Responsibly Accepting Blame
Doing the right thing after unintentionally failing someone usually earns a positive response, even if the emotions still run hot against you.
Lewis Hamilton did the hard thing and benefited from it. He knew he committed a serious error that caused big problems for another person and he chose to privately and publicly accept blame. That’s not the norm in business, sport, government or life.
Race car driver Lewis Hamilton acknowledged that he was in the wrong for a collision with Mercedes teammate George Russell at the Qatar Grand Prix and he did something positive about it.
"I've watched the replay and it was 100% my fault,” Hamilton said. "I take full responsibility."
Rare, refreshing, notable and impressive. The communication was prompt, humble, honest and with no excuses. It shined. That’s part of what people want to hear.
Want to make it better? Learn and talk about how the judgment and behavior negatively impacted people and show you understand and feel remorse for that impact.
How did Russell take it? Probably like most people who see someone unexpectedly do the right thing. "I definitely appreciate him apologizing for that,” he said.
The two drivers publicly say that their professional relationship is on solid ground.
"The relationship isn't broken,” Hamilton says. “I don't have any problems with George. We have a great relationship and we always talk about things. It is definitely unfortunate and I'm sure he was frustrated in the moment, as I was. But we will talk about it off line and we will move forwards."
Russell was upset at the time of the incident but he’s now over it, he asserts.
"Of course frustrated because it was just a missed opportunity for both of us,” he says. "We had a lot of discussions this morning about how we would work together. The fight wasn't with each other, the fight is with Ferrari.”
The two people are willing to move forward without animosity, at least for now. This was of course made possible by Hamilton’s decision to own what happened in preventing another person’s professional performance, financial potential and injuring their emotions and psychology.
It’s a good lesson and model for what is possible for doing the right thing and how disputes and negative emotions can be mitigated or extinguished.
Michael Toebe is a reputation consultant, advisor and communications specialist at Reputation Quality, assisting individuals and organizations with further building reputation as an asset or ethically protecting, restoring or reconstructing it.
Subscribe for free or become a paid subscriber to receive and access “extras,” whichever works best for you.
Want your services or products to be seen in Reputation Intelligence or discuss a partnership? Let’s talk about it to see how you can benefit.
Contact me (Michael) at Rep.Intel.News@gmail.com and you and I can talk about your objectives and value offering and create an impressive visual ad and message to prominently, impressively display in the newsletter for a month at a time, or longer.
$475 for an ad for two issues of the newsletter. Links to your About page, landing page or home page are $250 (one issue of the newsletter) per link.
Note
Reputation Quality Analyst Services:
Paid Professional Opinion — Consulting — Ongoing Advisory and Communications