Asking a late instructor why they’re late is a request for an excuse. Three steps that replace it, and the scripts that stop you asking for one.
My team is the Phoenix Suns, and a few seasons back they went out of the playoffs in a game that still bothers me. Afterward somebody asked Devin Booker what happened, and he said that putting it in context would sound like an excuse, so he wasn’t going to.
I didn’t want to hear that. I wanted the reasons! (I am, apparently, a fan first and a psychotherapist second.) I wanted to know what went wrong so I could be satisfied about it.
Then I noticed what I’d actually been asking for, and what I’d been trained to expect after any failure. He was strong enough not to give it to me. I came away with more respect for him, not less, and with an expectation that things might improve. That’s a strange trade, and it’s the whole subject.
An excuse is a reason with a claim attached
You’ve said it. I’ve said it. “I’m not making excuses, but the alarm clock battery died.” “I’m not making excuses, but my ride showed up late.” “I did have a flat tire that time, and that’s not my fault.”
Some of those are TRUE. That’s what makes this hard. The difference isn’t whether the reason is real. It’s that a reason gets handed over with a claim riding on it: this belongs outside me, and what happens next isn’t mine to fix.
What it actually costs you
When somebody doesn’t meet an agreement and assigns the cause to something outside their control, they come out less reliable than if they’d said nothing. The failure cost you once. The excuse costs you again, because now you also know how they’ll handle the next one.
It gets worse in a way most owners have felt and never said out loud. Your instructor is late and starts explaining the traffic. Now they’re implying you’ll spend a minute of your own time being sympathetic about it. The lateness took your schedule and the excuse is asking for your attention on top of it.
One thing before the steps, because this is where owners get it wrong in the other direction. Some reasons are real and they’re information you need. A sick kid, a hospital, a car in a ditch. You handle the PERSON first and you don’t run a script on them. What follows is for the miss that arrives wrapped in a claim, which is most of them.
Multiply that across a staff of six and you have a culture where every miss comes with a small bill attached. (The staff-facing version of this sits next to Effective Conflict Resolution, which covers what to do once it’s already a disagreement rather than a miss.)
There’s a name for the habit, and threat makes it worse
Keith Campbell and Constantine Sedikides ran a meta-analysis of the self-serving bias, which is the tendency to take credit for our successes and assign our failures to outside factors (Campbell & Sedikides, 1999). They found it’s real and it’s everywhere, which is not surprising.
They pulled fourteen different moderators under one idea, self-threat, and showed that the more threatened a person feels, the BIGGER the self-serving bias gets.
Excuse-making goes up and down depending on how exposed the person feels. You are also the largest source of felt threat in that conversation, which means the number of excuses you receive is partly a number you’re setting.
Stop asking for them
When an instructor, a staff member or your own kid comes in late, it’s natural to ask why. Look at the options you’ve just handed them. They can give you a reason so weak you don’t accept it, or a reason so good that you say “oh, I understand, you’re great.” One of those makes them defensive and the other rewards the lateness.
Neither one gets you a different result next week.
The three steps that go in its place
I call it the No Excuses Way. Roger Lewicki and colleagues took apologies apart into their separate components and tested them instead of treating an apology as one lump (Lewicki et al., 2016), which is the same instinct: the parts do different jobs. My middle step, empathy, is mine rather than theirs. I’ve watched it do work on the floor that the other two don’t do.
Acknowledge that the issue happened. Don’t hide it and don’t sugar coat it. An apology can ride along, though it doesn’t have to.
“I am late on the report, I know this will put us 3 days behind schedule…”
“You are right, I have not been keeping up with my paperwork…”
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Your job here is letting them know you understand the effect you had on them.
“I realize my being late may have disrupted your plans…”
“I understand this may have been inconvenient for you.”
Repair assumes a rupture. You don’t have to be at fault to be the one active in repairing it, and sometimes no repair is needed at all. The fix has to be relevant to the actual damage rather than a generic promise to do better.
How to prompt it in somebody else
Less talk, less emotion. Don’t engage with the excuse and don’t debate it. Ask for the three steps yourself.
Prompt the acknowledgement. “The situation is ________, correct?” Then let them answer. If they insist on the excuse, repeat only the result: “Yes, I was late because of traffic” gets “The situation is that you are 15 minutes late, is that correct?”
Prompt the empathy. “I feel like ________.” Tell them the effect it had on you. Then be quiet and let them respond. Showing empathy is a learned skill and plenty of people have never practiced it.
Prompt the repair. “I’d like to know what you’re going to do moving forward so this is improved.” This is the hard one, because if you’re frustrated you’ll want to hand them a list about alarm clocks. Let them build it instead. A repair somebody designs themselves is a repair they own.
Fair warning. Some people find this jarring at first, because they expect you to accept the excuse and you didn’t. Stay with it – what you get back is your own integrity and a staff that fixes things.
Worth turning it on yourself too, because the hardest version of this is the one where the miss was genuinely yours. I’ve written about that in It Was You, Not Them.
What to do this week
Count them. For one week, mark a tally every time you ask a question whose only possible answer is an excuse. “Why were you late.” “Why isn’t the paperwork done.” “Why did you leave the mats like that.”
Most owners are surprised by the number, and it is the ONE number here you control directly. Next week, replace each one with “The situation is ________, correct?” and watch how much shorter those conversations get.
Then go be the person who doesn’t hand one out either!
Common questions
What’s the difference between an excuse and a reason?
Often nothing about the facts. The difference is the claim attached: that the cause sits outside the person and the fix isn’t theirs. A reason can be completely true and still be doing the work of an excuse.
Why do excuses damage trust more than the original mistake?
The mistake costs once. Assigning the cause to something outside your control tells the other person how the next one will be handled too, so they adjust their expectations of you rather than just of that day.
Does the way a manager asks change how many excuses they get?
Research on the self-serving bias found it grows under self-threat, across fourteen different moderating conditions. Since a manager is a major source of felt threat in that exchange, the volume of excuse-making is partly set by how the question is asked.
What are the three steps that replace an excuse?
Acknowledge responsibility for what happened, show empathy for the effect it had on the other person, and offer a repair that fits the actual damage. Work on apology structure tests the components separately rather than as one gesture, which is why these are three steps instead of one. The empathy step is Chief Master Moody’s own addition rather than a finding.
How do you stop an employee mid-excuse without a confrontation?
Do not debate the excuse. Restate only the result and ask for confirmation: “The situation is that you are fifteen minutes late, is that correct?” Then say what effect it had, then ask what they will do going forward.
References
Campbell, W. K., & Sedikides, C. (1999). Self-threat magnifies the self-serving bias: A meta-analytic integration. Review of General Psychology, 3(1), 23–43. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.3.1.23
Lewicki, R. J., Polin, B., & Lount, R. B., Jr. (2016). An exploration of the structure of effective apologies. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 9(2), 177–196. https://doi.org/10.1111/ncmr.12073
Moody, G. (2024). Excuses: Building strong relationships by not using them! KarateBuilt L.L.C.
Adapted from the book Excuses: Building Strong Relationships By Not Using Them! More at mastermoody.com.
