How to apologize
/Do it right, and it might actually improve your reputation.
Some years ago, I gave a talk to 300 marketing executives at a major corporation. The subject was “How to Screw Up.” Being a master at screwing up, I felt well qualified for the presentation.
I told the assembled marketers that a company’s reputation relies on the same characteristics as an individual. You want people to believe that you’re capable (Craft), you care about customers (Caring), and you live up to high standards and values (Cause, or Virtue). I noted that Aristotle had defined these qualities for the ideal ethos, or public character, some 2,500 years ago, and that they hold true to this day.
Then I screwed up. I told the marketers not to say they were sorry.
It’s true that an apology can do more harm than good. “I’m sorry you feel hurt” is downright offensive. But even a genuine, heartfelt “I’m very sorry” can damage your reputation.
That’s because a stark apology often means belittling yourself. Most people duck their heads and slump their shoulders when they apologize; in some cultures they literally bow down, turning small and submissive. They literally self-belittle. That’s why politicians love to demand apologies from their opponents. Size does matter.
By making amends, you show your ability to mend.
When I invited questions, a woman stood up and said, “I’ve been apologizing all my life, and I don’t think a single man has ever said he’s sorry, and here’s a man telling us we shouldn’t apologize!”
Agreement buzzed through the room. Looking around, I realized that at least two-thirds of those executives were women.
Naturally, I said was sorry.
But I’d been partly right. Apologies alone won’t cut it. You also need to convince your audience that you can deal with the harm. By making amends, you show your ability to mend—your phronesis, as Aristotle put it: your “practical wisdom,” an audience’s trust in your ability to solve a problem. Simply belittling yourself won’t inspire that trust.
Instead after every major mistake, you can enact this Screwup Protocol:
1. Be first with the news.
Promptly admitting a mistake helps the “Caring” part of your ethos as well as your virtue.
2. Talk about the high standards you temporarily violated.
Turn your mistake into a chance to remind others of your Craft and Cause.
3. Express your own emotion, not the victim’s.
Go ahead and say you’re sorry. I was foolish to say that an apology was unnecessary; a wronged audience expects contrition. But it’s far more important to show how upset you are that you let your own principles down. Use that temporary lapse—and your own dismay—as a way of reminding people of your high standards. (In my latest book I tell how I use this argument with my own disappointed Aristotelian soul.)
4. Switch the tense to the future.
Talk about the fix, and how you plan to prevent a repetition. That mistake makes you all the more committed to your high standards!
Do it right, and your reputation might end up higher than before you screwed up.
This worked for me early in my career, when I wrote a news column in a magazine putting Mt. St. Helens in Oregon—the wrong state.
A realistic depiction of my brain upon receipt of the governor’s letter.
I received a letter from the governor of Washington asking for her volcano back. Walking red-faced into my boss’s office, I had a fix in mind: I would buy a model of the volcano and personally deliver it to the governor!
“No way am I letting your mistake buy you a trip to the West Coast,” my boss replied. But he said I could buy a plastic volcano and mail it to her. Back came a photo of the governor posing with the toy volcano, and we proudly published that with our correction.
And we wrote that we were sorry.
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