The Clean and Green Club

Shel Horowitz’s Monthly Frugal Marketing Tip, February 2008

Sometimes, you have to eat some crow. Over the years, I’ve built a number of relationships with reporters who have interviewed me or used me as a source.

One of these reporters was looking for sources on a story, and I responded. He came back with a no, thank you–and I asked why.

When he responded, I made an almost fatal mistake, and made a remark that he interpreted as pushing too hard. He found my remark patronizing, thought his judgment was being attacked, and basically told me never to darken his door again.

Ooops! Time to mend fences.

I’ve learned from my friend Bob Burg, author of Winning Without Intimidation, that antagonistic interactions are almost always less effective than being nice. And I hadn’t even meant to antagonize this man to begin with!

So I let it set overnight so as not to do anything even more rash, and then wrote a note with a one-word subject line: “Apology”:

I am so sorry. I totally respect your decision and wasn’t trying to badger you to change it–but rereading what I wrote, I can see how it came across. I’m a morning person. I should just not do email late at night when I don’t always say what I mean. I actually thought you’d be amused by the irony, as I was.

Mea culpa.

Happy holiday to you and yours.

The apology was effective. I got back a note that began, “Thanks for the apology – I can understand a tone going awry.” he then outlined a bit more about what the was actually looking for, and I responded with a few suggestions that didn’t have anything to do with what I’d been pitching and didn’t benefit me personally. In fact, I even cited one book that “I just tried to find it for you on Amazon but it seems to be out of print.”

He wrote back a very friendly note.

The lesson here is that it was worth the time and effort to redeem a relationship that had turned sour–and not just because he’s someone with the power to help me by writing abut me, but because my life is better for not carrying around the negative baggage of building an unnecessary wall of hostility.

I had the advantage that the reporter actually communicated his frustration with me, giving me the chance to respond. Sometimes you have to actually figure out what’s really going on, because the other person hasn’t told you. This was brought home to me many years ago, when a relative expressed concern that he felt a lot of distance from me. That gave me the opening to explain (rather loudly) exactly why I was furious with him. He hadn’t had a clue what was going on inside me and why, but to his eternal credit, he acknowledged his contribution to the problem, changed the behavior, and rebuilt the relationship he had lost. And we’re both very glad of this, more than 30 years later.