“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong”  Mahatma Gandhi

Forgiveness provides us with:

•  Peace from past conflicts, issues and challenges
•  Closing resolution with people and situations
•  Space in our emotions and heart for positive thoughts and feelings
•  Freedom from the burden of past hurt
•  Capacity to allow people to grow and overcome their transgressions against you
•  Ability to create relationships in the current state and not bogged down by the past
•  Enhanced personal resilience

With gratitude, forgiveness is one of the biggest cures to restoring the heart to a point of love and your attitude to a consistent positive state. The mud-freeing that occurs when forgiveness is practiced for the first time and then consistently thereafter is nothing short of amazing.

What is Forgiveness

Often forgiveness is misunderstood and associated with forgetting. You hear things like “just let it go” or “forget about it” and that is a common misconception. We humans do not have an erase button or delete key to remove a memory. The memory stays. Forgiveness gives us the power in how the memory is framed and the capacity to create positive overwrites of the prior memory.

Forgiveness is also not some grand spectacle where the person who wronged you is involved. Real forgiveness is quiet and there is really no need to share with the person being forgiven. Many times, the person who wronged you forgot about the event long ago or doesn’t even have an ounce of awareness about it. This is all about you and not about anyone else.

For our purposes, forgiveness will be the solemn promise and vow that the event or person we are forgiving will not influence any future interaction or event. So, by forgiving someone, I am not promising to forget it happened. I am promising that whatever the past event, I will not allow it to change how I deal with that person moving forward.

In the simplest analogy possible, someone cuts you off on the freeway during a long commute. Forgive them quickly and you return to safe and alert driving very quickly. Failure to forgive that other motorist and your attention is focused on harsh judgement of him or her, your anger and perhaps even revenge. Here, failure to forgive distracts from the ability to drive safely and could have dire consequences.

Accountability and Forgiveness

In a working environment, the most common objection to the practice of forgiveness comes from the apparent exclusivity of accountability and forgiveness. As a leader or person of success mindset, accountability is a core principle. Team members must be accountable for their performance and behavior. Vendors must be accountable for their promises of delivery. Partners must be accountable for the terms of the agreements they executed to work with you.

And all of that is true. Accountability is a foundation of success and leadership and must not be compromised.

Far too often in a business environment, accountability becomes a lifetime proposition. Someone commits a transgression, makes a mistake or other has some significant challenges and sadly, that becomes their career-long legacy. In my work as an executive coach and with other teams of leaders, the phenomenon of someone being on a radar screen for a past transgression is extremely common as is the failure to provide any pathway off that radar screen. Yes, that person made a terrible mistake three years ago and you held them accountable for it. Now is the time to stop defining them and judging them on that mistake and allowing them the chance to recover and giving yourself the freedom from this baggage as well.

Accountability should be swift and fair. Behind that, forgiveness should be equally swift.

The equation of workplace and leadership forgiveness will look like this:

•  Judge and asses an event, performance or behavior
•  Use defined accountability tools such as corrective feedback, documented discipline, or even termination of relationship
•  Grant forgiveness and not have the event affect future interactions with that team member or other person

By Tim Schneider

Tim Schneider is the founder of Aegis Learning and has been working with teams and leaders for 25 years.   He generates results, impact and his sole focus is your success.

He is the author of The Ten Competencies of Outstanding Leadership and Beyond Engagement and a widely sought speaker, training facilitator and individual development coach.