Molly McPherson argues that apologies don't work in a crisis. What matters is identifying who you hurt, naming the specific harm, and taking responsibility without blaming the people you wronged. If someone won't do that, cut ties.
Before I hop on a call with a client who's going through a crisis, I just quickly want to riff and tell you how to get through it. Spring has sprung, crisis eternal. I am getting calls and emails off the hook. So clearly spring is a time of year when people are in the crosshairs. This is how you get through it. You don't even have to call me or hire me. This is it. If you have caused damage, to your reputation, chances are it's because you hurt someone, a group of people, constituents, stakeholders, or in your personal life, you've hurt a person. If you wanna get through it, you can't think of it as make it go away. Typically when people call me, they're not calling me to write a response for them, an accountability response. They want me to make the pain go away. There's backlash. It won't stop. I'm besieged right now and I need it to stop. I need to walk them through this point. So here's the point for you. If you're going through a crisis, the only way, and I mean this, the only way you will be able to get through it with the ability to patch that relationship is with accountability. When people resign and think, okay, I'll write an apology, I'll say I'm sorry. People don't want sorries. I hate sorries. Sorries are empty. If you're trying to get through a crisis by saying you're sorry, you're gonna make your crisis worse. It's accountability. And what accountability looks like is you find the people, or the people you hurt, you identify what that hurt was, and then you acknowledge the hurt, you acknowledge the pain. Too often people write for gain. They write for themselves. This is why I did it. And then they focus on all the pain that everybody caused them, the backlash. I'm gonna blame you for everything. Blaming the victim. You've hurt someone. If you've hurt someone and then you're blaming them in your statement, you won't get through this. And this applies to professional crises that you see headlines, content creators, it doesn't matter. But also personal. If you have someone in your life who is refusing to take accountability because they hurt you, Let them go because they will continue to hurt you. Personal, professional. Now I gotta get on my call and tell the same thing to this person.
