The Power of An Apology: A Lesson in Leadership from GoDaddy

The letter to customers on the GoDaddy website began:

"We owe you a big apology for the intermittent service outages we experienced on September 10th that may have impacted your website and your interaction with GoDaddy.com."

Preceding this apology, said GoDaddy experienced a major technical malfunction, shutting down hundreds of thousands of the websites they host.  I'm not going to debate the handling of the malfunction, but I was impressed by the apology that followed.  As opposed to some apologies that seem only shallow enough to mildly placate, GoDaddy donned the sackcloth and accessorized with ashes.

"We have let our customers down and we know it.  I cannot express how sorry I am to those of you who were inconvenienced.  We will learn from this."

Note the difference in tone from other corporate "apologies" that aren't really apologies at all:

• "We are in the process of an internal investigation. . ."
• "Due to circumstances beyond our control. . ."
• "We will have a statement in the future. . ."

Instead of this type of spin, GoDaddy went right to the core of the matter and apologized.  That's smart.   When you've been inconvenienced, think of how it makes you feel if you're getting a run around. . .versus how you feel if someone admits to the obvious:  "We were wrong. . .and we're going to learn from our mistakes and do better in the future."

Leaders can and should learn from this simple statement of contrition.

Let's face it, errors, mistakes, blunders and bloopers are bound to happen in the workplace.  Seriously, not one of us is perfect.   The challenge is that often either we think we need to be perfect - or worse, we actually come to the god-like conclusion that we are perfect - and thus are unable to utter these three powerful words:  "I am sorry."

Instead of apologizing, we relinquish ownership of the issue ("It was Sebastian's fault."), try to turn around the blame ("Well. . .the copier wouldn't break down so much if people didn't use it.") or try to shift all evidence of wrongdoing hastily away from us, much like passing gas and then furiously fanning the emitted air in the general direction of the person seated next to you.

The truth is, if you've done something wrong, and aren't owning it and making proper amends, things start to go wrong:

• Even though you may think that by refusing to apologize you are making the issue go away, you are actually prolonging the issue.   The very act of apologizing is the act that allows humans and teams to move forward.
• Even though you may think that by refusing to apologize you are obscuring responsibility, the fact is that people figure out pretty fast who did what and by trying to dodge it, you are appearing to be less than courageous.
• When an apology is owed, and isn't delivered, mis-trust is fostered and teamwork is lost.

Conversely, by owning an error, making a sincere apology and learning from an honest mistake. . .the organization is enabled to move on and you garner extra respect as a leader with both courage and ethics.

By apologizing, you're doing something very right.