find relief no matter how I shifted.

Nobody at the hospital had done anything to hurt my back, and nobody was apologizing for a mistake, because there was no mistake to apologize for.

The Nurse was simply sorry that I hurt, and sorry that I was spending the night in the hospital bed instead of anywhere else.

I heard some version of it more than once before I went home, from a doctor, from a nurse, and from an x-ray technician, and every single time it landed the same way, which was that for a few seconds I felt less like a transactional case being worked on and more like a person being cared for (This is what I call HUMANALITY™).

It made me wonder why those words come so easily in that room and so hard almost everywhere else, and why so many of us behave as though "I'm sorry" is a confession we have to earn by being guilty first.

"THE FAULT LINE"

Not long before that, on a business trip, my wife and I stayed in one of the dirtiest hotel rooms we have ever stayed in, and we have stayed in a lot of hotel rooms in the past 40 years.

To their credit, the technology worked, and a survey arrived asking about our stay, so I answered it honestly and told them about specific elements of the room that were not clean.

Then the Director of Housekeeping wrote back.

WHEN SORRY BECOMES A DEFENSE

The email said they were sorry the room had not been up to my standard. My standard, for any hotel stay, becomes at bare minimum, a clean room.

I am confident that this is Most People's standard as well.

The apology was aimed at our standards rather than at the room, which quietly suggests that the problem was how much we had expected and not how little the room had delivered.

The note went on to thank us for our loyalty and to invite us to stay with them the next time we were in the area, so they could give us a better stay.

I appreciated the sentiment, and I mean that sincerely, but my plans are not taking me back to that destination anytime soon, and with so many other hotels to choose from, I would not be giving that one a second chance.

Put those two apologies side by side and they run in exactly the opposite direction you would expect, because the people in the emergency room were not at fault at all and said "I'm sorry" freely and genuinely, while the hotel owned every bit of the fault and still found a way to say sorry without claiming any of it.

I have started calling that invisible boundary "The Fault Line", which is the line most of us draw in our heads before we decide to let the words "I am sorry" out of our mouths.

When someone is at fault, Most People Do apologize, often carefully, cautious of how it might be used against them. If it is not, they often go silent, defend, or reach for a policy, because somewhere along the way they learned that saying "I am sorry" means admitting guilt.

The language does not help us, because the same two words carry two completely different jobs. One "I am sorry" means I did this to you, and the other means I see you, I see what you are going through.

Most People have become so nervous about the first meaning that they have stopped offering the second one at all.

There is a fine line between empathy and liability, but in order to provide excellent customer service, we should be more empathetic when somebody feels something is wrong, and brings it to our attention.

EMPATHY DOES NOT REQUIRE A CONFESSION

The ER Nurse was not accepting responsibility for my back when she said "I am sorry," she was simply choosing to stand with me for a moment, which turned out to be more comforting than any explanation could have been.

You will likely have the chance to cross "The Fault Line" sometime soon, and hopefully, it will not happen in a hospital.

A colleague may tell you that the project they poured themselves into was cut, or a client may call upset about a delay caused by a vendor you do not control, or someone on your team may walk in carrying something heavy from home that has nothing to do with work that may cause an issue.

Even if the situation is not your fault, what the person needs to hear first is that you are sorry for their experience and how they feel.

And when it is your fault, the careful apology ends up costing more than the honest one.

I suspect that hotel email was written to be polite and safe, but as a guest, I could feel the difference between being apologized to and being managed, and the managed version is the one that sends people looking for another choice.

Three Things to Try This Week

1. Say "I am sorry" before you know whose fault it is. "I am sorry you are dealing with this" admits nothing and is always true, so let it be your first sentence and save the explanation and the fix for the second one.
2. Apologize for "the room", not "the standards." When something is your fault, name the actual thing: "I am sorry the room was dirty," rather than the person's reaction to it: "I am sorry it didn't meet your expectations," because the first sentence owns the problem and the second one blames the customer.
3. "Stay at the bedside" a little longer. Before you fix, explain, or reassure, give the person one more moment of simply being heard because the hospital team did not cure anything by saying those words, and they were still among the most comforting things anyone said to me that day. I felt Valued, Seen, and Heard, not processed or managed.

Sorry was never meant to be only a verdict, and some of the most important times to say it are the times it has nothing to do with blame.

Somebody in your world is lying in some version of that hospital bed this week, hurting from something you did not cause.

What would it mean to them if you were the one who said, "I am sorry you are here"? 

Most People Don't. But YOU do.

Bart

"I SEE YOU" HIGHLIGHT VIDEO