The fine art of owning your mistakes and offering a classy apology has fallen on hard times. Often the offending person’s idea of an apology is “I’m sorry that your <insert whatever the offended is feeling here>.” That’s no apology. In fact, that’s a worse offense.

An apology is designed to demonstrate responsible ownership of your mistake and genuine sorrow that you’ve harmed the other person along with some assurance that you won’t do it again. So here are the steps to a good apology.

#1. Genuinely express your sorrow. Don’t be flippant, or fast with your words. If you can meet with the offended, look deeply into the eyes of the person you’ve harmed and say “I’m truly sorry.” If you can’t see them, either a phone call or a letter might suffice. If they are dead, you need to talk this through with your minister or a counselor.

#2. Ask “Will you please forgive me?” Then wait on their response. Hopefully it will be affirmative and collegial. The result of a good apology and forgiveness asked and granted is to restore the breach that was created.

#3. Thank the offended person for their understanding, and assure them that you’ve learned and will do better next time. Then do it.

We’re all going to offend. Sometimes it was necessary and intended and no apology is warranted. Sometimes its inadvertent and caused a hurt that we would have never intentionally caused. Sometimes we were just stupid, and did something stupid, and the consequence is ugly. Being able to navigate through a heartfelt apology is a skill we should all have in our toolbox.