The other day I was talking to a man who runs a small business.  All of his staff are female, about 8 or 9 or them.  He is a great supporter of women’s development but mystified about the apparent lack of confidence of his staff.  He tells them repeatedly that they are doing a great job and from my dealings with them I know that they all do a highly professional job and I have a lot of respect for their skills and experience.

Yet he says that the first thing they do in the morning is apologise – they say “Sorry” as if they are apologising for their own existence.  When I pondered on this I realised that I hear this happening a lot. Women will often say sorry as a way of opening a sentence, before we even know what the other person’s reaction is going to be.  If we went around and counted how many times at work we hear our male colleagues saying sorry and compare that with how many times we hear our female colleagues saying sorry I think that we’d find that we win hands down.

Also because it is such a habitual speech pattern we do not even hear ourselves saying it – let alone recognise how it diminishes us.  Can you remember the last time you said sorry and really meant it?  Yes of course you can.  Can you remember the last time you used the word – probably not, because its part of the regular landscape of your speech.  It was probably only ten minutes ago, or at least earlier in the day.  So its time to take action.

This is the next word that I want you to strike from your vocabulary, except when there is a genuine reason to be sorry, real regret.  First you need to build awareness and start to notice yourself saying it.  Then you need to catch yourself about to say it and decide that it is a positive thing to find another word or just lose the sorry and don’t replace it.  You will feel much stronger if you do not go around apologising unnecessarily for yourself the whole time.  You have as much right to be you as the next man.