And why apology is a learning tool, not weakness.

There have only been a handful of times in my career (and, frankly my life) where I have properly lost my temper. Four or five, I think, in twenty five years.

When I have, the component elements have been common, we’ve reached a crisis point in something that I deeply care about and I’m struggling to make myself heard.

One occasion was during the Kempt days, we were on deadline with an important project that had gone badly wrong. I pulled everyone into an impromptu crisis meeting in the studio because we needed options quickly.

The discussion was not going the way I wanted. Every suggestion I made felt like it was being blocked. In hindsight some of those blocks might have been reasonable constraints, the issue I had with that was not the objection itself, it was my inability to communicate existential threat and the fact that we needed solutions, not more problems.

I did my best to be measured and calm but, in that moment, with a deadline imminent, payroll looming and the weight of responsibility sitting squarely on my shoulders, something snapped.

I remember the physical sensation of it. The chimp came out. I swore. Loudly. It was not constructive and it was not fair.

Then there was silence.

I looked round the room and saw the shock on people’s faces. A sinking feeling followed, I had crossed the line and I knew it, nothing good was going to come from staying in that emotional state, so I left.

At that time I still smoked which, although unhealthy, was a useful management tool. It gave me an excuse to step outside, breathe and regain some perspective. After fifteen or twenty minutes I went back in and apologised.

Not casually, in passing or by offering excuses. I made sure I apologised properly, deeply and sincerely and made sure that was accepted before moving on to offering an explanation for my behaviour.

That order matters: Apology > acceptance > explanation.

I did not justify it or soften it. I did not say “sorry, but…”. I was specific about what I was sorry for. I made it clear that losing my temper like that was not acceptable. I acknowledged the impact it would have had in the room and I committed to doing my very best to ensure it did not happen again.

Only then did I explain what had been going on internally. The pressure we were under, the fear of us all losing our jobs and the responsibility I felt as a result, not as an excuse, but as context and as something we could learn from together.

I do not remember much about what happened next which, hopefully, means the repair worked. The rupture closed, the system stabilised and we got back to solving the problem.

The learning loop

In a previous piece I wrote that good leadership requires you to identify mistakes, admit them and outline what you are going to do about them. I still believe that. Over time, though, I have come to think that the ability to say sorry is even more fundamental than that.

There are some people in life who rarely apologise and, when they do, it often feels conditional. The apology comes wrapped in explanation, subtly shifts blame, or functions as reputation management. I do not say this with judgement but with empathy. In my experience it is usually rooted in insecurity.

If your ego feels fragile, admitting fault can feel like shrinking. It can feel like confirmation that you are less than you hoped, and so you defend, rationalise, reframe.

You protect the identity of being right.

Don’t get me wrong, I feel it myself at times. The instinct to justify, internal resistance to saying the words cleanly, it’s really hard to overcome. But the structural problem with this is simple:

If you cannot admit error plainly, you cannot examine it properly and if you cannot examine it, you cannot learn from it.

So, apology is not just about rebuilding trust or credibility (although paradoxically it often increases it) it’s about keeping the learning loop open.

When you can separate “I behaved badly” from “I am bad”, you create space. Space that allows you to analyse what happened. Space to adjust your behaviour. Space to improve.

• Secure people can afford to be wrong because their identity is not built on being right all the time, it is built on being capable. Capable people can make mistakes, repair them and get better.

• Sadly insecure people often do the opposite. They protect the ego in the short term and, without realising it, cap their own growth in the long term.

What’s particularly sad about this is that, in both cases, other people can usually see it. We are remarkably sensitive to both defensiveness and honesty (it’s a deeply seated survival skill) so, in the latter case, the very behaviour designed to preserve status gradually erodes it.

Lowering the cost of being wrong

This is why I think saying sorry is a foundational life skill first and a leadership skill second. It lowers the cost of being wrong.

If being wrong is survivable, mistakes become information rather than shame. They become part of a feedback loop instead of something that has to be buried or defended. Over time that compounds. You iterate faster. You adapt faster. You grow faster.

None of this is a licence to behave like an asshole: you still have to try to regulate yourself. I certainly do and I occasionally fail. The point is not perfection, the point is repair.

To conclude.

I’m aware that for some people this piece might be quite difficult to read: it wasn’t very easy to write.

If, therefore, reading this makes you feel a little defensive then please take it as encouragement rather than criticism. Saying sorry does not make you smaller and it doesn’t undermine your authority or reduce your standing. It makes you more secure which, in my experience, is what allows real growth.

Finally let me say that I, myself, am a long way from perfect. I make plenty of mistakes, but when I do, I do try to own them and apologise properly.

If you know me, I do hope you would agree. But, if you don’t for any reason, please do call me out on it. I’d love the chance to make up for whatever it was and it will be a useful chance for me to grow at the same time.

Thanks for reading, as ever, much love.