Early in my career I was blessed with two gems of advice.

Executive female: Never say "I'm sorry" in the business environment.

Executive male: Claim responsibility. Say "I'm sorry, it's my fault. What can we do to fix it".

Hmmm, imagine my confusion.

But in the 12 years since I've heard them, both nuggets of advice have proved true. It's just knowing which advice applies to the current situation.

For instance, in meeting recently I walked in to find the IT guys pointing fingers over a testing plan. SO, I said "Sorry, my fault. I didn't include the (insert "Hello, common sense" element here) in the requirements doc. Let's fix it" And we did.

Similarly, a coworker came to me after a rather emotional outburst to our boss. She wanted to apologize. I said "NO WAY!". He, being a guy, most likely didn't want to be reminded of the incident. The situation was so bad that I was afraid he would fire the next person who mentioned it. And he did.

Screwy reasoning but it's kept me employed ;-)