When you say you’re sorry, do you really mean it? 

Among other things, 2025 was the year of the so-called “fake” apology: Corporate brands created Instagram posts with messages that effectively boil down to “sorry … for being awesome!” The appeal isn’t hard to understand. Acts of contrition by public figures tend to stop scrollers in their tracks, prompting lots of shares and comments; fake apologies exploit this instinct in a (hopefully) witty way. And normally starchy brands get to demonstrate they have a sense of humor.

But of course, there’s a downside to this sort of tongue-in-cheek marketing stunt. It wears out its welcome fast: A Browser Media report in December points out the various ways that fake apologies have prompted a backlash. Even successful apologies tend to put a company’s integrity into question. “Some users feel genuinely tricked when they realise these aren’t real apologies,” the article notes. “That initial moment of concern, followed by the reveal that it’s just a marketing stunt, can create a negative association rather than relief and humour. Views don’t equal trust, and engagement doesn’t always equal positive sentiment.”

And the trend is (was?) especially risky because if there’s one thing we all sense about public apologies, it’s that they tend to arrive coated in a sticky film of insincerity. The company or leader wasn’t apologizing for an error so much as regretting the harm a decision did to their bottom line or reputation, and is now striving to shore up both. When I wrote a humor book some years back about companies looking boneheaded or smarmy about something, finding examples was easy: I just had to google “the company apologized.”

I could do much the same today (though maybe I’d include “ChatGPT” in the search terms). Luckily, this persistent problem has a simple solution, one any leader should keep in mind whether they’re apologizing to the public or one of their reports. 

It’s not “be sincere,” though that’s nice and should be expected. As business professor Jim Detert wrote recently, it’s a matter of follow-through. “The problem with so many apologies (including the ones I’ve made) is that no matter how many good elements of an apology are present…one fundamental thing is often missing: a pledge to stop repeating the problematic behavior, with noticeable follow-through,” he writes at the MIT Sloan Management Review.”

In that regard, leaders have a steep hill to climb—culturally, from the fake apology on down, we’re persuaded that any apology is going to initially be hard to trust. So the best part of Detert’s advice is that anybody apologizing—a leader, or a whole organization—needs to step up and ask the offended party if they’ve properly addressed the problem. “Make it a practice to follow up and ask some hard questions: ‘Have I stopped (or started) doing what I promised you I would?’… This isn’t easy or fun—most feedback-seeking isn’t—but it’s important, given that none of us has perfect-awareness.”

That recommendation gets at another nuance of apologies that can often be insincere. Too often, leaders like to say, “Hold me (or us) accountable.” This kind of hollow passivity assumes that the worst they’ll get in return is the occasional angry email or at-reply. Moreover, it compels the offended party to be your moral rudder, when it really ought to be your job. 

None of this need to involve pleading facial expressions or rending of garments. A meaningful apology, in the long run, involves doing what you should be on any given day—checking in with your people to make sure they’re being treated the way they deserve.