On Not Apologizing at Work

Intentionality has shaped nearly every area of my life.  What I spend money on, how I spend my time, who I allow into my orbit. Eventually, it reshaped my language.

There was a period in my career when I noticed how often I began sentences with “I’m sorry.” Not because I had made a mistake but because I was about to ask a question. Take up time. Deliver feedback. Enforce a standard.

“I’m sorry, can I ask something?”
“Sorry to bother you.”
“I’m sorry, but we need to talk.”
“Sorry if this is a stupid question.”

None of these situations require an apology.  This is something I see women do consistently in the workplace, and I understand why. We are socially conditioned to reduce perceived threat, to soften our presence, to make ourselves easier to receive. But in leadership, that conditioning works against us. When a woman begins a difficult conversation with "I'm sorry," she subtly positions herself as the person causing an inconvenience rather than the person responsible for maintaining standards. That is a significant distinction.

When I made the shift, I replaced apology with something cleaner. Instead of "Sorry to bother you," I started saying "I need a few minutes of your time to make sure I understand what's needed." Instead of "I'm sorry, but you're not meeting the expectations of this position," I started saying "You're not meeting the expectations of this position." Direct. Neutral. Clear about where the issue actually lives.

When I stopped apologizing, my tone changed. Conversations became clearer. Feedback became more direct. I stopped cushioning discipline. This was especially true when supervising men who had grown accustomed to a certain level of deference. Difficult conversations with men don't require harshness — they require steadiness. Authority without aggression. Clarity without apology..

When I coach managers,particularly women, I encourage them to eliminate pre-apology language. The strongest leaders I know are not aggressive. They are composed. They do not pre-emptively shrink. This does not mean refusing to apologize when wrong. Real apologies still matter. It means we stop apologizing for exercising responsibility.

The Moment I Stopped Donating Energy

I had a colleague I worked with for years. He had access to leadership, minimal accountability, and a habit of asking the same questions repeatedly — questions about well-established processes, questions he had asked a dozen times before. For years, I responded fully. I explained. I clarified. I re-clarified. I donated energy that was rarely acknowledged and never reciprocated.

One day, when he returned with the same question again, I gave him the answer. Once. When he began circling back, I repeated the original answer briefly, without cushioning. He told me I was being snippy.

What had changed was not my accuracy. It was my availability. I had stopped donating excess energy.

Snippy is a word that gets used when women remove warmth from interactions that were previously one-sided. It is not an operational critique. It is a reaction to a shift in access. For years I had made myself endlessly available — for clarification, for reassurance, for intellectual labor that went unacknowledged. When I reduced my responses to what was necessary, the tone became the problem. Not the pattern that created it.

This dynamic intensifies in leadership. A woman who speaks plainly gets called abrupt. A woman who enforces standards gets called difficult. A woman who stops over-explaining gets called cold. None of those are performance reviews. They are reactions to boundaries.

Directness is not disrespect. Clarity is not hostility. Brevity is not cruelty.

Language shapes posture. Posture shapes perception. Perception shapes authority.

I stopped apologizing for taking up space. The space did not disappear. The apology did.

Leadership is not performance. It is responsibility. You do not have to apologize for exercising it.