The Advice to Stop Apologizing Can Fall Short

Mainstream workplace guidance encourages women to reduce or eliminate apologies, such as replacing “Sorry for the delay” with “Thanks for your patience.” Research indicates women apologize more often than men and also identify more transgressions, which can function as social regulation. However, advice to stop apologizing can rely on leadership norms that overemphasize individualism and competition, potentially producing leaders perceived as lacking humility. The guidance also overlooks how intersecting racial and gender stereotypes change consequences. Black women can be judged more negatively when expressing anger than Black men or White women expressing anger similarly. Cultural values such as harmony and humility can be strengths when used strategically, and testing behaviors in low-stakes situations can produce better data than relying on generic scripts.

"Mainstream advice for aspiring women leaders in the workplace is to avoid apologies as much as possible. For example, we are encouraged to start an email with: "Thanks for your patience." Instead of: "Sorry for the delay in responding." (I don't know about you, but someone assuming I've been patient when in fact, I haven't, doesn't sit well with me.) More nuanced takes advise women to eliminate "unnecessary" apologies, perhaps the ones you say to soften your point or as a mindless filler word."

"Both approaches are based on empirical data about gender differences in apologizing behavior. Research shows that not only do women apologize more frequently than men, but they also spot more transgressions than men do, which may serve a social regulation function (Schumann and Ross, 2010). Despite its empirical basis, there are two problems with this advice. First, it's from an outdated playbook that centers on individualistic and competitive leadership norms that-if taken to their extreme-but-logical end-create leaders who lack humility and inspire more fear than trust from their teams (Rego, Cunha, and Simpson, 2018)."

"The second is that this advice does not account for the additional complexity faced by women of color due to the intersection of both racial and gendered stereotypes (Tinkler, Zhao, Li, and Ridgeway, 2019). For example, Motro and colleagues (2022) found that Black women were perceived more negatively when expressing anger compared with both Black men and White women who expressed anger in the same way."

Read at Psychology Today