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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I just met with one of the leaders of my new organization.  I’m completely new to this field and bring a technical skill from a different part of the business.  My predecessor was “all talk no show” and I’m very delivery oriented but don’t understand this part of the business well and I’m not the sales-type person my predecessor was - he was all vision and ideas, zero implementation.  Before he left he wrote this paper telling the business that they could make loads of money by doing x, y, and z - he sent the paper to the highest leadership, above the leader I just met (her boss and others). She is responsible for the part of the business this paper is about. She was polite but clearly pissed off that MY team would do this.  It was awful!  When the paper was written I was new (and not officially on seat) - my predecessor wrote it and I’m clearly blamed. I tried to walk it back and apologize and minimize the damage, but clearly this isn’t working.  Now it feels like I have people who don’t like me or want to work with me that don’t know me or my team or our skill.  I have to work with them otherwise I’m out in the next layoff.  How do I recover?!

I feel so ashamed and embarrassed over something that I had zero control over.[/quote]

Why would you apologize OP? That was a mistake.

Your attitude needs to be: sorry my predecessor left this for us to deal with but how can I help make it work?[/quote]

My reflex is to avoid conflict.  I apologize reflexively, like Brits do, even when I know I’m not to blame.  Yeah, she’s American and will likely interpret that as me taking responsibility.  Now I’m embarrassed for apologizing.  Geez there’s no end[/quote]

One of the better decisions I’ve made in my career as a woman is to simply never apologize ever for anything.  I say phrases like “that’s unfortunate,” or “that happened.”  I know that if I started apologizing I would never stop so I just made a hard and fast rule.[/quote]

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