Episode 35 of the El Showfeatured business book author John Kador, who most recently authored Effective Apology, a guidebook to apology. This was timely given my panel at DC Week this Friday on Public Failure as well as the ongoing BP crisis. Richard and I talked with John on a wide variety of topics.
Here’s the breakdown of Episode 34:
- Why John wrote the book
- The five Rs of an effective apology: Recognize acts, take Responsibility, demonstrate Regret, make Restitution, promise not make to Repeat
- Act your way into in effective apology, you can’t talk it
- BP stumbled into apologizing, and initially tried to minimize the situation
- How spin lacked factual communications and hurt BP
- Obama’s approach to the oil spill from an apology perspective
- The Citizen Effect/Geoff Livingston mission to the Gulf to benefit local fishermen
- The BP advertising decision, and whether it was welcome
- We don’t know if the apology will be accepted
- The fantasy of a cover-up and how it betrays relationships
- Face your mistakes directly and clean it up quickly
- How lawyers can really mess up a situation (Exxon Valdez)
- Recent apologies: Jim Joyce vs Tiger Woods
- The humility of a good apology
Download or listen to the El Show Episode 35 today! Also available on iTunes!