You might think knowing how to apologize when your organization screws up would be high up there in every leader’s skill set. And you would be mistaken.
A good apology can help everyone move past a crisis and start repairing relationships between organizations and their stakeholders. (You can find my podcast episode on making an effective apology here.) Yet every day seems to bring more examples of organizations and their leaders who not only don’t have a clue how to apologize, but manage to make things worse.
How? Let me count the ways:
- the apology that implies the problem’s really the other person’s for being so easily offended or hurt.
- the apology that implies actually you may not have done anything wrong — or that maybe the victim's really at fault.
- the one that makes it all about you and how you’re a victim here too.
- apologies that go wrong by playing down what happened.
- apologies that deflect, by apologizing for something tangential to the real misstep.
And... oh, god, so many more. You've heard them combined (so) many times from celebrities who’ve said things that were just appalling or racist or cruel. They offer a self-pitying I apologize if anyone was offended by my light-hearted joke. Now I’ve had to endure the worst 32 minutes of my whole life!
I call those “faux-pologies.” (I can confirm that’s a term that has just plain never caught on, despite years of trying. I can also confirm I will never stop trying to make fetch happen.)
And what they all have in common is they shrug off the most important part of an apology: taking responsibility.
Let’s see how those play out in a single incident.
United breaks guitars trust (and a nose, and two teeth)
Back in 2017, United had a little problem that was about to become a huge one.
They wanted to get four of their employees onto Flight 3411 out of O’Hare. The problem: Flight 3411 that day was full of paying customers.
So they ordered a passenger who was already seated, one Dr. David Dao, to get off the plane. He refused, as he needed to see patients at his destination the next day.
United had him forcibly dragged off the plane by airport security. They weren't gentle about it: he suffered a broken nose and two lost teeth.
Plenty of passengers recorded the incident and posted video to document what quickly became the viral moment of the day, a huge news story and a PR headache for United. (Not to mention a nightmarish ordeal for Dr. Dao, who would reach an "amicable" settlement with United a few weeks later.)
How to apologize... badly
The incident happened on a Sunday. Here's the statement released by United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz two days later:
This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United. I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers. Our team is moving with a sense of urgency to work with the authorities and conduct our own detailed review of what happened. We are also reaching out to this passenger to talk directly to him and further address and resolve this situation.
When it comes to apology missteps, this faux-pology covers a lot of bases.
Munoz makes the situation about the company, not the passenger: “upsetting to all of us here at United.” And with the phrase “having to re-accommodate these customers,” he manages a two-fer. He downplays a practice that amounts to kicking passengers off flights (“re-accommodate”) and ducks responsibility (“having to,” as though United’s hands were tied).
But here’s the cardinal sin. While he was asking the public for more time to figure out what happened, he and United were telling the airline's staff this:
This situation was unfortunately compounded when one of the passengers we politely asked to deplane refused and it became necessary to contact Chicago Aviation Security Officers to help. Our employees followed established procedures for dealing with situations like this. While I deeply regret this situation arose, I also emphatically stand behind all of you, and I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right.
When we approached one of these passengers to explain apologetically that he was being denied boarding, he raised his voice and refused to comply with crew member instructions. He was approached a few more times after that in order to gain his compliance to come off the aircraft, and each time he refused and became more and more disruptive and belligerent.
Which did not read like an organization that’s waiting to get all the facts. The letter was promptly made public, which was doubly unfortunate for Munoz: not just because he told the public one thing and his employees another, but because he was dead wrong.
Eyewitness accounts and video established that it was United staff, not Dr. Dao, who got the belligerence ball rolling. Dr. Dao wasn’t happy at being ordered — not “asked” — to get off the flight, but he didn’t instigate the situation.
Duplicity is the death of trust
Let’s start with a generous assumption: that Munoz wanted to stand by his organization. He took the explanations he was given at face value, and was prepared to stand by them.
That’s a tenable position... if your organization has a culture of transparency and honesty, and you can trust what you’re being told.
But don’t then apologize to the public and say you’re doing a “detailed review” to find out what happened, when you’ve already decided you know.
And even if Munoz thought he had all the facts he needed, just a few seconds watching those videos should have given him second thoughts. Which is why, three days later, Oscar Munoz was on national television delivering an actual apology. He said this was in no way Dr. Dao’s fault, and promised something like this would never happen again.
There are no more silos
In a crisis, especially one where your organization is at fault, the temptation is very strong to say something soothing. You badly want to get the angry mob to put down the pitchforks. But if that something soothing isn’t also true, then pandering isn’t a winning long-term strategy.
And when you have more than one angry mob, and you tell them each very different things — telling your staff they did everything right, and telling the public you’re still investigating — they’re going to compare notes, and they’ll find out. Siloed audiences are a thing of the distant past.
The thing you’ll be relying on more than anything else in a crisis is trust. That’s what determines whether even the most comprehensive apology comes across as sincere, and United burned a lot of trust over those few days. (Which is odd, because United has a lot of practice with apologizing.)
There are a lot of good and bad ways to apologize in a crisis. But one way to tell you’re on the right track is you’re telling people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.
