Any leader who makes a mistake serious enough to warrant a public apology ought to take a look in the mirror and reflect on the root causes of the offense. Not only is this self-reflection essential to ensuring that the apology is a meaningful act of contrition, but it’s also the best way to turn a negative situation into a positive one. Atonement, done properly, involves deep, careful work to change behavior and leads to real improvement.
But in today’s hyper-transparent world of social media and “gotcha†journalism, the mirror is two-way: On the other side of the looking glass, a small army of observers are watching as you reflect (or fail to reflect) on your behavior. The snap judgments of those looking in from the outside can, of course, be merciless. So the temptation after a public transgression is to apologize quickly, then just get on with your life. As I wrote earlier this month, this has given rise to a flood of “inauthentic apologies,†enough so that the apology itself has been devalued, as though it’s merely a public relations crisis management tool. But rather than being used to get out of trouble, an authentic apology should be used to get into the difficult process of grappling with meaningful change.
As such, an authentic apology is best seen as a commitment to change behavior over the long term, a commitment that can’t be made without a pause to carefully consider what just happened and what comes next.
At first glance, the apology by Tim Armstrong, the chief executive of AOL, for insensitive comments at a company town hall meeting didn’t start out as a promising example of an authentic apology.
The apology came at the bottom of a longer memo and did not seem to acknowledge the serious hurtfulness of his remarks, in which he cited two “distressed babies†that cost AOL “a million dollars each†as examples of cost pressures that led the company to cut back employee 401(k) benefits. But rather than make yet another snap judgment about the most recent performance in the never-ending Kabuki of the public apology, let’s take some time to pause ourselves â€" and consider some of the deeper issues, especially the hidden opportunities this situation presents to Mr. Armstrong and AOL to make meaningful changes that can greatly benefit the company.
Individuals are ultimately responsible for their own character, of course, and offensive or insensitive behavior is the responsibility of the individual transgressors. But the context of any poor behavior from a corporate leader is the reaction it receives from the rest of the company. As such, an incident â€" from initial behavior to reaction to response â€" becomes a window into the “character†of a corporation â€" the corporate culture.
Underlying everything, a successful corporate culture revolves around trust, a firm belief that if I do my part, others around me will do theirs. Security, certainty and predictability follow. Without trust, business slows to a crawl as every action and decision is second-guessed by staff members asking themselves, ‘Will I actually be rewarded, recognized and treated fairly?’ With trust, internal negotiations become faster, teams more productive and loyal, and rational risk-taking â€" followed by innovation and progress â€" becomes more ingrained.
With a solid reputation for personal credibility, a leader fosters greater trust and enforces this critical aspect of corporate culture. And for a company like AOL that has gone through a great deal of tumult, trust is the critical ingredient to long-term sustainability.
An intense, divisive internal reaction to the behavior of a leader, especially related to credibility, calls not just for a quick apology and reflexive response but also a careful assessment of the corporate culture and the behavior that created it. If you avoid the real work, cultural problems become more deeply rooted. If you do the real work, then the problems are revealed and can be addressed.
In the case of Mr. Armstrong, it’s probably not a coincidence that he was heavily criticized once before for his behavior at a virtual company town hall meeting, where he publicly fired a senior employee of AOL’s former Patch division for taking photographs. Mr. Armstrong apologized that time, too. But after the resulting furor, and his apology, did he thoroughly explore the related issues of corporate culture at AOL â€" especially trust?
Was the public firing of the employee really just an isolated incident of bad judgment? Or did employees at AOL feel as if top-down decision-making had become too imperious and that the ill-timed firing was just the latest symptom? After all, at the same meeting as the firing, Mr. Armstrong was explaining why he laid off hundreds of Patch employees, albeit in a bid to restore the rest of AOL to solid financial footing. It’s easy to see how trust might become strained in this uncertain environment, all the more so if the decision to fire someone publicly seemed vindictive and haphazard.
If more work had been done to restore trust in the aftermath of the first apology, then perhaps AOL employees might have been more forgiving this time around instead of immediately turning to the media to express their frustrations and mounting a furious internal campaign against the 401(k) changes. Mr. Armstrong’s decision to cut back on the 401(k) benefits was made from the top down, was apparently not broadly inclusive and, crucially, was explained in a manner that not only lacked credibility but was in fact offensive to some. If anything, citing the expense of paying for two specific at-risk babies appeared to be both insufficient to explain the 401(k) changes and unfair for singling out individual employees who properly availed themselves of the company’s insurance.
Because AOL’s revenue and profit have been on the rise lately, there’s not much of a risk that employees will run for the exit. But what about the next time there’s a problem? What if revenue and profit are not doing as well? Will loyalty prevail then, or will résumés fly out the door as quickly as damaging information did this time? Now would be the time to ask the difficult questions about corporate culture that apparently went unaddressed the last time.
Listening, of course, is the first crucial step toward rebuilding trust. When he publicly apologized, Mr. Armstrong explained that he had heeded employee feedback after the announcement of the 401(k) changes and had decided to reverse them. We also know from an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin that he deepened his initial public written apology by privately calling the aggrieved families and listening at length to their criticism. With these two actions, Mr. Armstrong took important steps toward restoring faith in personal and corporate character.
Just by listening more actively, Mr. Armstrong turned one of his most vocal critics into an AOL booster. “I accepted Tim Armstrong’s apology, and I take him at his word that he’s genuinely pained by the pain he caused my family,†Deanna Fei, the wife of an employee, and author of a damning piece in Slate about the incident, told Mr. Sorkin. “He spoke to me on a very personal level, as a human being and a fellow parent, and I think his regret is heartfelt. I am profoundly grateful for the support that my family received from AOL during our medical crisis, and I think AOL does strive to take care of its employees.â€
Listening, though, is only start. Over the long haul, most successful corporations need a culture of inclusiveness, deliberation, intent, communication, transparency, freedom to innovate and freedom to express oneself without fear of repercussion â€" just some of the elements of trust. To get there, AOL would do well to conduct what I’ve described in the past as a moral audit â€" the application of rigorous process improvement and change-management techniques to the values that drive behavior and decisions.
Dov Seidman is the chief executive of LRN, a company that helps corporations develop values-based cultures and leadership, strengthen their ethics and compliance efforts, and inspire principled performance in their operations. He is also the author of “HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything.†Twitter: @DovSeidman
