Taking Back I Am Sorry
Taking Back I Am Sorry
“We’re moving your team,” my manager says during one of our regular discussions.The very words I was sure I wasn’t going to hear rang in my ears. “This can’t be happening. This just can’t be happening,” I thought. Just a few weeks prior, the team and I were joking that “it was that time of year again”. After being asked the previous year to shift and help develop a brand new department, we were killing all our metrics. I had even reassured them there was no way a move was happening again since our team had been relocated to report into a different department every single year for the past several. Hence, our team joke. But this was no joke.As a team leader and their manager, this felt awful. A new department meant new initiatives (lots of them) on top of our old ones. Figuring out how to structure this department, formulate new team dynamics, report structure changes, and of course, the pressure to succeed. Oh and did I mention, this was all happening in the middle of COVID. On top of all the work pressures, team members were dealing with all the personal stresses COVID brought - lockdowns, changing school policies, monitoring, and homeschooling young kids, elderly parents, confined or not ideal work conditions, sick family members, isolation, and fear. Lots and lots of fear.It had been a really difficult year for the team and for me. As teammates, and as people, we had been there for each other, but we were stretched to our max. Our emotional and mental tanks were running on fumes. The extra effort required when changing departments wasn’t something we had energy for. But, it was a done deal.The fear was real. As a researcher and professor at the University of Houston, Brene Brown and her team interviewed 150 leaders.
"What we learned is that it's not fear that gets in the way of courageous leadership. It's armor. It's what we do to self-protect when we're afraid. Because truthfully, we're all afraid and brave at the same time, all day long, every day. But, for some of us, when fear takes over, we're a wreck,” she explains.
I was most definitely a wreck. I was afraid. I was confused. I was angry. I was tired. No, I was exhausted. It brought out all my insecurities. All my old thought patterns began to kick in and I felt powerless to stop them. Fear had taken over. In Atlas of the Heart, Brown says fear is one of the places we go when things are uncertain or become more than we can take on. Things were definitely feeling too much for me. I was a turtle flipped on its back, struggling to right itself and stand on solid ground. Survival mode switched into high gear and mashed the gas pedal to the floorboard.Now, I had the daunting task of discussing this change with the team. How was I going to make this okay when it didn’t feel that way? How was I to listen to them and hold them up when my own fears rang so loud in my ears?As with all major announcements, I discussed the scenario with the team. This gives us the opportunity to hear the news together and talk about the situation as a team. I then also check-in with individuals, giving each person their own space and opportunity to be heard. The good plan normally, provided I can hold the space for them and actively listen. But, not the best plan when it feels like I am in the stands at an Indy 500 race with fighter jets flying overhead. The roar in my head was deafening. I could hear nothing else and choked on the fumes of my own fears. I know one of my team members requires time to process information. Usually, I would do a quick check-in initially with her and then a longer one the next day or so when she’d had time to think.This time was different. During our initial session, she wasn’t sure how she felt about the move. I pushed her to tell me anyway. I could see her struggling, yet I continued to push. I pushed because I needed her to say she was okay. Her being okay would make me feel okay. My fears had changed this discussion. It wasn’t about her at all. It was all about me!
Brown says, “A crisis highlights all of our fault lines. We can pretend that we have nothing to learn, or we can take this opportunity to own the truth and make a better future for ourselves and others.”
This was not my finest hour. My fault line was front and center. Thankfully, I had a moment of self-observation and I saw I was handling this all wrong. So I quickly wrapped up the conversation with a promise to check in with her later. “What the heck was that all about,” I asked myself. I knew I needed to reflect and learn.Heart-based leadership requires self-awareness, self-compassion, and vulnerability. Upon reflection, I could see that I had let my fear take over the driver's seat. I had allowed them to invade and take over the space I wanted to hold for her. The conversation should have been supporting her, not the other way around. In this moment of self-awareness, I learned that I must take the time I need first. This allows me to then be present for others. Acknowledging my own emotions enables me to be aware of them so I can approach the situation in a heart-based manner. Think of pre-flight instructions: put your own oxygen mask on first.I messed up. For a recovering perfectionist, admitting this is tough, self-compassion even tougher. In Atlas of the Heart, Brown writes that perfectionism is one armor we wear to protect our own egos. But, she also says, “Self-compassion means to be able to relate to yourself in a way that is forgiving, accepting, and loving when situations might be less than optimal. It entitles you to give yourself some grace when you make mistakes like you would to a friend.” Instead of letting my perfectionist self continue to beat myself up, I needed to acknowledge I am indeed fallible. I will, and did, make a mistake. I learned that when you take off the armor you can wrap yourself in compassion in order to accept and forgive.Lastly, by allowing my fears to sabotage our meeting, I had dishonored the safe space we had created. I had pushed her to get what I needed, making her uncomfortable. I needed to repair the trust and restore the safe space. I needed to be vulnerable, admit my mistake and apologize. Most people, especially in leadership roles like me, do not know how to give heart-centered authentic apologies. Yup, you read that right. In fact, Brown does a two-part Unlocking Us podcast with her mentor Dr. Harriet Lerner on the importance of and how to apologize (Part 1, Part 2). Dr. Lerner notes that apologies are important in leadership as they allow the hurt party to again feel safe in the relationship, restoring emotional safety. It shows that the leader cares about their feelings, feels remorse, and wants to put things right.I recognized I had done something wrong, but still, my inner self resisted apologizing. What was going on? Okay, the big moment of truth here. As a woman, I am tired of apologizing!As women, we constantly feel the need to apologize. In fact, studies show women apologize 25% more than men. We are socialized to do so. According to childmind.org, boys are praised and encouraged when they show direct, confident behaviors. Girls are also told the same, but further conditions are applied. For example, be confident - but not conceited, be smart - but no one likes a know-it-all, ambition is good - but trying too hard is bad, or be assertive - but only if it doesn’t upset anyone else. So, when others are uncomfortable because we show or talk about our ambitions, we apologize? I don’t get it. Yet, many times I’ve been told I was too passionate, too assertive, too vocal, too… too… too. And I apologized every time. Grrrr…The difference is that these weren’t heart-centered apologies. They were done not to restore a relationship or right a wrong, but instead to make others feel comfortable with me, or us as women. Slam on the breaks! Say that again. We are trying to make others okay with who we are, not for something we did. By apologizing for who I am, I am willingly giving away my power. That’s not on. However, apologizing for something I did, I am acting with courage exactly as I want to be. Heartfelt apologies are vulnerable moments. We have to reflect on ourselves and be willing to admit to and own our behavior. We never know how our apology will be received, which also makes it scary. But, the ability to make heartfelt apologies is a gift to ourselves giving us moments of growth and maturity.The next day, I apologized. A heartfelt apology with no excuses and no buts, a complete acceptance of my error, and taking responsibility for it. It seems so simple. It sounds easy. It's not. However, the power of the act was transformative to my leadership and to me personally. “I’m sorry” are two of the most powerful words when spoken from the heart with the clarity of self-awareness and compassion. As women, let’s take them back. Let’s stop using them in association with who we are and reserve them for those heart-centered moments. (By the way, she accepted my apology with grace. It seems that teams led from the heart have a lot of compassion built-in, even for the leader.)
About the Author:
Alann Demeester is originally from the prairie province of Saskatchewan, Canada, and currently resides in the Vancouver region. She received her advanced bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in biology in 1988 and has worked in the technology industry since 1999. She currently works as the Director of Global Enablement at Elastic Path Software, Inc. An adventurer at heart, she is passionate about the role women play in creating a new paradigm of leadership by walking through vulnerability to get to courage. She is excited about sharing teachings, insights, and experiences by leaders in this area like Brene Brown in this blog series in the hopes that it will inspire you in your own leadership journey.