WorkLife: The secrets of a great apology

0:01Some children feel a lot of shame when they make a mistake and don't want to apologize. They run away. I had a child this year who would, every time he hurt somebody, he would run into the corner and hide. Kath Konnicki has been a pre-K teacher for more than a decade. She currently teaches in Brooklyn, where a huge part of her job is helping kids learn to make amends. You know, there's so much conflict that happens in a pre-K classroom. So it really is out of necessity, I would say, and many, many opportunities to work with children on apologies. Especially in block world. So we have these kind of big foam blocks in the gym.

0:46And children build, like, really elaborate structures out of them. You know, we were studying bread recently, so there were lots of pastry shops getting built. And in one corner, the grand opening. You know, these two children had been working so, so hard to build a bread shop. And they finally got it done. They were selling pretend croissants. They're really delicious. But then, disaster. Another child came running around the side, just completely knocked into the structure. Like, it all collapsed. The bread shop owners were devastated. Hours of hard work gone. The culprit looked back at his path of destruction.

1:26And, like, saw the children who were building's reactions. It was clear they were incensed. And did a, sorry, and kept running around the gym. And, you know, we had to bring him back. Kath sees this kind of apology all the time. She even has a name for it. I always call it a drive-by apology, where they're like, do something to another child. They like step on their finger or not go for their building. And they're like already on their way. Their hand is kind of flapping behind them. They're like, sorry, and then they're gone. And it's not, you know, about repairing. It's not about the other child.

2:04It's just kind of like a rote response. This isn't just an issue in block world or pre-K. Bad apologies are a big problem for adults at work and beyond. To maintain relationships and restore trust, we need to know how to repair things when we make mistakes and how to prevent them from happening in the future.

2:30I'm Adam Grant, and this is Work Life, my podcast with Ted. I'm an organizational psychologist. I study how to make work not suck. In this show, we explore how to unlock the potential in people and workplaces. Today, how to apologize and recover from mistakes.

3:02In Kath's classroom, preschoolers come in with all kinds of ideas around apologies. The drive-by apology is just one type of sorry that pops up. They're really often stuck on the word sorry. so I'll have two children come up to me and one is really upset like maybe crying and the other child kind of like stress yelling at me like but I said sorry you know I said sorry sorry and um children also at the start of the school year they'll do something to another child and kind of ignore it and then as soon as the other child starts walking towards an adult there'll be like Like, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

3:46That's the mad dash apology. Yeah. Yeah, never mind. Just stay. Kids treat sorry like a magic word. But the truth is that sorry alone isn't enough. Yeah, and so, you know, we do a lot at the start of the school year to move kids away from those kinds of apologies. We tend to think that just saying the simple words, I'm sorry constitutes an effective apology, and actually it doesn't. Beth Polin is a management professor at Eastern Kentucky University. She's an expert on apologies, which is handy because our conversation started with one from me. My sound recorder is recording too. Well, Beth, I am very sorry that I'm late.

4:32That is okay. I will forgive you. We'll talk about what constitutes a really good apology though. Beth studies apologies in the context of trust, which underlies all our relationships. We have to understand trust to be a risk-taking behavior. If we think about what it is, it's a psychological state where we actually accept vulnerability. We believe that someone is going to treat us well. We believe that someone is going to follow through on their promises. And so we engage in that risk and we ultimately trust them. Trust is vital to our work and our well-being. And so is repairing it when we mess up.

5:08Research shows that refusing choosing to apologize altogether is often a sign of narcissism. And a bad apology can disrupt a project, sideline a career, even undermine a whole company. A good apology can do the opposite. Apologies are really effective and they don't cost very much. They signal that the apologizer realizes there's this social requirement after a trust violation that some statement needs to be offered. And it's an opportunity for the apologizer to show some emotion and show effort towards repairing the relationship so that we can move forward together in the workplace. So if apologies are so effective and so low cost, why does it seem like many people don't recognize that?

5:55I think about all the people who refuse to apologize. It seems like they do feel there's a cost? Yeah. So first of all, I'm going to actually disagree with you a little bit and say, I think people do offer apologies more often than we think, except they're bad apologies. So there is a cost, like you said, by speaking up and admitting wrongdoing, we're showing some deficiency in ourselves. So you're right. There is a psychological cost to apologizing. People don't realize just how effective apologies can be. And for people who do offer apologies, there are some really crappy apologies out there.

6:37It's often said that a bad apology is a second insult. You've probably heard CEOs make that mistake, like at BP after their oil spill disaster in 2010. The CEO did apologize for the massive disruption, but then he said, quote, there's no one who wants this thing over more than I do. You know, I'd like my life back.

6:59This obviously did not go over well. One journalist called it the crisis PR soundbite from hell. And it did nothing to restore trust in BP or in that CEO who was fired. So what makes for an effective apology? In her research, Beth studied how people react to different aspects of apologies. Let's break down five key components. Think of them as the five R's. The first R is regret. You're showing remorse for your past behavior. You're truly sorry. You truly apologize for the wrongdoing that occurred. And you're sincere and authentic in that. I'm sorry. The second R is rationale. You're explaining why it happened.

7:39We really do care about why a trust violation occurred. And what's so important about why the trust violation occurred is that this gives us information about how we can go about repairing the trust that was broken. Anecdotally, I often find that giving an explanation backfires, that people take it as an excuse and it comes across as defensive. I know specific people that I've tried to apologize to and then explain, well, here's what I was thinking. They're like, I don't want to know. I don't want to hear your excuses. I just want to see you change. I think what you're speaking to is an internal versus external attribution.

8:17So for example, let's say I'm late to work and I come running in the door and I say, I'm so sorry I was late. I woke up on time. My alarm went off on time. I was in the car on time, but it was the traffic's fault that I'm late. That's an external attribution. And even if it really was the traffic's fault, we would actually respond better to an apology that said something like, I'm so sorry, I'm late. Traffic was really bad. I should have checked the traffic patterns before I left my house. This leads to the third R, responsibility. You're saying, this is on me. We really care about someone taking ownership for the damage that was done.

8:56I think that saying I'm sorry without admitting responsibility feels like an empty statement. It does. Because it sends the message that this is not on me to fix or change. Correct. And going along with that, we've all received that apology that says, I'm sorry you feel that way. I was just thinking that. Which is really not an apology. Research shows that when leaders take personal responsibility for negative events, they're viewed more favorably and their company's stock prices go up the following year. It's not just because they're showing that they care. Responsibility also signals that they're in control.

9:36Blaming others can send a mixed message. Are you capable of cleaning up this mess or not? By taking responsibility, leaders make it clear that they have the power to fix the situation. A good example is Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, who handled a crisis over a faulty switch. She didn't ask for her life back. She hired outsiders to investigate what happened and set up a fund for victims. and she was named crisis manager of the year. Mary once explained her guiding principles to me. We're going to do everything possible for the customer. We're going to be transparent and we're going to make sure we do everything in our power to make sure this never happens again.

10:14That brings us to the fourth R, repentance, promising to do better. So a few years ago, my then four-year-old daughter, I told her, I said, please do not wake up your baby brother from his nap. And I walked out of the room for just a second. I come back 60 seconds later, probably. The baby is awake and my daughter I look around for and she's standing in the corner. And she said, Mama, I am so sorry. This will not happen again because I put myself in the corner and I am thinking about what I did wrong. And that was a great declaration of repentance she had there at four years old. The last R is for repair, taking action to restore trust.

10:58We want to try and make up for the wrongdoing that was done. So while the apology as a whole might be future-focused on repairing the relationship, that offer of repair looks backwards at the trust violation and seeks to repair damage that was done. In her research, Beth found that the most effective apologies include all five R's. Regret, rationale, responsibility, repentance, and repair. but some elements are more important than others. Do you have any guesses as to the most important? I was just going to ask you that question. So my bet is on responsibility as number one. Yep, you're right.

11:37Acknowledgement of responsibility is extremely important. Interestingly, if we only include three components in an apology, the acknowledgement of responsibility needs to be one of those three. Also, the explanation and the offer of repair are ranked very highly. Let that sink in. The word sorry isn't the most critical part of an apology. It's not even in the top three. What matters most is that you take responsibility for what went wrong, give a rationale for why it happened, and commit to acting to repair trust. Which brings us to what Beth views as a sixth R, a request for forgiveness. Trust repair, it's a bilateral process.

12:18It takes two people. I can offer you the best, most effective apology ever. But it's still your choice if you want to accept that apology. And you have to engage in the trust repair process with me for us to be able to move forward. I want to fight you on this one. Okay. Because I think when someone asks for forgiveness, it sounds self-centered. At least it's the way it comes across to me. When someone says to me, will you forgive me or do you forgive me? What I hear them saying is, I'm shifting my attention from the fact that I wronged you to the fact that I want you to absolve me of blame. And to me, it undercuts the apology.

12:58Yeah, instead of thinking of it as self-centered, think of it as an invitation. You're welcoming the other person in to the trust repair process. And it still is their choice because people can choose to not engage in the trust repair process. right? We've all heard, you know, I forgive you, but we still need to go our separate ways, right? So you get that forgiveness, but you do not get the full relationship repair. Let me actually try this. Let me see if I can pull this off here. Beth, I'm terribly sorry that I was late. I went to the dentist. I did not budget enough time to race back here, which is all on me.

13:36And I take full responsibility for that. The next time we do a podcast together, I will make sure it happens before I go to the dentist, not after. And I have a bunch of ways that I can make this up to you. I can't manufacture time, but I'm happy to let you go 10 minutes early. I'll come up with other ways to repair. So there, what I don't want to say is, Beth, will you please forgive me? I can't function without knowing that you're going to absolve me of this guilt. What I would feel better about is saying, and if at some point you would forgive me, I would so appreciate that because your opinion of me really matters to me and our relationship matters to me, but no pressure to do that now.

14:20Yeah. That is still a request for forgiveness. So maybe what's bothering you is the question part. Will you forgive me? You could also word it as, are we good? Are we okay to move forward, any statement that invites the other person in, that's the request for forgiveness. And someone could also respond, you know, if you said, are we good? Are we going to be able to move forward? Someone could respond and say, I need to think about it. I need some time. So someone does not have to choose right away to engage in the trust repair process or at all. Even good apologies aren't always enough. They tend to work better for failures of competence than failures of character.

15:04In other words, for accidents and mistakes, rather than deliberate decisions to be uncaring or dishonest. And your history matters a great deal too. It depends on how long our relationship has been in existence. It depends on our level of trust. It depends on prior deception. So how many times have you wronged me? Is this your fourth violation and I really need to rethink whether or not we can continue this working relationship? or is this the first time that I violated? How isolated was the incident? So there's so many variables that go into this that it just goes back to and it depends on the situation.

15:43Another thing I was wondering about is what do you do when people don't see eye to eye on whether an apology is needed? So I think you've wronged me. You don't agree. Now what? Yeah. So it all depends on the perspective of the person who was harmed. because if the person who was harmed believes that an apology is due, then it can be seen as a second violation to not offer an apology. It begins to get tricky, though, because if you, as the person who violated trust, really believe that you do not need to offer an apology, then how sincere will your apology be even if you do make an apology statement?

16:25And you have to ask yourself, both parties need to ask themselves, do we need to repair trust? Do we need to continue this relationship? And do we want to continue this relationship? And if both parties need and want to continue the relationship, then both parties need to take the perspective of the other and find a way to repair the harm that was done. Ideally, we start learning these skills early, which is a big focus in Kath Konachy's pre-K classroom. It takes time and experiences apologizing, apologizing and making mistakes and hurting other people to learn that you can have that effect on other people.

17:03And especially like they hurt each other's feelings in ways that don't necessarily make sense to them. As an adult, I feel like we can make a joke that like maybe I think is really funny and but it is hurtful. And it takes a while to understand that like what doesn't hurt you might hurt somebody else. Kath tries to teach her students that they're responsible for that hurt, even if they didn't mean for it to happen. Positive intent doesn't guarantee positive impact. And so we tell the children that if you hurt somebody's body or their feelings, it's your job to help them feel better. And the way we do that is we have the child who did the hurting say, what do you need to feel better?

17:48And the child who was hurt can respond with whatever it is they need. Over time, Kathy's drive-by saris morph into real apologies. I was in the gym, and kids were running around really fast, and two kids ran into each other. And it was like, they hadn't been able to produce this language independently all year. But this time, I just saw the two kids, and one said, like, are you okay? And the other child said no. They said, what do you need to feel better? And they needed a hug, and then they moved on. And it was this like, wow, they trust that they can apologize, that like their apology can actually repair whatever hurt happened and that they're not like losing anything by apologizing.

18:39You know, what's so fascinating about that is a lot of people don't want to apologize because they're giving away power. And you're saying no, not so much. Yeah. I mean, I think it can initially feel that way for a lot of children, right? Like, they identify with being right and having to say that they weren't is really tough. But then when they see that process to its conclusion, they also get to see the power of repairing. and you can often see a real sense of pride in the child who did the hurting because then they fixed it and then they made the child feel good, which I think can make a child feel powerful.

19:25An apology doesn't give away power. It gives us the power to right our wrongs. A hug might do the trick in pre-K, but once we move into the adult work world, effective repair can get more complicated. One of my favorite mantras is that the best apology is changed behavior. So what does good repair look like? More on that after the break.

20:02So you've got 22 people that carry out 36 tasks in two seconds. This is Mark Gallagher. I've been an executive working in Formula One auto racing all my career, and I now run my own consultancy business working in the sport. Okay, I see a car rolling in. A bunch of people just touched the car, and then it just went. Wow, that was extremely uneventful. Well, that's the way we like it. You know, you should show that clip to the auto shop and say to them, this is the kind of service, you know, I'd love to have. In F1, the difference between drivers comes down to just a few seconds. So even the smallest mistake can have major consequences.

20:43And that's especially true for pit stops. When drivers get their tires swapped during a race, it's a highly coordinated dance. They jack the car up, they remove the wheels and tires, they put the new wheels and tires on, they adjust the aerodynamics of the car, and then they lower it back onto the surface of the planet and set it back into action. all in two seconds or less. Formula One pit crews are exemplars of what researchers call high-reliability organizations. Like airlines, hospitals, and nuclear power plants, they work in high-stakes environments where errors can be catastrophic. It's a high-risk activity because fundamentally you have a machine weighing almost a metric ton driving at speeds of over 200 miles an hour.

21:29So for the first 45 or 50 years of Formula One, the things that could go really wrong were something broke on the car or the driver made an error and it led to loss of life. Since then, changes in car design have reduced the most extreme risks. But the stakes are high in other ways. A mistake could mean millions of dollars worth of repairs. Or the difference between getting on the podium and not. In 2016 at the Monte Carlo race, all eyes were on a rising star, a driver named Daniel Ricardo. So Daniel Ricardo was heading for victory, but he was being pushed hard, so he had a rival right behind him.

22:10And he came in for a pit stop. Something to know about this race. It has the shortest track. So the amount of time the team has to basically collect its thoughts or make a decision is much shorter than normal. So the team had an instantaneous decision to make about a pit stop. They decided to call the pit stop. And this is where things really started to go wrong. Daniel pulls in. One second goes by. Then two. Three. Those seconds when nothing is happening feel like hours. It's just excruciating. By now, he should be back on the track. But Daniel is still waiting. I remember I was with a group of people and they were literally screaming, oh my goodness, you know, they've got this row so wrong and his tires are not ready, his wheels are not ready.

23:00Waiting for his wheel change, Daniel lost around 10 seconds total. It cost him victory in that race. And that failure, every aspect of it was the opposite of what Formula One teams want to be known for. So they want to be known for clinical efficiency, split second decision making, brilliant teamwork, seamless execution. And it was wrong in every level. So there was miscommunication. There was confusion. There was chaos. It was just a catastrophe. Daniel was the runner up, about seven seconds behind the winner. He was not happy. After that event, you can imagine apologies all around to Daniel, individual mechanics, his race engineer, you know, they're all apologizing to him saying we're really sorry.

23:49And on the flip side, he's going, I know you're really sorry because he knows just how much they want to win. But sorry wasn't enough. Well, we got the apology, which is fine. But actually, that's not really going to help us. What helps us is what actually went wrong. So let's get into the debrief. Let's actually sit down and say, what went wrong today? How do we make sure that never happens again? The team needed to go beyond words to action and focus on repair. It's the most complex R, and as with apologies, there are ineffective and effective versions. Research points to three key steps for repair.

24:25The first is to over-deliver. Evidence shows that after customers make a complaint, Their satisfaction and loyalty depend on how they're treated by service providers. The best way to show care and integrity is to exceed expectations. For example, if a food delivery is missing an item, it's not enough to refund the cost. Someone is left hangry. You make amends by refunding the cost and covering a free meal. The second step is change. If you're a worker or an organization, you need to improve your policies and practices. F1 teams are well-oiled machines at this, literally. After crises like the Monte Carlo race, they establish a clear chain of command.

25:07Then they start troubleshooting. So the fact-finding process there is getting all the key stakeholders literally around the table. And in this case, the key stakeholders were not just, you know, the leadership team and the senior people in the pit crew, but actually every individual member of the pit crew. because we often find when we do analysis of what goes wrong that it's usually not one thing. So you usually get a cascading impact. So you get a missed radio communication. Missed radio communication leads to someone perhaps making an assumption. Or if they've misheard the radio communication, they start to do something which actually they weren't asked to do.

25:47During this process, Daniel Ricciardo's team realized that their mistake hinged on the uniqueness of the Monte Carlo racetrack. It doesn't just have the shortest track with quick laps. It also has the smallest space for team garages. There is so little room in Monte Carlo, the teams don't have a proper garage. So instead of having a garage on a single floor, they have a facility that's over two floors. This meant that the race strategists were physically separated from the team mechanics. So that turned out to be quite pivotal, because I had to make a quick decision. and there was a call made by the strategist which did not get communicated to the race team efficiently.

26:25So there was a loss of time. There was one individual who had a key role to play in this and they were effectively unsighted and out of place at precisely the moment where they needed to make that communication. The team concluded that their regular process wouldn't work for the distinctive layout of Monte Carlo. So they changed it. They developed a process tailored for a two-tiered garage. And the result was, guess what, Daniel subsequently won that race. That's right. Two years after the pit stop debacle, Daniel finally got his win. And I think really the errors and mistakes in Formula One are accepted as being something that happens from time to time.

27:10The thing that is not accepted is if the same mistake, the same error reoccurs, and particularly if it's reoccurring with the same individual, because then you know you have a slightly deeper seeded problem. You don't even have to wait for a postmortem to debrief yesterday's errors. You can run a premortem to prevent tomorrow's errors. Think about an important decision that your team is making. Assume that in a few months or a few years, you find out that it's gone terribly wrong. What are the three most likely causes? Research reveals that premortems help us see around corners. Once we've anticipated possible threats, we can work to stop them from happening in advance.

27:51This is something Mark has seen F1 teams do. So they essentially said to their own people, OK, if you worked for the competition, how would you beat us? And that became a very interesting process because it turned out that their own people actually did have a really high awareness of where perhaps their weaknesses might lie. We kind of understand where could the missteps be and how can we avoid that. This leads to the third step for repair. Increase accountability and autonomy. When someone makes a mistake, why not use that moment to give that person even more responsibility? Although it can be tempting to micromanage, the healthiest cultures actually couple accountability with autonomy.

28:33You can see it in a study of robotics line operators. When they gained more authority to manage machine faults, they took it upon themselves to fix the errors, which meant less machine downtime. Then they started learning what caused the faults in the first place and managed to prevent errors over time. This happens in Formula One teams. Mark once spoke to a driver for the Williams team who had a big accident after his steering went out during a test lap. And he told me that it was one of those accidents where you genuinely feel frightened because you know that you're about to hit the wall very, very hard.

29:07Afterwards, he was invited to the Williams factory by Sir Frank Williams, who founded the team, was chief executive, and he invited David into the boardroom to meet the mechanic who had not bolted the suspension together properly. This mechanic apologised and said, I just cannot believe what happened. He said, I was building your steering and I got distracted by a colleague and I went away and did another job and I forgot to come back and finish it. And I said to David, so what happened to that mechanic? And he said, well, it's interesting. He said Frank promoted him. He made him head of steering systems because he said that guy will never, ever let another Williams car out of the garage without the perfect steering on it because he will never, ever want a repeat of that.

29:51And I love things like that because it's a diametric opposite of the blame culture where people get blamed and fired. As Amy Edmondson pointed out in our work-life episode, is it safe to speak up? the best way to prevent errors is to make them discussable. I think that is very suggestive of an open, honest, transparent, and psychologically safe culture within which every member of the team can contribute, can speak up and speak out. If they see something going wrong or being done badly, they can say so. You have a very open, honest conversation, and that helps the whole organization to move forward.

30:27Blaming and shaming doesn't stop people from making mistakes. it stops them from admitting mistakes. If people can't share their blunders, we can't learn from them, and they can't repair them. When you apologize, you're not acknowledging that you're a bad person. You're taking a step toward becoming a better person, and you're showing you care about the other person.

31:28Thank you. Konstantin Sidikidis on narcissism, Fiona Lee, Gabe Adams, and Juan Madera on leader responsibility, Carl Weick, Kathy Sutcliffe, and Dave Hoffman on high reliability organizations, Kiara Orsinger on customer complaints, Gary Klein on pre-mortems, Toby Wall on autonomy, and Beth Poland's co-authors, Roy Lewicki and Robert Lount Jr. on apologies.

31:59I have to tell you, it took a fair amount of cognitive dissonance reduction to bring an Ohio State PhD onto the show. So that's how much I like your work. Oh, well, thank you. I really appreciate that. That means a lot.