David De Cremer on why apologies backfire: people want them until they get them, managers fear apologizing more than they should, and an apology alone won't fix anything. What matters is what happens next.
Chapters
Well, we wanted to look at the value of apologies in the reconciliation process. So to bring people closer to each other after failure has emerged or when a conflict arises. And this idea was actually sparked by the fact that in the financial crisis, especially Europe and the US we see that a lot of bankers initially had problems to apologize. No one wanted to take responsibility. So we arrived at this idea, okay, responsibility. It's an important issue when it comes down to dealing with conflicts and especially solving conflicts. So is there someone out there who wants to take responsibility? Or in other words, do people want to apologize? And if so, why do they have so many difficulties apologizing? Well, we looked at, I would say, two or three main questions. The first question was, do people actually like to receive an apology? Because we might say it's very useful to apologize, but do people value it? And our research was quite surprising there.
Initially, when people are victim of a.
Failure or someone has lied to them, betrayed them, they all want that the perpetrator apologizes, that he or she says, I'm sorry, and that he or she says, this is what I will do to make a bad thing a good thing again. But then actually, when the apology is delivered, we see that people value it a bit less. So basically, people are bad predictors or forecasters when it comes down to receiving the value of an apology. And why is this the case?
We can easily imagine, oh, you've done bad to me.
Of course you need to apologize. But when the apology arrives, suddenly, people notice the world still goes on, life still goes on. And basically the sorry thing is a good thing because he or she accepts responsibility. But not much has changed. We still need to work on the relationship. So then suddenly people realize there's less value to it. So that was one important piece of finding. The second research finding was that we saw that, why do managers actually have difficulties apologizing themselves? Because it's really difficult for people to say, I was wrong, I take responsibility, because you can be blamed. And for some people, it would even be, I can be legally pursued, which is not always the case. But still people have difficulties with that. So they find apologizing stressful. It's not part of their leadership role, they say. But what we see is that it's very much a part of your leadership role. You have to be able to restore relationships. So what we saw there was when people have to imagine, managers have to imagine, okay, I apologize, they say, I would feel very stressful. And then we compared it to a condition where managers actually apologized for real. And it turned out that they actually experienced less stress than when they were imagining to apologize. So we have two interesting findings here. Managers overestimate the stress that brings apologies with it, and at the same time, victims, they overestimate the real value of apologies. So we seem to have a misfit there. So what's important there for managers is to learn that it's not so stressful. You can be relaxed about apologizing because people, people want it. They want an apology, even though they might value it later a little bit less. The first step towards reconciliation is made. So start apologizing. Managers should become aware that apologies are not as stressful and difficult as they think it is. Second of all, as we see that people who are recipients of apologies, they want it, they value it. But I said later on in the process, they might suddenly realize there's less value to it. And then a manager needs to realize you also need to work on it, on the reconciliation process. So it's not only apologizing, but apologizing is the first step. It's a minimal requirement. You can't skip that phase.
But the good news is it is.
Easier to apologize than people think. But then you have to work hard in the relationship, and people will then value you. So if you do it well, if.
You can manage it well, and we.
Know how, then you can actually gain a better reputation after failure.
A lot of people don't believe that.
They can get a better reputation after they failed. Well, if you manage it well, you can do that because you can add something extra to your reputation well, that you're a moral person caring about others.
