The Overlooked Power of Forgiveness in a Leader.

Of all the things you could do to improve your leadership, how is it that incorporating forgiveness could be the missing link that takes your business to the next level?

The attitude you bring to work everyday effects every aspect of your business.

If you are harboring any unforgiveness towards someone that has treated you badly, it makes succeeding in business much more challenging. It is like carrying a 50 lb backpack while trying to run a marathon - it is possible and the racer might finish - but the process would be more challenging than it needed to be. It would also require more effort and persistence and when the racer finished they would finish with a slower time. To add to that, the race will have taken so much out of them that they would be too exhausted and depleted to enjoy the fact that they accomplished their goal.

Every time you harbor unforgiveness towards someone it is like you are adding a ten pound rock to your resentment backpack. Some business owners have the mistaken idea that holding a grudge gives them an edge and the extra drive they need to succeed. The truth of the matter is, it might bring short-term results but it will end up worse for your business in the long run.

Are you experiencing an employee problem in your business?

Harboring unforgiveness has a tendency to cause the business owner to be short-tempered, to have unrealistic expectations, and to see the worst in their employees. Depending on what industry you are in, there is already a national trend in America for employees to work for a company a couple years and then move on to another one. With employees already being so mobile, keeping a top-notch employee at your organization, if you are not a great boss, is near impossible. If you are able to keep them, there is a good chance your employees will do just enough to get the job done and they might even look for ways to passively-aggressively sabotage your company as a way to get back for the way they are being treated.

According to Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries in an article for the Harvard Business Review,

"Leaders have such an important effect on other people’s lives that their lack of forgiveness can create a climate where anger, bitterness and animosity prevent a team, an organization, a society, and even a nation from being the best they can be."

Top-performing employees are not robots that will produce at their maximum potential regardless of how they are treated. In fact, if you are offending your employees as a result of unforgiveness in your heart, you are creating resentment in your employees and adding rocks to their virtual backpack which will effect every aspect of their production as well.

Are you having customer service challenges in your business?

Poor customer reviews will sink a business. If you are having customer service issues they need to be addressed immediately. So how can harboring unforgiveness effect customer service. The culture of your company and how you treat your employees has everything to do with the way your customers are treated. Many companies have the motto, "The customer comes first." A better motto to have is, "The employee comes first." According to an article by Emmie Martin, in Business Insider, about the employee first culture at Southwest Airlines,

"The 44-year-old airline is known for its friendly (and often witty) flight attendants, as well as its top-notch customer service. This stems from its employees-first mantra, which plays out in a trickle-down effect."

Excellent customer service takes determination and a great attitude from your front line employees. If there is an unhealthy culture at your company, your employees that interact with your customers the most will do just enough to get by or worse and your customers will know it.

Are your profit margins low or do you have a cash flow problem?

When you come to work with bitterness in your heart it causes you to mainly notice things that can hurt your business instead of seeing new opportunities that can help it. Even worse, for many business owners who harbor unforgiveness, it causes them to focus on surviving instead of thriving. Opportunities to increase your profit margin and cash flow could be right in front of you, but holding grudges can keep you blind from them.

Even for business owners with a perfect frame of mind, it can be a challenge seeing opportunities that can help your business. Many business owners feel like their main job is being a fire fighter. Sometimes, so many problems have to be dealt with immediately that running your business based on your short and long-term goals can feel impossible. Adding unforgiveness to the mix makes accomplishing your goals even more challenging. Going back to the race analogy, the goal becomes just finishing the race instead of competing to win.

As a business owner, their can be a lot to forgive.

Being a business owner is not for the faint of heart. Along with all of the personal areas of our lives where we might need to forgive, there are also things to forgive that took place at work before becoming an entrepreneur. Now that you are a business owner, there are possibly many issues you face where forgiveness is needed. Whether it's a customer writing a 1 star review because they are having a bad day, or your employee pulling a no call / no show on your busiest day of the year, no lender giving you additional funding, or the government adding on a new tax or regulation, being wronged as a business owner is going to happen.

As much as there is to forgive as a business owner, getting a handle on how you deal with the negative things that can happen to you is a major key to your success.

How to implement forgiveness in your life.

The solutions I am about to provide are not for forgiving abuse. I will address abuse later in this article.

If you agree with the side-effects unforgiveness have on you and your business and you know you need to apply forgiveness to your life - how do you accomplish this?

First, it is important to know why forgiveness is so hard so you can overcome the objections your mind is giving you to not embrace it.

• You feel a need for justice. When you are wronged you hold on to the anger and resentment when the offender is not justly punished or held responsible for their actions.

The solution: Justice is a good thing. It is natural to feel a need for justice. When it is in your control for justice to take place it is fine to support it. Many times though, justice does not happen. If you only forgive when you feel the justice fits the offence, you will be walking around with a lot of unforgiveness. The way you deal with injustice that is out of your control is to have to have a funeral of sorts in your mind where you accept the fact that justice will probably not take place so you can move on.

One thing that helps with overcoming unmet justice is when you succeed despite how the offense could have or did set you back. Especially in a situation where the offender has ill intent and was trying to set you back, you can feel a sense of justice when you succeed in spite of them.

• Many times the offender has not apologized or does not even know they offended you. Forgiveness is hard enough when someone asks for it but much more difficult when the adversary fully justifies their actions. One of the hard things about being a business owner is that from a PR standpoint, a lot of times it is not advisable to respond to negative reviews or unfavorable media because when you do you bring attention to the negativity, which compounds the PR hit.

The solution: When it is advisable to do so you should confront the offender. A lot of times they might surprise you and apologize. Far too often business owners are walking around with unresolved anger and resentment when the person their upset with would have made it right if given the opportunity.

When there is no apology, it is still possible to forgive the offender. If they are someone you know, it helps to think of all of the good things that you like about the person. Write them down and read the list to yourself if you have to. Focusing on someone's strengths makes it much easier to see the whole picture and forgive their faults even if they do not apologize. Just a reminder, this is not a good solution for forgiving someone who abused you. I will address abuse later in this article.

If you don't know the person, write down or think about the things you like about others in the group they belong to. For example if a customer writes a 1 star review because they were mad at the world that day, read all of the 5 star reviews of the customers who love your business and sing its praises. When you do this, you begin to realize that the 1 star review pales in comparison to all of the customers who know, like, and trust you - making it easier to forgive them.

• Sometimes, the offender continues to do so. How do you forgive someone who continues to treat you wrongly? More importantly, how do you forgive while confronting the behavior and setting up protective barriers? Does forgiveness mean weakness?

The Solution: Forgiveness does not mean weakness. A large part of forgiveness is giving yourself permission to move on with your life after being wronged or mistreated. As mentioned earlier, when possible, offensive behavior needs to be confronted. Also, when possible, you need to insist on being treated differently or avoid being around the adversary. Sometimes, it is so hard to forgive someone because who you are really mad at is yourself for not overcoming the fear to confront the behavior and insist that it stop.

Sometimes, it is not possible to remove yourself from the person or entity that is treating you wrongly. If you are two thirds of the way through a project for a difficult customer, and they are determined to still be difficult after you have confronted them, you are probably going to have to deal with the continual mistreatment until you finish the job so you can get paid. Dwelling on the mistreatment will not make it go away and will make it harder to forgive and to get through the project without overreacting. Once again, the key is to dwell on the things that inspire and encourage you. Make sure you have good outlets outside of work to de-stress.

• The person you need to forgive is yourself. . Sometimes, the person hardest to forgive is yourself. A lot of us are our own worst critiques. One of the worst things business owners and managers do is self-sabotage their business and success because they do not feel like they are worthy of greatness. It is time to stop living every day feeling defeated because of past wrongs.

The Solution: Go to the person you have wronged and apologize. I have noticed that saying, "I am sorry," is getting harder for people to do in today's culture. You know from personal experience that if you are guilty you can never convince your subconscious mind otherwise. Your subconscious will continue to punish you until you make it right.

If the person does not forgive you, you still have to give yourself permission to forgive yourself. If your peace with yourself is always based on how others feel, you will never make the leap from good to great and get your business out of a rut. One thing that helps you forgive yourself is if you take proper action to make sure the offense does not continue to happen. The more you continue to do the same wrong thing, the harder it is to forgive yourself.

A person's religious beliefs can positively impact their ability to forgive.

For me personally, counseling with people at my church over the years has helped me to be able to forgive and move on with my life. A person's worldview and perspective on life can have a major effect on their ability to forgive. Your religious belief most likely shapes the way you view the world - especially how you view forgiveness, justice, anger, and love. For many, the act of forgiveness is not only a mental act, but also a spiritual one. If you have a particular religious belief I encourage you to look to the teachings of your religion on forgiveness or get counsel from your religious leader on the subject.

What about forgiving abuse?

If you have experienced something traumatic in your life, there are different ways you need to deal with it, and the people involved, to be able to move on with your life. Trauma such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse can affect a person so deeply that a lot of times they need professional counseling to heal and it can take years.When dealing with the memory of abuse though, there is hope of healing from it. I hope it is an encouragement that many have gone before you and found healing from the worst of atrocities.

If you have experienced abuse in your life and then became a business owner or manager, congratulations for being bold enough to make that decision. You could have chosen a field where you do robotic type work, but instead you chose a vocation where you have to bring your A game everyday. You chose a profession where those around you are affected by your attitude and where you have to make rational decisions and not let past experiences or emotions cloud your judgement. Trying to do this while dealing with the emotions of the abuse you faced can leave you emotionally depleted and cause so much stress, that while your business might survive, the emotional battle can take a toll on your health and quality of life.

I am not a professional counselor, so instead of writing anything about how to move on from whatever abuse happened to you, I came across a list of what forgiveness is not that I would like to share with you. It was put together by the abuse-victim advocate, Ashley Easter. The only way to be able to forgive someone who has physically or emotionally abused you is to have a true understanding of what forgiveness means and what it does not when it comes to forgiving abuse.

1. "Forgiveness Does Not Mean the Abuser Must Be Involved.
2. Forgiveness Does Not Mean Reconciliation.
3. Forgiveness Does Not Mean Lack of Boundaries.
4. Forgiveness Does Not Mean Quickly Moving On.
5. Forgiveness Does Not Mean Excusing or Overlooking the Wrong.
6. Forgiveness Does Not Mean Forgetting.
7. Forgiveness Does Not Mean You Can’t Talk About the Experience.
8. Forgiveness Does Not Mean There Will Not Be Consequences.
9. Forgiveness Does Not Mean You Stop Keeping Track of Toxic Patterns.
10. Forgiveness Does Not Mean You Should Not Warn Others."

Concluding thoughts.

I hope this article has been beneficial to you and your business.

Are your profits down? Is employee morale down? Are you having trouble keeping your best employees? Is customer satisfaction getting lower? Do you feel discouraged and depressed everyday even when things are going well?

If the answer is yes to any of these questions - have you tried forgiveness?

YOU AND YOUR BUSINESS WERE MEANT TO THRIVE AND NOT JUST SURVIVE! YOU WERE MEANT TO WIN THE RACE AND NOT JUST FINISH!

I encourage you to try forgiveness, today. You and your business will never be the same.

About the Author

Victor Hallock has been a business owner for 9 years. 3 years ago he returned to college and finished his business degree. He is excited for the next adventure that awaits as he pursues a full-time position in the Marketing or Public Relations field. While in this pursuit, he is working part-time as a Mobile Marketing Consultant to brick and mortar businesses. He enjoys writing articles on how to succeed in business and in life and enjoys connecting with new people and businesses on LinkedIn.

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