Mainstream advice for aspiring women leaders in the workplace is to avoid apologies as much as possible. For example, we are encouraged to start an email with: “Thanks for your patience.” Instead of: “Sorry for the delay in responding.” (I don’t know about you, but someone assuming I’ve been patient when in fact, I haven’t, doesn’t sit well with me.) More nuanced takes advise women to eliminate “unnecessary” apologies, perhaps the ones you say to soften your point or as a mindless filler word.
Both approaches are based on empirical data about gender differences in apologizing behavior. Research shows that not only do women apologize more frequently than men, but they also spot more transgressions than men do, which may serve a social regulation function (Schumann and Ross, 2010).
Despite its empirical basis, there are two problems with this advice. First, it’s from an outdated playbook that centers on individualistic and competitive leadership norms that—if taken to their extreme-but-logical end—create leaders who lack humility and inspire more fear than trust from their teams (Rego, Cunha, and Simpson, 2018). The second is that this advice does not account for the additional complexity faced by women of color due to the intersection of both racial and gendered stereotypes (Tinkler, Zhao, Li, and Ridgeway, 2019). For example, Motro and colleagues (2022) found that Black women were perceived more negatively when expressing anger compared with both Black men and White women who expressed anger in the same way.
On top of these harmful stereotypes, cross-cultural research in sociology and psychology has shown that the meaning of an apology and even the way it is delivered varies across countries (Isagozawa and Fuji, 2025). Women of color in the workplace are juggling not only the dynamics of racism and sexism, but also interdependent and collectivistic values that may inform their worldview.
What is a woman of color to do?
First, remind yourself that you’re not imagining things.
When you notice your “thanks for your patience” emails didn’t translate to recognition at performance review time, the explanation may lie in the data on differential treatment. In these instances, it’s important to recognize that when our experiences aren’t validated in our environment, we question our own perceptions, which leads to persistent self-doubt. This is one way that our brains try to make sense of the world, but the world is not always sensible.
Second, reflect on your values and alignment with your workplace.
The mainstream stop apologizing advice assumes you should adopt dominant (White, male, individualistic) values around leadership. But what if humility, interdependence, and collective success are actually your values? It’s also possible that your values are a combination of individualistic and collectivistic values. For example, you might value both professional advancement and communal harmony, and that’s what makes your workplace tricky to navigate.
Here are prompts to help you think through value conflicts:
- How different are my personal values from those of my workplace?
- Are the values and priorities of my workplace in direct opposition to mine?
- Is this gap something I can tolerate in the service of my eventual goals or a bigger value?
- What is the impact of this value conflict on my work satisfaction, mental health, and relationships?
Explicitly acknowledging these conflicts can help you make intentional choices in the service of your values.
Finally, run strategic experiments to gather data on your workplace.
Testing different behaviors in your environment matters, but only when it’s intentional and strategic. To prepare for risk-taking, develop emotion regulation skills to handle potential backlash or microaggressions that can come from deviating from expectations. Leadership coaching and or therapy can help with this.
Pick one low-stakes situation to try a different approach. Maybe it’s one email where you say “thanks for your patience” and one where you say “sorry for the delay,” then notice what happens. Whatever the results of your experiments, be neutral and curious. You may be able to focus on the data instead of getting stuck in judgments or emotions. Both failures and successes are valuable learning opportunities.
You may also get pushback or confusion from an experiment. These are opportunities to take a step back and ask yourself: Did I act in alignment with my values? If yes, the discomfort might be worth it. If not, adjust.
Don’t Lose Sight of the Bigger Problem
The meta message behind stop apologizing and its variants is that if women say the right things and stop saying the wrong things, they would be better received by colleagues, particularly those in positions of power (who are disproportionately male and White). This approach overemphasizes superficial markers of leadership without addressing the underlying power dynamics that produce inequities in the first place.
Rather than trying to “fix” yourself to fit a broken system, try this:
- Validate that the system is broken and your experiences are real
- Clarify what you value so you’re not unconsciously adopting someone else’s values
- Strategically experiment to gather data about your specific environment, so you can make informed choices about what risks are worth taking
This approach shifts from “change yourself to succeed” to “know yourself deeply enough to navigate the workplace strategically while staying connected to who you are.”
