The Power of Apology (Editorial)

Humility is an underrated virtue.

Unless you’ve spent the last week in a sensory-deprivation tank (do they still have those?), you know that last week, United Airlines and White House spokesman Sean Spicer experienced the full-bore blast of social media scorn when they made huge mistakes yet balked at admitting error.

In United’s case, the airline faced the righteous wrath of the internet when it had security officers physically drag a paying customer out of his seat, bloodying his face, after the company had failed to reserve enough seats for employees on their way to an assignment.

In Spicer’s, President Donald Trump’s feckless press secretary for some inexplicable reason decided to compare Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to Adolf Hitler, averring that Assad was in some ways worse because — get this — not even Hitler used chemical weapons. As CNN’s Chris Cillizza, among others, noted: “Sean Spicer forgot the first rule of politics during a press briefing on Tuesday: Never, ever compare anyone or anything to Adolf Hitler.”

Forget for the moment how these public relations disasters happened. In some ways, the most important thing, the thing that reveals the character of a company or a person, happened next: the failure to deliver a timely, sincere, complete apology.

United CEO Oscar Munoz waited days before saying United would take “full responsibility” for the incident. Spicer tried repeatedly to walk back his comments before saying what he should have said as soon as the Hitler comparison left his mouth: “I made a mistake; there’s no other way to say it,” adding, for good measure, that his comments were “inexcusable” and “reprehensible.”

We were taught that it’s a mark of strength to know your weaknesses, to know when you have done wrong and to acknowledge it. And we have learned that there’s a bonus to doing the right thing: The timely, sincere, complete apology almost always pops the giant outrage balloon.