I get it! Bad stuff happens.
You might think I’m talking about the many events that have already gone wrong in 2022! The Omicron variant is pervasive. There are more signs that our planet isn’t doing so well. Our societies are more divided than ever.
No, I’m thinking more about these carefully crafted plans at work. These programs that we designed to beat the target. All the energy we had put into succeeding..
When these don’t work, what’s the most common answer most of us find?
Blame!
It doesn’t need to be someone else. Most of us blame the “circumstances,” the “stars that did not align,” the “macro” reasons that just defeated our best effort.
Yet, if you aspire to be a strong leader, don’t lose a second trying to identify what to put “under the bus.”
Instead, do one of the most challenging yet necessary things. Apologize!
When done right, apologizing demonstrates our level of maturity, our drive, and ownership. It shows we’re more than just the sum of our mistakes.
But it’s hard, and if not correctly handled, it will backfire and undermine credibility.
So when and how should you apologize? What should accompany it?
The answer, in a nutshell, is a delicate balance of going to the issue’s roots, fixing what needs to be fixed, learning from it, and moving on.
Here’s some real-life experience that you might find helpful:
A few years ago, I was the General Manager of a business unit, developing audio software. We had just done a gate review, where all the indicators the team had communicated were green. My boss, the Sr executive VP, was quite pleased with the status, and we moved into the next development stage. He happily shared this outcome with the rest of the executive team.
The next day, my engineering leader came to me, extremely embarrassed. He shared a batch of unsolved issues, a.k.a. bugs, that fell through the cracks. The status was not green; it was purple red!
I shared my disappointment but also apologized to the team. After all, if our process didn’t catch such issues, there was a flaw. A flaw that I – as the leader – carried some responsibility for. We needed to deconstruct the process and fix it for good.
In addition, and as importantly, I asked for an immediate plan of action to mitigate the situation on the newly discovered bugs. The team worked on it at night and gave me their analysis and proposed plan of action that we reviewed first thing in the morning.
At that stage, I had enough elements to go and break the news and what we were doing about it to my boss. Guess what I did?
I reached out to him. I apologized for the oversight. I made NO excuse, expressing we would get to the bottom of the process flaw to fix it for good. Finally, I shared the immediate mitigation plan to address the newly-found bugs.
It didn’t go very well. At first, my boss felt betrayed and quite disappointed. But eventually, after some time, he acknowledged that our approach was demonstrating drive and ownership. He even thanked me for my leadership on this.
The moral of this story?
Of course, don’t fail too often, and don’t over apologize! But the next time things don’t go as planned, make sure you own the problem, discover its roots, and drive its resolution.