How not to apologize for a disaster

A series of gaffes made by BP managers in interviews and at the congressional hearings on the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe are proving disastrous to the company. British CEO Tony Hayward said he wanted to stop the oil spill so he could "get his life back" — a slap in the face to the families who'd lost their livelihoods. Though he later apologized, he also said that the spill wouldn't cause big problems because "the Gulf is a very big ocean". It sounded like BP officials were belittling not only the problem, but also the people suffering the consequences, when Swedish Chairman Carl Henric Svanberg said, "We care about all the small people." To top it off, Lamar McKay, chairman and president of BP America, promised that BP was "going to pay all legitimate claims". The word "legitimate" implied that the company would fight those claimants first. In America, winning claims against corporations is considered heroic. That nailed it: BP had a public-relations disaster on its hands.

Business logic dictates that heads must roll. No, wait a minute: Only one man, Tony Hayward, will be given the axe. What was it about his performance that made the American public hate him so? His "elite" British accent certainly played a role, and Vicki Hollett, English author of "Learning to speak 'merican", thinks there might be a cross-cultural problem here:

"When I watch interviews with Tony Hayward ... I also wonder if what might be interpreted as an embarrassed smile sometimes in the UK could be interpreted as a smirk in the US. Seriousity is an American behaviour and an appropriate behaviour for a congressional hearing on a grave issue. But I don't think we 'do' seriousity in the UK." ("A British apology")

Under extreme stress, Tony Hayward responded with awkward embarrassment and wore a mask of ironic detachment to create distance between himself and the questioner. To the American public, that translated to arrogance and cynicism, rather than an appropriate degree of humility and dedication to fixing the problem. Just watch:

Getting apologies right is a subtle art. In our exercise on the next page, study the different formulas for saying you are sorry, and learn to describe facial signals and some underlying cultural differences between Britain and the United States — features of non-verbal communication that you will need to learn to recognize in order to make your apologies culturally acceptable.

Anne Hodgson