If you have been in business long enough, you have made a mistake. I certainly have.

Maybe you missed a meeting. You forgot to return an important call. You overlooked a detail in a contract. You misunderstood an instruction or failed to communicate something that another person was counting on you to handle. 

Mistakes happen. What defines you as a professional isn’t whether you make them. It’s what you do next.

In commercial real estate, our transactions involve a lot of people: clients, brokers, attorneys, lenders, title and escrow officers, inspectors, contractors, employees, assistants and countless other professionals. There are deadlines, negotiations and millions of dollars at stake. 

Even with the best systems and intentions, something can occasionally go wrong. When it does, own it.

Three Steps: Acknowledge. Apologize. Remedy.

A sincere professional apology doesn’t require a lengthy explanation. In fact, overexplaining can quickly begin to sound like excuse-making. Start by acknowledging what happened.

• I missed our meeting.
• I should have caught that.
• I didn’t communicate this as quickly as I should have.

Then say the words that sometimes seem surprisingly difficult in business. A simple, “I’m sorry,” goes a long way toward building or rebuilding trust.

No “but.” No shifting responsibility to an employee, a busy schedule or someone else involved in the transaction.

Then comes the part I believe is just as important as the apology: offer a remedy.

What can you do to make the situation right? Can you correct the document immediately? Absorb a cost? Reschedule at the other person’s convenience? Make the phone call you should have made yesterday? Put a new procedure in place so the mistake doesn’t happen again?

An apology acknowledges the past. A remedy demonstrates how you intend to move forward.

Some Conversations Deserve More Than a Text

Technology has made communication wonderfully convenient, but convenience isn’t always appropriate.

If your mistake significantly affected someone else, pick up the phone or, when warranted, apologize face-to-face.

A text saying, “Sorry about that,” after a meaningful mistake can come across as dismissive. Worse, it can leave the other person feeling that you aren’t willing to have an uncomfortable conversation and fully own what happened.

Your tone matters. Your sincerity matters. And sometimes people need to hear your voice to understand that you genuinely mean what you are saying.

When an Apology Isn’t Enough

Several years ago, I represented a client purchasing a $3 million NNN investment property. It was 2020, COVID was in full swing, and this was a new construction project with two tenants. We couldn’t close until construction was complete and both tenants had received their certificates of occupancy. Estoppel certificates were also coming in late, making an already complicated closing even more challenging.

But complicated isn’t an excuse.

After closing, one of the tenants refused to pay rent. They had six months of rent abatement written into their lease.

We had missed it.

The buyer missed it. The attorney missed it. And I missed it.

Had we caught the provision during due diligence, we would have negotiated for the seller to reimburse the buyer for those six months of lost rent at closing. After the transaction closed, however, our leverage was gone. I went back to the seller and tried to recover the money, but they refused. The tenant was simply exercising a right clearly provided in its lease.

There was no one else to look to. We had made a mistake, and an apology wasn’t going to replace six months of income for our client.

The attorney and I discussed the situation and decided the right thing to do was to cover the lost rent ourselves. We valued our client, our professional responsibilities and the relationship more than the cost of correcting our mistake.

Something unexpected happened next. When we told our client what we intended to do, he insisted on absorbing a portion of the loss himself.

That experience has stayed with me. We didn’t preserve that relationship because we were perfect. Clearly, we weren’t. We preserved it because when something went wrong, we acknowledged our mistake, apologized and offered a meaningful remedy.

That client remains a good friend, continues to seek our advice, and we expect to close another investment property together.

Sometimes saying “I’m sorry” is enough. Other times, the apology needs to come with action.

Acknowledge it. Apologize for it. Remedy it.

An Apology Isn’t a Sign of Weakness

Some professionals struggle to apologize because they believe admitting a mistake diminishes their credibility.

I believe the opposite is true. Taking responsibility builds credibility.

People don’t expect perfection. They do expect honesty, accountability and professionalism, especially when something goes wrong.

Over the years, I’ve learned that a sincere apology can actually strengthen a business relationship. It tells the other person: I respect you enough to acknowledge what happened, and I value this relationship enough to make it right.