Sorry - again
I’m still thinking about the [tag]sorry [/tag]thing and the responses to the Sorry seems to be the hardest word post. I was further reminded of the issue when I read David Murray’s column over at Ragan this afternoon. The question I keep mulling is, “How do you know when it is appropriate to say you are sorry?” As a Canadian, it seems quite simple: say sorry at every opportunity - whether it is called for or not. (Hey, that’s just the way we are, eh.) If it were just that simple. Wait, maybe it is.
As I have said previously, my default position has always been to apologize - as quickly as possible - if something has been said that obviously should not have been said or if something has been done that obviously should not have been done or if words and/or actions have had an unintended effect on someone or some group. If no overwhelmingly compelling reason not to apologize surfaces, proceed as quickly and sincerely as possible. And, of course, explain what specific actions are being taken to either “fix” the situation or reduce the chances of it happening again.
After thinking about this for a number of days, reading the comments to the Sorry post, and reading David’s column, I think I’m sticking with my default position. Why? Because apologizing when you are wrong or have hurt someone is, very simply, the right thing to do. It may not be the easiest or the smartest (did someone say litigation?) thing to do but it is the right thing to do. Do you remember Robert Fulghum’s book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten? Confession: Many years ago I had a poster of the things learned , you know - share, play nice, clean up your own mess, etc. in my office. Maybe it rubbed off more than I thought.
January 21st, 2006 at 9:47 am
I met one of Time Magazine’s 2002 Persons of the Year last night. Her dad, who looks so much like Romeo Dallaire that I thought it might be him, wanted information on visiting Niagara Falls, and we got talking.
Then he introducedhis daughter.
We were all in a Starbucks.
Cynthia Cooper was on the cover of Time, along with Colleen Rowley, an FBI Agent, and Sherron Watkins, of Enron, featured as the whistle-blowers who blew the lids off US business scandals. Cynthia ran “audit” at Worldcom.
Cynthia was in Toronto after speaking yesterday to a broad assortment of Ontario Univerity and Durham College studets — business, journalism, and more — in Oshawa. I’m hoping Durham’s PR students were there, too.
We talked for a few minutes about ethics at PRSA, IABC, and CPRS, before they headed off for their hotel.
Among the concerns I expresssed was one she agreed is very serious. When someone sees an unethical action, how prepared must you be to lose your job, have trouble paying your mortgage, and make it very hard to be hired by some other company, if you take a stand.
Which is why I keep arguing that the communications associations have to work hard to get our profession elevated, giving the senior communicator a chance to argue for the “right thing to do” in the same room as the lawyers and bean counters and the guys with stock options based on quarterly results.
Don’t let them make a bad decision, and then instruct us to send out the news release.
As to “sorry,” the theme of this thread.
Admitting errors instead of covering them up tends to have a calming affect.
I’m semi-lucky.
POSITIVE side of semi-lucky. Most of my career has been in companies that did understand PR, and either my boss, or another member of our department, or I, were usually in the same meetings as the lawyers and finance folks, able to argue for “sorry” when appropriate. It certainly tended to minimize lawsuits and we really didn’t have big scandals I had to manage.
And because PR was strong at Northern Telecom in my day, at CNCP in my day, and at most of the clients I’ve had, there were not all that many times I had to argue in favor of sorry.
NEGATIVE side of semi-lucky.
In the past few years, I see more company and government and other organizational actions that, if not outright unethical, are skaky enough to warrant intervention by a PR person more interested in preserving reputation than managing the quarterly numbers. Yet fighting with the lawyers and accountants would be a career limiting move. I hear PR people saying, “I’m just going to keep my head down. I’ve got a mortgage to pay.” Some, even worse, conced the battle to the lawyers by saying, “Well, their lawyers. They understand this better than we do in PR.”
When I first saw Cynthia and her father walking through the tables at Starbucks in my neightborhood Chapters she was carrying Dallaire’s book, and I wonderd if that was really him.
Dallaire, for those who don’t know, was a Canadian military general in Rwanda leading poorly armed United Nations troops with orders severely limiting what they could do, during the events depicted in the movie Hotel Rwanda. One of Canada’s most ethical men, Dallaire has been torn by those events ever since, after his pleas for help fell on deaf ears at the UN.
Cynthica would make a great speaker at an IABC International conference. I’ve got her phone numbers.
BAK