Vindication and a Public Apology: Courage & Cowardice

If You Do Something Wrong, Fix It!

It is really not that difficult a concept. If you do something wrong, first you must recognize that you have done so, then you should do something to rectify the situation.

For those of you who have been around for a while, you know about the situation that occurred with Ezine Articles. For those of you who don’t, have a look at Never Accuse Your Customer Without Having All the Facts! AND Don’t Steal People’s Content!. In brief, I submitted an article to this site that syndicates articles, but my article was rejected. I never heard why until a year later when the company essentially accused me of stealing the article from someone else. I was floored by these accusations, since I was the actual author of the article (someone else had stolen it from me), and it was plainly obvious. I then blogged about it.

Vindication & Courage

Yesterday, Chris Knight of Ezine Articles, made a public apology to me in the company’s blog: Josh Dorkin’s Blog Comment
The apology was sincere. While Chris did not need to go and make a public apology on his site, he stepped up and did what was right.

Customer Service Lessons Learned

For those of us who run a company, we are responsible for all of our employees and their behavior while representing our company. Clearly, Chris realizes this, and I’m sure he will work with his editors and other employees to ensure a situation like this does not occur in the future. That is the key here.

When you make a mistake, fix it, then put systems into place to be sure the same mistakes don’t happen again. Most importantly, when an apology is in order, step up to the plate and make sure it happens. We all have pride, but it takes a strong person to cop to the errors of their (or their company’s) ways and apologize for their actions.

Weakness & Cowardess

[NOTE: Political Commentary Ahead]
If only our government’s Executive branch could learn this lesson . . .

I believe a true coward is someone who is so caught up in their own ego that they are completely unable to even recognize their own mistakes, let alone apolgize for them. How about you?