An apology and a lesson

• Sat, October 22 2011
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I presented at the No More Homeless Pets Conference this weekend on how to connect with our audiences through a greater understanding of how people think, and I want to tell the story of how I messed up and what I learned.

I spoke about the discovery of mirror neurons, which show how we relate to each other’s experience, and I told the story of how this insight came from observing a monkey in a lab.  I described the experiment, and its implications for our understanding of human connections.

That was a mistake.  A story that featured animal experimentation, whatever the type or circumstances and whatever the point, was not the right story to tell to my audience.  And of course the irony was I made this mistake in a speech about connecting with audiences.  So I managed to make a meta mistake too. 

When you mess up, all you can do is own up.  So here’s what I said about my mistakes:

I want to apologize to all of you—everyone in this community and especially the conference organizers.  I sincerely and utterly regret referencing an animal experiment in my speech.  I understand now that this was not appropriate and upsetting to many of you.  I am also sorry to have fallen so short of my goal: which was to express my heartfelt support for your work and to inspire you to do it well.  It’s a great irony that in talking about connecting to an audience, I missed wide of the mark in my own talk.  I made a mistake, and I feel terrible about it.  I will post this sentiment on my blog as well, and I will be expressing it in my workshop this afternoon.  Thank you for your understanding and for all you do for animal welfare.

I’m a perfectionist, so I feel physically ill when I make mistakes.  Like now.  But I have to say, the things I’ve gotten wrong (and the apologies I’ve made) have been hugely instructive, however painful.  In fact, they have been far more effective in making me a better person and professional than the things I aced.  So I’m sharing this story to show what I learned once more: Know your audience well—and know when you have failed to connect.  When you err, own it and learn from it.  It’s a lifelong process to try to understand our connections to each other and our disconnects from each other.  I can say from personal experience, that work is never really done.  We may have mirror neurons, but that doesn’t make us mirror reflections of each other.  Our different perspectives are rich territory for misunderstanding - but also for enlightenment.  In other words, I feel both stupid and a little smarter.