How to Forgive
While relaxing and enjoying my lunch today, I opened the drawer of my desk and rediscovered a leadership tool our company distributes as part of an on-going series in management and leadership development. You know the kind, those short mini-series booklets that all-to-often people just toss into their desk drawer, never giving another thought to the reason they may have been given the book in the first place. But that little book taught you a unique lesson: How to forgive.
I read the title – Inspired to Lead - and opened to the full page quote on the first page. It said. . .
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a Leader.” – John Quincy Adams
I read the entire book during my thirty minute lunch, which tells you it was a quick read. I took note specifically of one of the lessons that struck a particular cord with me, as it is something that escapes the perspectives of our leaders often.
How to Forgive Like a Leader – Short Story
It was a story of a company whose top executives were not working together effectively. Egos, infighting, manipulation, and turf-battles had left the company morale ravaged and devastated and productivity waning. A new CEO was brought in and directed to fix the problem or everyone, including him, would be gone. Through his action, he gave the group of executives a unique and valuable lesson in forgiveness and humility.
To summarize, as all the executives were arriving for their first meeting with the new CEO, they noticed the conference room had been re-arranged into a kind of a horse shoe, forcing everyone’s eyes to the center of the room. Located In the middle, surrounded by all the conference tables, was a large green trash can. You know, the kind you would find sitting out on the curbside for trash pickup.
The meeting began with a brief introduction by the CEO and once the introductions were concluded, he instructed all the executives to scatter about the room and make a list of any injustice that had been done to them; any issue that nagged at them as unfair, along with the names of every person whom they perceived had wronged them in any way with the company.
Almost all of them compiled a very long list.
The CEO then distributed a large, clear plastic garbage bag to each of the executives as they stared puzzled and a bit bewildered at what was happening. The CEO then walked from his seat, over to the middle of the room and removed the lid of the big green garbage can. He instructed each executive to come up and fill their plastic bag with one of the cleaned, unpeeled potatoes contained in the can for every name and injustice they had noted on their list.
The group was then asked to carry their bag of potatoes with them everywhere they went for the next two weeks. To the meetings, traveling in their car, at their desk, around their house, and to bed each night – everywhere! Absolutely no exceptions!
At first they all thought it rather amusing and funny, lugging around sacks of potatoes, but soon the laughter faded and embarrassment and frustration began to set in. Employees within the company couldn’t help but gawk and whisper about what the executives were doing and questioning why they were carrying the large bags of potatoes everywhere.
Day after day the bag became more of an impediment and barrier to their jobs and their lives. Lugging them from meetings and other places within the office and back and forth from the office to home, the hot weather and sun added another additional element of unpleasantness as the potatoes began to rot and transform into a smelly, slimy, stinky mess.
After two weeks, they reconvened at the next meeting with the CEO where he explained that the demise of the potatoes represented how quickly such dead weight in our lives becomes toxic and ugly and how physically fatiguing and debilitating it is to carry with us the pain and negativity of things past.
The CEO then offered up forgiveness as an answer to some of the problems they were all facing. He explained that forgiveness was probably something they had never really considered or associated with leadership, but that when we as individuals carry around the gripes of yesterday, we limit what we are able to accomplish today. He added that forgiveness may be perceived as a value that we extend to someone else, but its true nature and value are far deeper. In short, he had unveiled a great lesson: How to forgive and be a true leader.
Forgiveness & Leadership
The reality is that forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves, a freedom to discard and shed that which is no longer healthy or positive in our own life.
Think about your own situation at work, or at home — how many of us carry around that rotten sack of potatoes full of past injustices, offenses, and insults that may have been perpetrated on us innocently or with malicious intent? Ask yourself how heavy and toxic has it become for you.
The capacity to forgive is a rare and unique quality that few leaders ever master, but it is one that offers enormous strength, wisdom, and transformative power when it is extended humbly and gracefully.
Forgiveness is not forgetting an injustice or that something didn’t happen; it is a choice we make. A choice that we have better uses for our energy, our talent, and our life than carrying around the dead weight of yesterday’s pain.
How do you practise leadership + forgiveness? Share your tips and tell us how to forgive.
Photo by eflon.
