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Forgiveness – A Powerful Leadership Capability

July 15, 2015

Blog Topic

There’s a severity about our overall culture that seems to be embedded in our workplace.

It has to do with judgement, punishment, revenge and isolation. We are quick to demonise others’ transgressions, forgetting our own errors and lesser choices of behaviour.

Once a person is judged, s/he is ‘branded’. We hold on to our judgements or grudges.

In our workplaces we have a continuing high rate of employee disengagement, consistently reported by Gallup.

Much of employee engagement is dependent upon effective relationships.

In every workplace where I have consulted I have found a string of broken relationships, many that have existed unchanged for years.

They exist between peers and between supervisors and team members at all levels.

No-one is willing to go first in making amends.

I run a workshop around attitudinal competence and improving culture. Towards the end I do a particular exercise with the participants that lead directly to them going to the people they need to and sharing their forgiveness with one another.

They do so willingly and I have never experienced anyone shirking the action.

The result is an immediate improvement in the culture and because the leadership is present and participating it sticks.

Nelson Mandela demonstrated the power of forgiveness after the fall of apartheid and Ghandi said “An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.”

Leaders seeking to improve employee engagement could do well to discover how they can encourage the dual process of improving attitudinal competence and creating the space for forgiveness.

The resulting cultural improvement and improved employee engagement shows up in improved productivity. The return on investment is immense.

What do you think?

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