Lots of articles criticizing United CEO Munoz used the term “tone-deaf” describing his email to employees about the United/Dr. Dao incident. Here’s what I find most interesting:

“Our employees followed established procedures for dealing with situations like this. While I deeply regret this situation arose, I also emphatically stand behind all of you, and I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right…. Treating our customers and each other with respect and dignity is at the core of who we are, and we must always remember this no matter how challenging the situation.”

I wrote a post about the Microsoft CEO standing behind his employees after a public blow. So why is one lauded and one ridiculed?

1. Munoz forgot something important: people hate the airlines.  So when you are directly involved in a terrible outcome captured on video, people will be relentless.
2. He talks about treating customers with “respect and dignity” in his last sentence, but uses the verbs “defied”, “refused”, “more disruptive”, “belligerent”  in describing Dr. Dao.  How do you reconcile the two…does respect and dignity only apply to nice customers?
3. In trying to stand behind his employees, he implies that the process and procedures that ended in this outcome were correctly followed and right.  In other words, if this happens again, and you follow the same process, it’s ok?

Think how different it would have been if he had just said: “This was a horrible thing to have happened and we will make sure that something like this never happens again.” Done.