Being a Boss with a Compulsion to Apologize

I'm not a huge Lena Dunham fan.  She's an outspoken champion for women, so I feel obligated to pay attention to her.  But her show hasn't enticed me; I read Not That Kind of Girl and personally found much of it unsympathetic and unrelatable.  I've subscribed to her newsletter, Lenny, but more often than not I just roll my eyes at the titles and delete them.  For the most part, her work is just not my style . . . and because of that I often don't give her a break.

For some reason I read her recent post for LinkedIn:  Sorry, Not Sorry: My Apology Addiction.  (Maybe it had something to do with her fantastic headshot at the top of the article.)  Once I got past the trendy title, and the Beyonce-referencing first paragraph, I was ready to dismiss the article as yet another redundant---however earnest and frankly accurate--- piece about how women apologize too much and need to learn to have more confidence.  But then I got to this paragraph:

"I say sorry all day . . . I am a woman who is sometimes right, sometimes wrong but somehow always sorry. And this has never been more clear to me than in the six years since I became a boss." (emphasis mine)

I realized that Dunham was talking about my experiences.  As someone who runs a team and has direct reports, I have to make decisions and tell people what to do.  Most of the time the team works in harmony.  But as with anything, screw ups and disagreements happen.  Sometimes decisions have to be made that can't please everyone.  This falls to me, and I'm ok with that.