This incident made the news after the player filed a police report, and kicked off a national debate about tough versus abusive coaching. It eventually culminated in a tense meeting between player and coach on the television show Good Morning America, during which the player would not accept the coach’s apology. Soon afterward, the coach resigned his position.

After reviewing a video of the show, I feel this incident has an important lesson for all of us – but not the one you might think. I feel that in this case, the coach did not lose his job over a shove on the basketball court. He lost it over a stupendously bad apology.

Apologies are a tightly scripted dance where every word has to work. They are one form of communication where 99% often isn’t good enough: like O’Connor’s game of basketball, the momentum of the game can turn on you in a heartbeat, and the wrong words can easily backfire. So in that spirit, I would like to respectfully break down how the player probably heard O’Connor’s words.

“This was an accident”: Here, the coach is blaming circumstances rather than himself, and saying it wasn’t really his fault. Statements like these are like throwing chum into shark-infested waters.

“I was just trying to make us a better team and make us more competitive”: This is the dreaded rationale statement, where he thinks the right reasons will somehow make things OK. But the listener doesn’t care. Instead of taking ownership, these “reasons” make him sound entitled and defensive.

“It was unintentional by me”: He may think he is saying he had no malice of forethought. Instead, it sounds like he had no control over what happened, and for that matter, it could jolly well happen again.

“I’m really sorry that it happened”: Oops. This is the classic “I’m sorry but not responsible” statement. Instead of talking about what *he* shouldn’t have done, he wishes that “it” hadn’t happened.

So let’s replay this apology as the player probably heard it: “I wasn’t responsible for what happened. I have no clue how I could have avoided it. Besides, I had good reasons for it. So it’s too bad it happened.” Breaking down the linguistics, I frankly don’t think the player had much choice in turning it down, especially in front of an audience.

Even worse, when GMA host George Stephanopoulos asked coach O’Connor whether his behavior was over the line, he hemmed, hawed, and insisted it was an “accident.” Linguistically, game, set, and match went to the player at that point.

Now let’s try a real apology that steps up and takes ownership, validates the injured party, and expresses remorse and restitution: “Matt, I crossed a line last week. I tried to be competitive after a tough loss and took it much too far. In the process I embarrassed you, me, and our school. I acted like a bully, and I don’t blame you for reacting the way you did. You are a good player, and this shouldn’t have happened to you. I apologize for what I did; more important, I want to promise you that I have learned from it, and that it will never happen again. I hope you will give our coaching relationship another chance from here.”

If the coach had chosen the right words, I feel his player would have been much more likely to accept his apology; in fact, he might have seemed petty not to. And the coach – who had the support of much of his team after the incident – would probably still have his job and his dignity intact.

If this subject interests you, check out a truly incredible book: Effective Apology by John Kador. It breaks down the mechanics of good versus bad apologies – and in the process, will teach you how to have grace and power in your most challenging situations. Like sinking a clutch 3-pointer, I hope this coach can eventually learn to use the power of words better, and move forward from this incident.

Like many people, I sign up with a specific e-mail address reserved for this kind of stuff. I check it every couple of months or so, open a few of them, and do a mass delete for the rest. And it fascinates me to see which ones I do and don’t open out of the hundreds that are waiting for me.

Let’s start with the ones I never open:

False urgency: If you use capital letters, exclamation points, or time limits, I will never ever click your message. For exactly the same reason I don’t hang out with people who shout in my ear. Messages like “Rich, will I see you TODAY?” and “You HAVE to check this offer out” all go through the trap door immediately.

False intimacy: I realize you have my name. I gave it to you when I signed up for your list. But that doesn’t mean splattering it all over your subject lines is going to impress me. “Rich, get my e-mail about tomorrow?” “What’s your plan for 2011, Rich?” Look, we haven’t even met, and here you go asking me all these personal questions.

It is even worse, of course, when you use the name from my credit card order. The only time I am ever called “Richard” is when my wife is mad at me about something.

Guessing games: I really don’t have time to play “ha-ha, made you look!” So if you have cute e-mail titles like “Read this fast, Rich” (there you go with the “Rich” again …) or “I’m totally convinced,” you have to get in line behind a few hundred other e-mails that are willing to tell me what they are talking about.

Now let’s look at the lucky few e-mails I do open:

You offer me something of value: One e-mail I did open had a subject line of “Want to meet Zig Ziglar?” Yes, I would. He is a legend, and being in his 80s, who knows how much longer he’ll be working the speaking circuit. The workshop was too far away and too expensive for me, but at least I did click through a couple of levels to explore it. You offered me something cool and very specific, and I checked it out.

I like you: For example, I recently connected with a fellow speaker on Facebook named Al Borowski, based in my former hometown of Pittsburgh. I really liked his schtick, and his messages are pretty high-content, so I’m happy to see what new things he has to say in his e-mails.

You have a track record: My good friend and colleague Carolyn Healey, publisher of customer support industry portal site SupportIndustry.com, has an incredible radar for high-content articles on trends in the industry. Her content helps my business, so I have always read her weekly newsletter cover to cover (and still do). That’s why her stuff gets delivered to my personal e-mail, not my “slush” e-mail.

It is tougher than ever to get your message through in today’s ultra-high-bandwidth environment. To sum up what works for me: Offer value. Be likeable. Be genuine. Be specific. Amp down the urgency. And please don’t call me Richard.

I was back this week doing some training for my good friends at Colgate University, one of the most mission-driven organizations I have worked with. They see their role as not just being an elite liberal-arts school (and having a great football team), but creating experiences in and out of the classroom that help students develop as leaders.

It was in this context that I was fascinated by this mural, which graced the wall above me as I led a workshop at their campus multicultural center. It appears to be a storyteller (“naw, it’s a shaman” remarked my sweetie …), bathed in light, with people gathered around him. In the far background, people are dancing.

What are the things you do best? What are you proudest of? What is the North Star that you move toward in life? I will bet these all revolve around things you were *taught*. Things you never knew before that captured your imagination, gave you new skills and powers, and perhaps even changed the direction of your life. Things that helped you learn to dance your own unique dance.

Storytellers have had a huge influence in my life. For example, I struggled in school when I was a child, actually getting put in a special private school by the time I was seven years old. (I’ll bet I am the only Ivy League graduate you know who flunked third grade.) So what was different there? For one thing, they assigned me a “math nun” who taught me college-level matrix algebra in fourth grade – and then had me teach it to the fifth grade students.

The simple act of teaching me a skill that few people knew – and then giving me a chance to show people I was great, not just bad – was life-changing for me. I later earned an engineering degree from Cornell and actually made a career of using matrix algebra for many years. In fact, those who know me as a communications skills author often have no idea that my first book was actually a book on 3D computer graphics that is knee-deep in matrix equations.

I have seen the same thing happen many times in other people’s lives. The young person in trouble who discovers great skills in culinary school, and jumps from the fire into the frying pan. The person struggling with their job or their attitude, until someone takes them aside and says, “I see potential in you – try this.” Or in a more famous example, Susan Boyle living a very ordinary life until someone asked her to open her mouth and sing.

Much of my current career as an author and public speaker revolves around telling stories that teach people new things, and hopefully giving them powers they never had before. People often tell me that they don’t communicate well, react badly to others, or get flustered in difficult situations. Then I teach them different words to use, and pow! Problem solved. They didn’t have to work harder, try more often, or change their personalities – in fact, those approaches have almost always failed them in the past. They just needed to listen to someone who knew something they didn’t, take it in, and hopefully pass it on.

I would not be so arrogant as to compare myself with the person bathed in light in the picture above. Sometimes my stories lift people, and very often other people’s stories lift me. In both cases the brightest moments of my life, now and I believe yet to come, spring from gatherings where stories are being told and new ideas are being shared.

So what stories do you have to share with people? What could you teach people that might lift them, give them new skills, or help them believe in themselves? And more important, what stories might be out there that might change your life?

I am not going to join the chorus of people calling her a bad mother – that is between her and her daughters, at least one of whom publicly supports her. But what she describes goes against everything I have ever learned in family therapy, and for some of it (like the piano incident) some columnists are wondering what the social services folks think. And for whatever it is worth, my four siblings and I – all of whom became Ivy League graduates and successful adults – came from good parents who didn’t scream at us when we got B’s, block our social lives, or pressure us into activities we didn’t want.

For that matter, my late father’s parents were always trying to get him to loosen up and not be such a grind studying, and he ignored them and eventually became a university president – kind of like an early version of Michael J. Fox in Family Ties. If his parents had used Chua’s approach and pushed him instead, what would he have done instead – lead two universities? Or perhaps lose his motivation entirely? I am not yet convinced that Chua’s argument would hold water if you were to do a legitimate empirical study. Especially if you measured being happy and successful, versus just test scores and trophies.

But I have a deeper concern with books like this. Our society has become addicted to extreme solutions with no room for shades of grey. Whether Amy Chua intended it this way or not, she now joins the flamethrowers on cable news channels, the shock jocks on the radio, and the get-rich-quick hucksters on the business bookshelf. All of them make a great deal of money by putting out extreme views that people embrace as the next great hope.

Ultimately my concern isn’t so much for Amy Chua’s parenting skills. It is that her book is on the cover of Time magazine. Because it draws a lot more attention than things like supportive parenting, productive dialogue, political diversity, and moderation. In my opinion, the problem isn’t with them, it is with us. When we put books like Chua’s on the bestseller list (currently #4 on Amazon as I write this), we sacrifice more of our own humanity to the counsel of the loudest voices.

The road to civility doesn’t make for good media buzz. This is why I rarely watch television unless there is an umpire on the screen somewhere, and do not purchase books like Amy Chua’s. But if enough of us start changing the channel, we could honestly build a much more respectful world, where screaming parents and political extremists are off in the margins where they belong. Care to join me?

You see, my mother lives down the road from that Safeway in Tucson, where my family has called home since the 1970s. I have gone shopping in it on many a Saturday morning. It is one of the safest and friendliest neighborhoods you could imagine, in a beautiful setting surrounded by the Santa Catalina mountains. I have always thought that if there was a paradise on earth, this place was close to it. And now, just like that, it has suddenly become a place of horror.

Since then, there has been no lack of opinions on what happened. We’ve been hearing this incident turn into a forum on political vitriol, the death penalty, and what Obama and Palin said – or should have said. And we keep going back and forth about whose fault this situation ultimately was or wasn’t.

My opinion is that perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to have an opinion. I would love nothing better than to see an end to the partisan ranting that passes for entertainment on today’s cable news channels. It would be great to put an end to the politics of division. And I would welcome seeing society respect its elected officials. But sadly, I don’t think any of that would prevent incidents like this.

The shooter was, by all accounts, a good kid who slid over time into severe mental illness. Of course, some mentally ill people become politically overinvested. And a few take out their grievances, real or imaginary, on people in public. I myself had a scary incident years ago, after a radio appearance in Rochester on a book I had written on corporate culture, where an obviously unbalanced man pushed toward me at a book signing that night ranting about corporate America, yelling a few inches from my face and poking at me. Thankfully I was whisked away by store security posthaste.

But I also don’t think the context ultimately matters that much. When I visited Japan years ago, for example, I read about a man committing a murder who claimed that Buddha made him do it. If we are really going to prevent tragedies like these in the future, we need to rethink how we deal with serious mental illness. Because we could heal every single political rift in the nation, and next week someone might get shot at Disneyland by someone who is obsessed with Goofy.

When a member of Congress lies critically wounded, and we watch the funerals of people like an innocent 9 year old girl, feelings run very strongly. And for me, this incident strikes close to home – my mother could have been in that store. (For today, I am glad she is a Republican.) But right now, it is simply time for America to mourn the dead, and resolve to do a better job of treating the mentally ill.

Often I find myself in the middle of conflicts like these as a counselor. And over time, I have found a simple question that often changes everything about these conflicts when I ask it. I call it The Big Question. Here it is:

“Is the other person simply a bad person?”

If the answer is “yes,” all you can do is set boundaries for yourself. But if the answer is “no,” this question can lead you to the common ground where the solution lies.

You see, every conflict fundamentally boils down to a dialogue that goes something like this: “Me, me, me, me, me.” “No, me, me, me, me, me.” “Yeah, but me, me, me, me, me.” And soon we get entrenched in our positions and start building a “villain story” about the other party: “He is out to get me.” “She won’t listen to common sense.” “They are constantly stabbing me in the back.”

In reality, we all have a powerful survival instinct that leads us to push back against people who confront us, criticize us, or disagree with us – listen carefully – no matter how right they are. Which means that the laws of physics work against you every time you go, “Me, me, me.” So most conflicts normally continue until one party or the other finally goes, “OK, I see: you, you, you.” So let’s see how this ties in with The Big Question:

-If you believe that your mother is simply meddlesome and judgmental for the sake of pure evil, you may never convince her to stop. But if you realize that she is worried about how well her grandchildren will turn out, then the two of you have something to talk about.

-If your boss is simply a ruthless taskmaster, you may have no option other than to leave. But if you know that he feels people don’t respect him or listen to him, there is light on the path.

-If your husband married you for the sole purpose of making you feel worthless, you probably won’t stay married much longer. But if underneath it all he needs down time while you need attention, there is hope.

Sometimes people are, in fact, bad people. When someone is sexually harassing you, stealing from your company, or posting compromising pictures of you on the Internet, you don’t need to communicate better with them. For some situations, the right answer is to take them to court, talk to your HR department, or simply say “No more.”

But in reality, most people aren’t just bad people. And if they aren’t, chances are that you know it. So ask yourself The Big Question, and take the first step to putting your conflicts behind you.

Given the knot I feel in my stomach sitting in the stands as a fan, I can only imagine what it is like being one of the 18 men out there in the arena. Some of them are probably locked in doing a job they have done well for years. Others, being human, get caught up in the tension of an atmosphere where one team ultimately succeeds and the other goes home in defeat. And more often than you think, games are decided by human errors that you rarely if ever see during the regular season.

I was thinking of that tense playoff vibe this week reading about Brooks Conrad, a 30-year-old career minor leaguer who suddenly found himself on baseball’s biggest stage. Thanks to injuries to two of the star players on the Atlanta Braves’ depth chart, he ended up playing second base in a key playoff game – and committed a record three errors, the last of which bobbled a routine play that turned a certain victory into a last-minute defeat. Atlanta bowed out of the playoffs shortly afterward, and after the game Conrad stated that he wished he could “dig a hole and go sleep in there.”

So picture this: you have devoted your entire life to becoming a baseball star, enduring years of bus rides and bad food, and finally make it to the top – only to see your moment in the sun drowned out by a chorus of boos, and your name going into the wrong side of the history books. Red Sox great Bill Buckner experienced it when a routine ground ball rolled through his legs to keep the Sox from winning their first World Series in nearly 70 years, and Buffalo Bills kicker Scott Norwood gained a lifelong nickname of “Wide Right” when the Bills lost a Super Bowl on his missed last-second field goal.

So what fascinates me in cases like these – where people fail on some of life’s biggest stages – is where they take their lives from there. Some take it on the chin and move on. Like 1993 World Series goat Mitch Williams, who became a respected sports broadcaster, or Buckner, who had a long and distinguished tenure as a baseball coach. Others did not fare so well, like when baseball’s Donnie Moore committed suicide three years after surrendering a climactic home run in the playoffs.

What is the difference? In my view, something I call “leaning in” to mistakes. When I was training to become a therapist, I went through an exercise where someone would intentionally criticize my therapy work in front of a group, and I was instructed to simply acknowledge or agree with him. (“You’re right. I really did mess that up. In fact, you should have seen me last week – I was even worse! That must have been a really bad experience for my client.”) Then the group points out how well you come across by openly discussing all of this criticism.

This was a life-changing experience for me. In a very real sense, my “new toy” over the last three years has been learning to lean into other people’s criticism without getting defensive. It works beautifully for other people as well, even in their worst moments. Williams, for example, has made it a point to freely acknowledge and talk about his mistakes in the World Series for years, to the point where he became a welcome and respected figure in the same Philadelphia he lost the Series for.

Nowadays I am often on stage in front of large audiences, sometimes hundreds of people. The vast majority of the time it goes swimmingly. Other times I kick it wide right. Like the time I invited someone on stage to role-play an angry patient with me, and she just got angrier and angrier as she taunted my well-rehearsed techniques. Or the time I name-checked the wrong sports team in the wrong city and was drowned out by a chorus of boos.

I have found that when I lean into these situations with gusto, they usually turn out just fine. The angry person, for example, soon taught both me and the audience a lot about what it’s like about her work with challenging people like drug addicts, and it was a great learning experience for all of us. And the sports gaffe led to a productive discussion on what their team does right. Ironically, I feel my worst mistakes often lead me to rave reviews and more business by the time I’m finished.

So smile, Brooks Conrad. Own what happened and lean into it. And then come back next year – or ride off into the sunset – proud of having gotten into the arena to make these mistakes. You’ll be fine.

At the same time, I have to be honest with you: what I do is really pretty simple. There is more science behind it than you might think. And you can do it yourself in your own relationship. Looking back on several hundred therapy sessions, I could boil many of them down into five simple rules:

1. No criticism. Ever. Really. Before my first session with a family is over, I tell them my mantra: you can never successfully criticize anyone for anything, ever. There are few less successful undertakings than trying to convince someone else they are wrong.

We all have a hard-wired survival instinct to push back against criticism – listen carefully – no matter how right it is. Get this and everything starts changing.

2. Ask for what you want. So now what happens with all those grievances you have with your loved ones: the crumbs in bed, the bad attitude, the affair two years ago? Here’s what you do: ask them for something specific and actionable. And remember, NO criticism.

I can read your mind right now. You are saying, “Look, I’ve asked my partner over and over and over to stop doing X, and she keeps doing it anyway.” No you haven’t. You’ve been complaining to her in a tone of voice that would curdle milk, and she’s responded with human nature. So try it again: “Agnes, honey, I would love it if you could do X. It would make me so happy. Where could we go with this?”

Maybe the other person will say yes. Maybe they will say no. Maybe the problem is unsolvable, like when she wants children and he doesn’t. Either way, you’ll be talking productively, instead of watching the other person respond passively or aggressively to your gripes. So ask them to go mountain climbing, see a movie with you every week, or kiss you passionately. Then watch what happens.

3. Ask what they want. What makes your kid happy? What is your partner most worried about? How do they feel about the X that you are asking for? Knowledge is power, and most of us spend too much time wondering what to say to someone and not enough time wondering what to ask.

4. Cheer the other person on. Do you have a rotten kid, or a complaining spouse? Pop quiz – how often do you compliment them, or say things that accept them for who they are, or comfort their mistakes? There is a stronger correlation between these things than you might think. People are capable of amazing transformations when they feel loved and supported.

5. Create your own great life. In grad school, they teach us a spectrum. At one end people are “enmeshed” – highly reactive and dependent on others for their emotional well-being. At the other end they are “differentiated” – loving and secure, but not needy. We want you to be more differentiated and less enmeshed. So start being a great partner or family member by making yourself happy.

Is that all there is to it? Well, not always. But as long as you both care, and aren’t beating each other with sticks or recovering from trauma, this is actually a pretty good summary of where a family therapist might lead you. Try it for yourself, and watch some amazing things start to happen with the people you love.

Here is a neat little tool I recently developed for my therapy clients. It is a worksheet where you plug in the right words, and then watch the other person’s criticism go down the drain. It is based on very powerful, evidence-based principles of strength-based communication.

It came into being when I would instruct people to “acknowledge” or “validate” the other person, and they had no idea how to go about it. So I would whip out a sheet of paper and write down a step-by-step procedure, and suddenly everything became clear. Try it yourself and let me know what you think!

The criticism-stopping worksheet

Step 1. Begin your response with, “Well, of course!”

Step 2. Describe the worst possible thing the other person might be imagining. Don’t hold back!

Step 3. State your own case. Use facts, stay positive, and never, ever use the word “but.”

Step 4. Ask “What do you think?”

Here are some examples of how it works:

Mom: What a stupid idea you have about majoring in acting!
College student: Well, of course! I’ll bet you worry that I am going to end up a starving actor who hangs around your house drinking beer in my underwear until I’m 43. In reality, I am planning to see how I can use the acting skills I learn to succeed in business, while I try to build a career. What do you think?

Boyfriend: Sheesh – here you go with another crazy business idea!
Girlfriend: Well, of course! The last business I tried failed miserably, so you are probably worried that I am going to crash and burn again – and take our finances with it. Here is how I am planning to gradually bootstrap this business this time (…) What do you think?

Wife: You never pay attention to me. You are always in front of your computer.
Husband: Well, of course! You probably feel like I am married to my career instead of you these days. I have been pretty busy, but perhaps we should schedule a “date night” every week just for us. What do you think?

So what do you folks think? Welcome your comments!

Now, here is my own hot air balloon story. Recently, an over-the-counter medication that my wife and I use regularly went completely AWOL. We could not find it in any store, and every major online retailer was mysteriously out of stock as well. But we hadn’t heard anything about it being discontinued, so I e-mailed the company.

The response I received did note that “we are aware of the problem,” but the rest of it was corporate twaddle about how they “appreciate the time I have taken to contact them” and ”would be happy to assist me in the future.” I will not reprint it here, to protect the guilty, but I will translate it into plain English: We are too stupid to know when, where, or if you can purchase our products, or to even acknowledge you directly.

Shortly before that, I called another large company after discovering the PFFFTTT of a broken inner seal on their orange juice. This time I was subjected to a lengthy interrogation – including being asked no less than three times if I really, really didn’t have an alternate contact number – and was then ordered to keep the product in my refrigerator until I received a letter from them. This week I finally received the letter, which magnanimously informed me that I was now free to discard my own orange juice.

The lesson in both stories? Most organizations don’t realize there is a simple way to turn their customers into raving fans, sitting right under their noses: change the scripts they use to deal with the public.

The word “script” strikes fear into the hearts of many customer advocates. But to me, there is great joy in good scripts. Back when I was director of customer services for a large NASDAQ software firm, great scripts that used people’s names, paraphrased their concerns, and used solution-oriented language formed the bedrock upon which we built high service ratings and strong sales growth. Unfortunately, most organizations use robotic scripts that sound like they could care less, like the ones above.

Another important reason for good scripts: your own front line people. When someone like me, who is unfailingly polite, comes away feeling annoyed by transactions like these, I can just imagine how customers with lower EQs react. This is probably why your staff sound like robots who would rather be doing their taxes than working for you.

Let’s close with a rare good example. A few months ago, some goof managed to hack my Apple iTunes account and charge themselves a gift certificate. When I finally figured out how to e-mail Apple (which is like trying to call the Pope), I received a response that began, ” I understand you are concerned about purchases that were made with your iTunes Store account without your permission or knowledge. I realize how upsetting this can be for you. Thank you very much for reporting this to us.” Wow. Perfect. And probably being cut-and-pasted just like all the other corporate responses I get. See what a difference the right words make?

(P.S. Shameless plug department: Do you want corporate communications that help your customers adore you, your employees love coming to work, and your sales go through the roof? Connect with me (gallagher -at- pointofcontactgroup.com) for a nice no-sales-pressure-whatsoever chat, anytime!)