Conventional wisdom holds that if there’s a potential legal claim against you, don’t apologize, because that could be deemed an admission of guilt or liability and increase claim risk.

The opposite is actually true: Proper apologies tend to prevent claims or lead to amicable resolution.

The key is how you apologize. We urge them to apply the MIDAS touch:

• M means acknowledging you made a mistake.
• I stands for "injury," as in, "My mistake caused you harm."
• D stands for "differently," as in, "I won’t behave this way again."
• A stands for "amends"—your gesture to show your apology is heartfelt.
• S means "silence"— stop talking and thus keep your "but" out of your apology.

Here’s an example.

My friend Jathan Janove once served as office managing shareholder in an international law firm. He got a call from a partner in one of their East Coast offices. "Tom" was furious.

"Jathan," he said, "I have a complaint about one of the partners in your office, ‘Lisa.’ " Tom explained how Lisa had dropped the ball on a project. The client was so upset that it threatened to take its business to a competitor.

Tom explained that Lisa had compounded the offense with an e-mailed "but" apology. It pointed out mistakes others made and stated that her mistake was minor and caused no substantive loss to the client.

Jathan told Tom that he would look into the matter.

When Jathan told Lisa about Tom’s call, Lisa became angry. "I wasn’t the only one who made a mistake!" she said. "Tom dropped the ball himself, as did the client’s general counsel. I’m being singled out! This isn’t fair! If Tom has a problem with me, he should’ve called me, not you. I have a good mind to give him a call and let him know what I think!"

Jathan replied, "OK, Lisa, what do you think will happen if you call Tom and give him a piece of your mind? Won’t he become even more upset and take his complaint to the firm’s board of directors, as he threatened to do in our conversation? And what happens when the board gets the complaint? Although you said others made mistakes, you acknowledge that you made one, too, so your record won’t be clean. How will that look to the board, especially when it learns a large client may take its business to one of our competitors? How will your approach help you achieve your goal?"

"Oh," Lisa said. "I hadn’t thought of it that way."

Jathan explained the MIDAS touch apology and suggested she give one to Tom.

"Acknowledge your mistake and say nothing about the other mistakes. Acknowledge the injury your mistake caused in the client’s becoming upset and threatening to take its business elsewhere, and in Tom’s anxiety and stress about potentially losing his biggest client. Tell Tom what you’ve resolved to do differently to prevent that mistake from happening again. Offer to make amends. And then be silent. Don’t say another word."

To keep to the script, Lisa wrote "MIDAS" on a sticky note and said, "I’ll have this in my hand when I make the call."

Two days later, Lisa walked into Jathan’s office and said, "I called Tom and made the apology."

"What was his response?" Jathan asked.

"To my great surprise, after I stopped, he made the points I wanted to make—that he and others made mistakes, as well, and that the client wasn’t materially harmed."

"What else did he say?"

"He accepted my apology, said he thought we could keep the client and that he’d be happy to continue working with me."

"Problem solved. Thank you."

Lisa turned to leave but then said, "One last thing: If I didn’t have that sticky note in my hand during the call, I probably would’ve blown it. By the time I got to the ‘S,’ I didn’t want to be silent!"

One last point, noted by best-selling author Daniel Pink: "With apologies, timing can be everything. The best approach is to apologize as quickly as possible after the underlying offense. Often, the longer you wait, the more the aggrieved party will stew and the less sincere your apology will seem."

This blog was excerpted from Jathan Janove’s blog December 14, 2023.

Jathan Janove, J.D., is the author of Hard-Won Wisdom: True Stories from the Management Trenches (HarperCollins/Amacom, 2017). He was president of the Oregon Organization Development Network and was named in Inc. magazine as one of the Top 100 Leadership Speakers for 2018.