“Never apologize, mister. It’s a sign of weakness.” These words were said by John Wayne in the 1949 film “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”. John Wayne is the hero of 169 Western movies.

I happen to disagree with John on this statement. I think it should be “Apologies are a sign of maturity”.

I was a district manager in Florida when I was assigned to further develop a district manager candidate. She was a well-qualified candidate, intelligent and hardworking. She was assigned to my district as a district manager in training and my responsibility was to help her gain real life experience. She was assigned several of my stores for her training and she reported directly to me.

As we began to work together, we made a plan: when we visited stores she was responsible for, she would do the tour as a district manager would. One day, we walked into one of her stores and it was rough around the edges. I was a little irritated at the store manager because the store should have been in better condition – its condition reflected poorly on me – so I took over the review of the store and walked the store with the store manager and the district manager in training. Now, this was contradictory to what we agreed on and I realized it after I had done this, I knew it wasn’t a good decision.

The next day the district manager in training asked if she could talk to me. She was upset and asked me why I went against our decision for her to take the lead while reviewing her stores. Upon reflection, I knew I was wrong. I also knew the right thing to do was apologize to her, so I did. I told her she was right and that I was wrong and I gave her my word it wouldn’t happen again. Because there was an atmosphere of open communication and willingness to apologize when it was necessary, our relationship continued to be a strong, positive relationship between two people who wanted to do the best job they could.

Apologies are not a sign of weakness, but the sign of a quality leader who demonstrates maturity.

https://linktr.ee/Rseipler