I'm Sorry
Admit it!
This post is not an apology. It is about an apology. And how much I appreciated said apology.
The details of this will be familiar to those who live locally, so I will be brief in my explanation. A few weeks ago amidst all the winter storm fun, there was a Wednesday morning in which nearly all (maybe not nearly, I didn’t check) the schools in our area had a delayed start or canceled school due to the forecast of morning snow and subsequent slippery travel conditions. Our district did not. It was business as usual. Which led people to wonder whether the Cheshire administration knew something others did not.
Dear readers, they did not. It was a mess. It snowed really hard for a period that morning, the roads were a mess and the travel to school that morning seemed deeply stressful for parents and particularly bus drivers. A quick glance at social media a little later in the morning suggested that folks in town were BIG mad at the decision. I certainly saw it as a mistake, but as someone who tends to give people the benefit of the doubt, I assumed the decision makers had their reasons. Obviously if someone had been seriously hurt the choice would have seemed even worse, and fortunately that didn’t happen. But I didn’t give it much thought beyond that until the school community received an email from the Superintendent later that morning.
It came in at 10:33 a.m. and the subject was “Apology.” From there, he apologized for making the choice to hold school as scheduled, explained his decision-making process, and closed by apologizing for the anxiety his decision understandably created. That was it. One paragraph, 142 words, exactly 800 characters and a fairly simple message: I made a mistake, here was my thinking, and I’m sorry it caused problems.
Putting aside the content of the letter, what struck me immediately and inspired me to write this post in the first place is that the Superintendent chose to publicly admit an error. Maybe for others it wasn’t nearly enough to overcome the error in judgment, for me, I appreciated he owned up and publicly admitted fault. Maybe it’s simplistic and letting people off the hook too easily, it feels more important to me that a leader be willing to admit a mistake than some unrealistic expectation that they won’t make mistakes in the first place. Of course they will make errors — and it so happened this was a choice that impacted families and staff directly and immediately.
Perhaps if someone in authority seems to consistently making reckless decisions, or choices that lead to bad outcomes I would feel differently. But that isn’t the case here, so instead I was just appreciative that a person in that position owned up. It feels like that sort of accountability in leadership has becoming increasingly rare, so I think it’s worth giving a nod of appreciation when we see it.
I was going to write this post closer to the actual event (I’m sure it’s shocking for readers that it took me awhile to actually write) and only focus on my reaction to the public mea culpa. During the period between thought and writing, I found myself on a bit of a losing streak when it came to domestic decisions, and was in position to offer apologies. Given my admiration for the Superintendent’s acknowledgement of fault, and my general self awareness as a person that tries his best to do the right thing, you might think I would be willingly and easily accepting my responsibility and apologizing when I dropped the ball husband and father-wise. Even with those thoughts in my head, I still managed reluctant and half-hearted apologies at best. So what gives?
The disconnect comes, I think, because people don’t make mistakes intentionally. So apologizing feels like a bigger admission — we want people to give us credit for the fact that we didn’t mess things up on purpose. We had reasons, maybe even good reasons, and yet a bad result occurred. It’s hard to muster a sincere apology when we see the negative result but we know in our hearts that we had the best of intentions. Apologize anyway. I’ve stared at the blinking cursor for several minutes searching for the best way to rationalize why I think folks being more willing to readily apologize is important and the best I can come up with is this: you would want someone to apologize to you.
I worry about lots of things in terms of the lessons Declan and Rory learn from us, Rory in particular. Really, I don’t know when I became so consumed with this stuff — probably around the time I got laid off and had fewer things to occupy my brain. Either way, one of my current concerns is Rory’s predilection to skirt accountability. When confronted with a mistake, rather than owning up to the error we get the laundry list of excuses about why whatever transpired wasn’t his fault. It makes me a little crazy. It probably is age appropriate, but it’s the time of pattern and behavior I sincerely hope we can nip in the bud.
Of course, emboldened by the Superintendent’s email, I broached the topic with Rory to see if I could turn it into a learning experience. Unsurprisingly, he was mostly uninterested in my lesson and tuned me out, which frustrated me and Caryn. Alas, I’m sure I will try again some other time, and hope to find a way to have the concept break through.*
*As is often the case, Rory typically offers some glimmer after the fact that he was, sort of, listening. Monday of this week was a dreary, rainy day and when we went out to the bus stop on a day when we had school, Rory announced, “looks like Mr. Solan is going to have to apologize again.” I clarified for him that school is rarely canceled due to rain, but at least he provided a glimmer of hope he took in some of my preachy message.
If nothing else, it is nice to have an easy example I can point to of someone in position of authority accepting responsibility and admitting a mistake. How novel. So go tell someone you’re sorry — and ideally mean it — and maybe we can all help it catch on.