Advice flows on art of apology

By THERESA GARNER

In George Bush's home state they could teach Helen Clark a thing or two about the art of apologising.

An outfit called Partnerwerks based in Comfort, Texas, which offers "responsibility-based team strategies" has issued a tip sheet on how to say sorry in a seemingly "win-lose world".

"Don't just do it halfway. It may just backfire on you. Some people actually pay attention to the feeling/tone of the message."

And "never ever use that lame phrase 'if you were offended', which is a subtle move to shift the blame from yourself, the offender, to the offended. It implies that rightminded people were not offended, 'so you who are offended must be wrong-minded"'.

The Prime Minister has been grilled in Parliament this week over her apparently apologising for causing offence to George Bush, rather than apologising for making the remarks in the first place.

It was a lesson, if any were needed, of the perils of apologising, certainly half-heartedly.

Auckland mediator and dispute resolution consultant Deborah Clapshaw said apologies must be genuine and sincerely felt.

But it was often appropriate to qualify your apology, she said.

"The wrong meaning is often taken from something and we may not have intended it. When you apologise on that basis, it obviously has a different quality but I don't think it makes it inappropriate."

"We think of communications rather like being injected with a drug, that it will have the effect it's intended to have. But we have to construct meanings from messages."

From a public relations perspective, Jane Dodd, the general manager of Network PR in Auckland, said it was hard to judge how Helen Clark's apology had come across. "We are only hearing the public side of it.

"From the initial comments it appeared as though she apologised but then added a bit of a rider to it, and I felt that that was undoing the good that she had done."

Insincere apologies could heap insult on insult, Ms Dodd said.

"A good example is on TV when they do a 'we apologise' and they read it out because they have to do it, and when that is the case it doesn't really mean a lot, as it doesn't look as though they genuinely feel contrition for what they've done.

"Certainly the initial comments I read about it, I did feel as if there was a little bit of 'I'm sorry, but ... "

But Massey senior lecturer in communications Marianne Tremaine said Helen Clark's apology was realistic. "She apologised in terms of regretting that they had taken offence.

"I think it's honest."

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