This Is Karl Moore of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University with Talking Management for The Globe and Mail. Today I am delighted to be in Vancouver, sitting down with Maurice Schweitzer, a professor at the Wharton Business School.
In your new book Friend & Foe, you talk about apologies. What is your latest thinking?
SCHWEITZER - When you think about apologies, there are two key things we can be conveying. One is a sense of authenticity, and another is a commitment to change. When you think about, for example, Southwest Airlines, when they suffered their first fatal accident at that time it was unprecedented for the CEO to quickly apologize.
Before that airlines had PR representatives deliver apologies, but in this case the CEO flew to the scene, delivered an apology, visited people in the hospital, and was able to convey that authenticity that he was really sincerely regretful for what happened and promised an investigation to make sure it didn't happen again.
MOORE - So what can institutions do about this approach?
SCHWEITZER - I think the bottom line is that we should be prepared to apologize and I will give you a great example of this. Baptist Hospital had a tragic accident that happened to an 18 month old girl. Through an MRI the breathing tube had been disconnected, and after this girl had been sedated, she suffered a brain function loss and the result of this is she is actually disabled for the rest of her life.
What is amazing is that Baptist Hospital immediately apologized, they instituted change, they were completely candid with the family, they brought the family in and the family actually became advocates for the hospital because they believed that the hospital was so committed to change and they were.
What is really interesting about this example is that it was at the hospital level they prepared and implemented a strategy to deliver these immediate apologies whenever they suffered an accident. So here was a great example of being able to transform a potential foe into a friend.