What forgiveness looks like in the workplace

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you." - Louis B. Smedes

Forgiveness is an interesting concept.

Growing up Christian, in a deeply Christian environment, it’s not something I struggled to understand. Forgiveness was simply … forgiveness.

So when I moved to the UK in 2013, I found it surprising that it was a concept a lot of people didn’t quite understand.

I found it more surprising that I understood what it was but couldn’t quite articulate it. Kind of like heartbreak.

Forgiveness is hard to comprehend, and hard to accept, because as humans we tend to want to hold on to pain.

We have this false belief that forgiving someone means that we approve of what they did. We think forgiveness means a pat on the back of someone who hurt us. We think that if we forgive it’s going to make us look weak, that it’s going to be a signal to the world that we should be walked over and taken advantage of.

We find it hard to forgive, because to be in that position in the first place, something or someone must have hurt us. And how can you forgive when you are so terribly bitter. It’s like been thrown into a freezing ocean suddenly and out of the blue. Because your body is in shock, your instinct will be to kick and swim ferociously. But, it’s the counter-intuitive approach of staying calm and floating, the unnatural approach, that’s more likely to save your life.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t even stay calm if I turn on the shower and cold water greets me for a few seconds. Absolute panic.

Okay, I digress.

Point is, to forgive anyone is not natural reaction, but it’s the better way. And we should practice it in the workplace, not only in our personal lives. Resentment can last days, weeks, months, or years if you let it.

Because countless times I’ve failed at successfully describing forgiveness for what I believe it is, I will try to explain it for what I believe it is not, and hopefully convey why forgiveness in the workplace is a strong and positive culture trait:

1.      Forgiveness is not turning a blind eye

Some of us actually practise forgiveness at work more than we think.

When your subordinate makes some errors on a shareholder report, and you highlight it with him or her for future reference, work him/her through potential improvements, and then you go on your work without any hard feelings (because everyone makes mistakes), you are exercising forgiveness.

Scenario switch: If instead, when you saw the error, you thought “Ah, it’s alright, I’ll forgive”, you fixed the mistakes, and you didn’t raise it up with them – there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that – but it’s not necessarily forgiveness. Because what would happen if those mistakes are repeated?

You might have a more significant outburst. By not addressing the issue when it first happened, you might have thought you were being forgiving. But you weren’t. Unknown to you, you were building up what I term “resentment capital”. Sometimes your own silence can kill you.

An ‘Out of sight, Out of Mind’ approach to life doesn’t always bode well when that thing comes back into sight, because you might have thought you let it go – when you really didn’t. 

It also doesn’t help that person grow. And neither does it make you look trustworthy (because it’ll then be evident that there are pieces of constructive feedback regarding them that you are withholding).

Forgiveness is letting the people you work with be aware that something has gone awry. Then having a conversation on what could be the best way forward, so that your engagement, happiness, and quality of life at work isn’t impacted negatively.

2.      Forgiveness doesn’t mean that actions don’t have consequences

This is the point that quite a few people get tripped up on. I always hear things along the lines of “Forgiveness makes no sense. What they did was terrible. We’d be sending a message to everyone else that this is good behavior and we tolerate it”.

Um, that’s actually not true. Of course what they did was terrible. That’s why it’s called forgiveness. We don’t forgive good deeds - there’s no reason to – we forgive bad deeds.

Example 1: All the time, parents, with their children, exemplify actual forgiveness. There’s rewards for good behaviour, and punishments for bad behaviour. The incident is addressed. The parent-child care carries on.

Example 2: When an accounting firm allows its trainees to resit their exams after failing the first or second time, that’s forgiveness. The consequence might be the bonus lost or promotion delayed, but the forgiveness is providing the choice to try again. Again, the organization-employee care carries on.

If something goes wrong with a co-worker, address the problem explicitly, instead of letting it bubble below the surface. Get to clarity. Get to a resolution. And then move on.

You either forgive someone or you resent them. One of these two options drains your energy, fills you with negativity, hurts you more than it hurts them, takes a lot of headspace, triggers pain and dissatisfaction – and it’s not the former.

If you are not ready to forgive at work, you are ready to drive up animosity. And that never bodes well for company culture.

3.      Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you are weak!

There’s a friend I have. A few years ago she fell out with a partner. It was something that was quite intense at the start, but became more trivial with time.

Yet every time we met she would bring it up again. Frankly, it was getting boring.

So I armored up one day and said those risky words: “Maybe you should just forgive him”.

She looked me dead in the eye and replied “No, that would just make me a push-over”.

Interesting. I hadn’t ever heard of that perspective before: that forgiveness makes one weak.

I promise you it doesn’t. Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that because it’s so difficult to do, it requires immense strength?

One reason why we forgive our children’s shortcomings is because of the unconditional love we have for them.

Now imagine someone you barely know, a colleague at work, causing you significant bitterness. To forgive that person is basically to apply a bit of unconditional love. Does that sound like something a weak person can accomplish?

4.      Forgiveness isn’t always from me to you

Oftentimes, you must be the recipient of your own forgiveness.

This is at the core of it all, because if you can’t forgive yourself when you make a mistake at work e.g. mess up a report, turn up late to a client meeting, spill coffee on your boss’s favorite shirt etc., you will find it a lot harder to forgive someone else when they let you down or fall short of your expectations.

This is not to suggest that you mismanage yourself or be satisfied with sub-par quality of work. This is just to say that we are all human beings, and we are allowed to be imperfect sometimes. 

Akachi O.

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