Sorry, can I take leave for next Friday?
I’ve heard this alot. In my view, leave is an entitlement, so why would we feel paiseh to take leave, enough to say sorry? Maybe there’s a real operational issue, e.g. too little notice or an important event that cannot be covered. Usually, there isn’t. The “sorry” arrives anyway.
I am not someone who apologizes a lot, but even I sometimes say “sorry” when I mean “excuse me”. I use it before asking someone to do something that is already part of their job.
Why though??
Leave is part of our employment entitlement. Reviewing a legitimate claim is a supervisor’s (aka me) responsibility. Asking a question or disagreeing with me is definitely not an offence.
Why do we feel the need to apologize? And what does that habit do to us?
Sorry seems to be the easiest word
Elton John sang that Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word (loved it btw, I listened to Blue’s version).
At work, it sometimes seems to be the easiest.
Sorry, can I ask a question?
Sorry to trouble you, can you approve my claim?
Sorry, but I disagree.
Sorry to chase you again.
Nobody consciously means, “I know your time matters more than mine, so please forgive me for requiring your attention.”
Still, that is sometimes the posture we adopt.
One unnecessary apology will not make someone weak or passive. When every ordinary request begins with “sorry”, however, normal work starts to look like a personal favour.
Leave is an entitlement, not a confession
Taking leave doesn’t mean abandoning your responsibilities.
Give reasonable notice and make sure important work is covered or handed over. Flag anything likely to go wrong while you are away.
If the world will collapse in on itself during your absence, then yes, perhaps we should have a conversation.
I am jesting… ok maybe only half jesting.
Operational needs can still affect the dates, and sometimes there is a genuine conflict that needs to be discussed.
But the normal conversation should sound more like this:
I plan to take leave next Friday. I have arranged coverage for X and will complete Y before I go. Please flag any operational issue I have missed.
That gives me the information I need without presenting the leave as an offence.
The same applies to claims:
My claim is ready for review. The receipt and justification are attached.
If reviewing it is part of my role, you are not troubling me. I should either approve a compliant claim or explain what is missing.
You absolutely don’t need to apologize before asking me to do my job.
Saying sorry changes nothing
There is another side to this. If someone says:
Sorry, can I take leave next Friday?
The apology doesn’t make their plans more negotiable than they already were. I am not going to hear “sorry” and assume they are inviting me to pressure them into changing their leave.
At the same time, I am not stupid enough to think that saying sorry cushions the blow if they have created a real operational problem.
If they gave no notice or left important work uncovered, the problem is still there. The apology doesn’t make the situation easier or convince me that it was handled responsibly.
The useful conversation is whether the work can be covered and whether the notice was reasonable. If the dates genuinely cannot work, say why.
If those things are in order, take the leave. Otherwise, let us discuss the actual problem.
Saying sorry should neither weaken your entitlement nor disguise poor planning.
Is it cultural?
Maybe? I’ve only ever been in the public sector, where hierarchy is visible and politeness matters. I cannot tell where national culture ends and workplace habit begins. Previous bosses and ordinary discomfort with imposing on someone also matter.
I am not going to turn one workplace habit into a grand theory of Singaporean personality.
The more useful question is what happens when someone speaks directly.
If managers treat questions as challenges or disagreement as disrespect, people learn to wrap everything in “sorry”. Punish independent judgement and they will ask permission the next time.
Researchers call some of these learned assumptions implicit voice theories: unwritten rules people absorb about when speaking up is risky or inappropriate.
Permission culture creates followers
Managers say they want people to take ownership, but look at how we actually manage them, we see a culture of “ask before you…”, “check before you…”, “make sure to seek XYZ’s approval before you move”.
Employees learn to ask whether they can send an email, contact someone, raise an issue, make a routine change, or take the next step. Eventually, they stop exercising judgement because waiting is safer.
Thanks to ChatGPT I came to learn that L. David Marquet wrote about replacing permission-seeking with statements of intent. Glad to know it’s largely what I always tried but never knew people wrote books about it.
One example from Marquet made the distinction obvious to me. Compare this:
Can I reject the vendor’s proposal?
with:
I intend to reject the proposal because it doesn’t meet requirements A and B. I will respond tomorrow unless you see a risk I have missed.
The second person has thought through the issue and explained the reasoning, while still giving the manager a chance to intervene.
Some matters genuinely require approval. Intent is not a license to ignore controls or act beyond your authority.
How can I expect you to make decisions or try things if I keep teaching you to depend on me?
If the decision belongs to you, make it. If it belongs to me, bring me what I need and let me decide. Neither case requires ceremonial humility.
Polite organizations can still be passive
A passive organization may be full of capable people who have learned that acting is dangerous and waiting is safe.
People learn to push uncertainty upwards until managers become bottlenecks, after which we somehow wonder why nobody takes ownership. Like seriously.
Language becomes part of the ritual. Proposals and concerns are softened until even disagreement begins with “sorry”.
The organization remains extremely polite while becoming increasingly unable to disagree honestly, until silence itself starts to look like agreement. That is the narrow link to groupthink, where self-censorship can create an illusion of unanimity even when people privately have doubts.
Sorry as a warning shot
I cannot pretend that all my own apologies come from excessive deference.
Sometimes I know exactly what I am doing. I use “sorry” when I am being paggro. The email is already obviously angry. I write:
Sorry, but…
Then I unload a lot of critiques and stuff people don’t want to read. Of course I know the apology is fake. I totally mean everything that comes after it!
It’s true… you have definitely received one of my emails like that. I have edited it just enough to remain professionally survivable, then placed “sorry” near the front as though it makes the rest less hostile.
Nobody is fooled. That “sorry” is a warning shot dressed as politeness.
Blunt anger sometimes feels too naked. “Sorry” gives me a thin layer of cover before I say exactly what I think, even though I have no intention of softening the message. That is fake politeness, and I am guilty of it.
Nonetheless, I apologize to no one!
Save apologies for when they have work to do
If you caused harm or left someone else to clean up your mistake, apologize properly. Own what happened and explain how you will put it right.
I made a mistake. I’m sorry. Here is what I have fixed and how I will prevent it from happening again.
Now that is something worth apologising for!
Apologies can also communicate genuine empathy. Saying “I’m sorry you are going through this” doesn’t mean you caused the problem. Research has found that expressing regret about an unfortunate situation outside your control can demonstrate concern and increase trust.
The trouble starts when “sorry” becomes an automatic preface to asking for attention, exercising an entitlement, disagreeing, or expecting another person to fulfil a responsibility.
Research on frequent apologising suggests a trade-off. Frequent apologizers may seem warmer and more concerned about relationships while also appearing less assertive or self-directed, particularly when their apologies appear perfunctory.
Perhaps sorry really should be the hardest word. A genuine apology requires us to admit that we actually did something wrong.
Respect without submission
None of this gives you permission to become an arsehole.
Please and thank you still matter. So does excuse me when you interrupt someone. Plan your leave properly and don’t use “entitlement” as an excuse to dump work on everyone else.
Don’t confuse respect with submission. Take your leave responsibly, submit your claim (on time pls), ask the question, disagree with me if you need to, and tell me what you intend to do.
You do your job. Ask me to do mine.
Neither of us needs to apologize for that.
What the literature says
The research doesn’t support the simplistic claim that apologising is inherently weak.
Apologies can repair relationships and increase trust. In four studies, Alison Wood Brooks, Hengchen Dai, and Maurice Schweitzer found that apologies for unfortunate circumstances outside the speaker’s control could signal empathic concern and increase trust.
The picture gets more complicated when apologising becomes a repeated personal pattern. Karina Schumann and her colleagues found that a person described as a frequent apologizer was judged as more communal, meaning warmer and more relationship-oriented, while also appearing less agentic. In a second study involving romantic relationships, the lower-agency judgement appeared when the frequent apologies were perceived as low quality. This suggests a trade-off rather than a universal rule.
Workplace linguists Janet Holmes and Maria Stubbe describe politeness and power as things people perform through everyday workplace conversation. Politeness helps people get work done while maintaining relationships. It can also communicate social distance and authority, including who is expected to ask whom for what.
The organizational argument comes from connecting this work with research on employee voice and silence. Elizabeth Morrison’s review shows how leadership and perceived risk influence whether people raise useful information. James Detert and Amy Edmondson explain how employees develop taken-for-granted beliefs about when speaking is dangerous or inappropriate.
David Marquet’s intent-based leadership is a practical model rather than academic evidence about apologies. It is useful here because it offers an alternative to permission-seeking: people communicate a considered intention to act, while leaders retain the ability to intervene when necessary.
The link to groupthink remains an inference. James Esser’s review found the groupthink literature still useful, though its empirical base was small and many ideas remained untested. There is no demonstrated causal chain from saying “sorry” to organizational passivity or groupthink.
My argument is narrower: routine apologies can be both a symptom and a small reinforcing practice within a deferential culture. They frame normal questions and entitlements as impositions requiring forgiveness or permission.
Some of the main research and books behind these ideas (yes, ChatGPT helped me find and check these too):
- Karina Schumann, Emily G. Ritchie, and Amanda Forest, “The Social Consequences of Frequent Versus Infrequent Apologizing” (2023), Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 49(3), 331–343.
- Alison Wood Brooks, Hengchen Dai, and Maurice E. Schweitzer, “I’m Sorry About the Rain! Superfluous Apologies Demonstrate Empathic Concern and Increase Trust” (2014), Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(4), 467–474.
- Janet Holmes and Maria Stubbe, Power and Politeness in the Workplace: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Talk at Work, second edition (2015), Routledge.
- L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around! A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders (2013), Portfolio.
- Elizabeth W. Morrison, “Employee Voice and Silence: Taking Stock a Decade Later” (2023), Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 79–107.
- James R. Detert and Amy C. Edmondson, “Implicit Voice Theories: Taken-for-Granted Rules of Self-Censorship at Work” (2011), Academy of Management Journal, 54(3), 461–488.
- James K. Esser, “Alive and Well after 25 Years: A Review of Groupthink Research” (1998), Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 73(2–3), 116–141.