The corrective responses to the Four H's are the Four R's: Remorse, Restitution, Rehabilitation and Request for Forgiveness.  If you are the CEO or part of the team responsible for guiding your company or industry through such a crisis, these are the steps you will need to take, (You is used to describe an individual, management team or company).

In order to heal the hurt, the injured parties need to see and feel your genuine Remorse. This means looking stakeholders straight in the eye, seeing the damage you’ve done, having them see that you see it and telling them that you know what your action did to them.  You can communicate this by saying to them: “When we (you and your company) did X, you felt disappointed, betrayed and hurt.  And it’s going to take somewhere between a long time and never before you would trust us again, because of how devastated you felt because of what we did; isn’t that true?” After they concur, follow up by saying to them: “We were wrong and I’m sorry for what we did.” Your "I'm sorry" must be simple and clear and not followed by excuses or "but it wouldn't have happened if only ..."  This is possibly the most difficult thing to do (President Clinton wasn’t able to get closer to this than finally saying after too long delay, “It was wrong.”).  This may also be why news interviewers frequently ask victims of corporate exploitation if the company ever apologized directly to them. TOP

As much as each stakeholder's hurt needs remorse in order to heal, his/her anger needs vengeance in order to be expunged.  Restitution starts when you provide a forum for the injured and aggrieved to verbally vent their outrage, revulsion, disgust, disappointment directly at you for the hurt and pain caused. They need to verbally “punch themselves out” and feel completely drained of all the negative feelings your betrayal engendered. This is the hard part. Picture yourself releasing the steam in a pressure cooker just moments prior to its explosion. If you try to stop the steam, you will get burned. Stand there and listen, empathize and acknowledge without defending yourself. This outpouring of emotion will help calm and quell people’s need for revenge.  The temperature in the pressure cooker will drop to non-threatening level. With the anger expressed, each will now be open to a discussion of a tangible payback. This restitution will need to replace the chunk of their being they feel you took away through misdeed. TOP

Even with restitution, most will remain hesitant to trust you.  This is human nature.  It is also human nature to forgive once earned. To overcome this, your stakeholders, partners, customers and peers must witness you actively Rehabilitating yourself. Prove you are sincere through action.  Learn how to deal with all challenges to your business without resorting to any immoral or unethical actions. Make sure you’re strategies are sound (appear rational), feel right (sit right), and seem doable (realistic). Integrity, a virtuous attitude, consistency and delivered intent build character and overcome the weariness and wariness of those you’ve hurt in time. Character is what you do when you’re disappointed, angry, frightened, bored or swathed in temptation…and nobody’s looking.