Scroll through old emails, messages and texts to colleagues and supervisors and look for the word sorry. If it comes up quite often, consider whether or not those situations warranted an apology.

Any uncalled for use of the word sorry could deflate a professional’s perceived competence, according to Laurel McLay (pictured, right), New Zealand-based career expert. “What we want to say is, save sorry for when it really counts,” she said.

McLay and her twin sister, Josie Gillan (pictured, left), angel/advisor in training at Pipeline Angels (PipelineWomen LLC), spoke with Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the recent Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing event in Orlando, Florida. 

The sisters co-founded Twinovate, through which they help professionals build on their strengths and present an image that inspires trust. “We’re truly passionate about women — particularly in [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] — being able to contribute themselves fully in a way that works for them,” McLay said.

Women, more than men, tend to toss out the word sorry indiscriminately, she explained. They ought to curb this habit, because apologizing or even watering down language with qualifiers like actually can weaken an individual’s image in business, according to McLay.

“That makes you appear a lot less confident and really can have career-limiting impact,” McLay said.

Chutzpah cheat sheet

Through the Twinovate workshop and Facebook page, McLay and Gillan show women small and large steps they can take to pipe down on the apologies.

“We have created this cool little sheet we call Apology Bingo that’s available on our on Facebook page, and it helps people to look at the many times that they might say these words,” Gillan said. The duo also recommends the Gmail plug-in Just Not Sorry, which highlights wimp words much like a spell checker.

Taking this new attitude live and face-to-face will require some guts, they say. The bigger steps they advocate are “about people learning and doing some personal development work on themselves to get the courage to do that,” McLay said.

To-the-point women may be called angry, uppity or worse. To be sure, Twinovate does not advise abandoning good manners. As long as women are not crossing lines, standing their unapologetic ground will ultimately boost their image at work, they concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Photo: SiliconANGLE