Being a Caring Leader

Compassion and Forgiveness

Doug Lennick and Fred Kiel Ph.D.

Actively Caring About Others

When you are a leader, embracing your responsibility to serve others flows into compassion. Actively caring about others means that you do things that actively support the personal choices of others. Sometimes, it means you care about others’ goals as much as they do. At times, you might find yourself taking others’ goals more seriously than they feel able to. Mike Woodward, SVP of American Express Financial Advisors, is a conscientious and productive leader, but also a very private person who, early in his career, was reluctant to share his personal goals with his manager. After some nudging from his boss, Mike confided, “I really want to spend more time with my daughters. I have done a lot of hunting and fishing with my sons, but I haven’t spent as much time with my girls, and I’m missing that.” Then, soccer season rolled around for one of his daughters who was a strong athlete. Mike had arranged his schedule to attend her soccer games. Then, Mike was called to a meeting of the top national sales managers to be held in Minneapolis. The meeting was running late, and Mike’s boss realized Mike would need to leave before the meeting ended if he wanted to see his daughter’s soccer game. But Mike wasn’t moving. Mike’s boss interrupted the meeting. “Mike, don’t you have a flight to catch?” he asked. “Yeah,” Mike answered, “but the meeting is going long.” His boss then demonstrated his support for Mike’s personal goals, saying, “Leave now. Go to the airport. Go home and see your daughter’s game.”

AEFA’s Brian Heath, the body-building executive with the bouncer’s physique, doesn’t look like a compassionate type. Appearances to the contrary, he is deeply compassionate. In Brian’s mind, compassion isn’t just about taking pity on the helpless. It is about taking people’s hopes and dreams seriously and doing what he can to help them achieve their aspirations. He sets ambitious goals, but only after he is sure he understands what his people hope to accomplish.

IMG President Gary O’Hagan also subscribes to the notion that compassion means challenging people to do their best, believing that they can accomplish their goals, and providing the tools they need to succeed. There was a time right after Gary was cut by the New York Jets when he coached junior varsity high-school football. There were only 25 teens on his team, and 4 of them were handicapped. He wasn’t sure what to do. He was afraid his handicapped players would get hurt, but they wanted to play badly, so he decided that they were going to play. Gary explains, “The handicapped kids were offside all the time, but we decided to work on that. With the help of the non-handicapped kids—who were phenomenal—we instituted a special series of concentration drills—that by the way had nothing specifically to do with football. We put in some penalties for not doing the drills right. We were very nurturing, and the coaching staff and the whole team were very compassionate, and we converted the handicapped kids’ weakness into strength. We never went offside during a game that whole season. Their progress was incredible. The solution was unique, and it allowed everyone to contribute.”

Jefferson Bus Line’s CEO, Charlie Zelle, points out that compassion doesn’t mean ignoring bad behavior—that sometimes the most compassionate thing a leader can do is hold an employee accountable for unacceptable behavior. A number of years ago, Charlie had a senior manager who began to act like a loose cannon. It was a stressful time because the company had to close down a division. In a misguided attempt to show compassion for an employee he was letting go, the manager started badmouthing the company’s decision during his termination discussion with her. Every employee he laid off got a different explanation for the layoff. Then, the manager began an affair with someone in the corporate office. Other people tried to ignore the manager’s missteps, but Charlie knew he had to let him go. If Charlie ignored the manager’s bad behavior, it would wreak havoc with the trust other employees had in him and the company.

Three years later, the manager he had fired came back and asked for a half hour with Charlie. Turns out, he came to thank Charlie. He had been drinking heavily during those last few months with Charlie’s company and getting fired had been the wake-up call that prompted his entry into a treatment program. If Charlie had kept the manager on board out of misplaced compassion, it might have taken a lot longer for him to get the help he needed. Charlie’s reaction? “This said to me, you’ve got to do the right thing even if at the moment it feels like the person will really hate you.”

ID Media’s Lynn Fantom has an unusual appreciation for compassion. She considers it central to her leadership approach. “I take my model for management from my mother. To me, the behavioral model of a mother is perfect for management. A mother is very compassionate and encouraging and forgiving. Think about how a mother behaves when she is helping a young child learn to walk. When I became a mother, I became a much better manager.”

Jay Sleiter, CEO of BWBR Architects, discovered that compassion can open the door to unexpected business opportunities. In the early 1990s, due to some federal legislative decisions, the bottom had dropped out of their specialty market designing healthcare facilities. However, many opportunities existed in the international market, so they decided to pursue markets in Southeast Asia. They knew that these countries were revamping their health-care systems and didn’t have enough regional capacity to build the required facilities. Quickly, BWBR found that there was plenty of work if they were willing to go along with some very corrupt business practices characteristic in the region at that time. But they finally found a firm of Chinese and Malay architects operating in Malaysia, whose business values were remarkably consistent with those of BWBR. Jay said, “So we partnered with them. Then the Southeast Asian economy tanked. This proud Malaysian company was now faced with laying off many of their staff. Meanwhile, BWBR’s domestic business had come back full steam, so Jay’s company sent the Malaysian architects enough work to help them stay in business.

Today, that relationship has grown so that the Malaysian has become more and more a part of BWBR’s business. Because of compassion, what began as an opportunistic alliance has become a genuine partnership.

The two forgiveness competencies are “mirror competencies,” clearly very closely related. It is hard to talk about one without the other, but they are not the same skill. Some of us are much better at forgiving ourselves than others and vice versa. Many of us are hard on ourselves because of perfectionism. We can let go of other’s mistakes but hold on to our own. Sometimes, we are our own worst critics. Others of us have an easier time forgiving ourselves because we know our own underlying good intentions, while we may resist forgiving others because we distrust their motives. Effective leaders know that letting go of mistakes—their own and others—clears the way for better future performance.

Letting Go of Your Own Mistakes

The founders of Modern Survey were riding high. They knew they had developed a unique technology for providing survey-based business information. Right out of the gate, they landed a big contract with a Fortune 500 client and had several projects going on at the same time, each with a different contact person. They worked hard on the various projects and were sure the results had impressed their clients. They geared up to bid on another project for this company. Then co-founder, Don MacPherson, got an unwelcome call from a key contact in the company. They were taking all their business to a competitor and wouldn’t even let Modern Survey submit a bid. The problem? Don and his partners had assumed that their superior technology was the only thing they needed to be successful. Don was responsible for managing the account, and he hadn’t spent any time cultivating high-quality relationships with his client contacts. They wanted more attentive service, and when they didn’t get it from Modern Survey, they went elsewhere. Don says, “My mistake was not taking good care of that relationship. We expected the business. We felt entitled to the business rather than understanding we have to continually work for the business. We’ve never gotten the client back.”

Don’s partners were upset about the situation, but they didn’t blame Don. Don, however, blamed himself. He dwelled on his mistake for almost six months. Three years later, he still thinks about it occasionally and gets upset. But only by letting go were Don and his partners able to think more clearly about how to change their business practices, and those changes have helped the company with their other clients. “Now,” says Don, “I make sure I give all my clients the kind of service and nurturing that I failed to give the one we lost.”

Letting go of our mistakes doesn’t mean we have to excuse or explain away unacceptable behavior. It is important, after all, to accept responsibility for what you did and commit to do better going forward. But we do have to give up the negative self-talk that can crowd our brain when we have disappointed ourselves. Why? When we are busy talking to ourselves about our frustration, anxiety, and guilt, there is no mental space for learning the lessons of our mistakes. If we can’t forgive ourselves, we stay stuck; we hold ourselves back from fresh experiences and opportunities.

Brian Heath discovered that the hardest part of letting go of a mistake is first to admit that you have made one (the responsibility competency of admitting mistakes). When Brian was promoted from a regional VP to the newly created Group VP job, he had a stellar track record for developing high performing sales teams. Several months into his new role, his group’s performance had slid below the national average. For someone who had never been in that territory, the experience was shocking and debilitating. It took him a while to figure out what was going wrong. He was frustrated in his job and missed the direct contact he used to have with his field sales force. Now, instead of concentrating on developing his field team, he was spending a lot of energy developing a new piece of the bureaucracy—a mandated coordinating team intended to link him to the regional market groups. Finally, Brian had an epiphany, “I was focusing more on a method than an outcome. The evidence was there for several months, but I couldn’t or wouldn’t see it. It was hard to let go because I was vested in my own decision how to go about my new job. Finally, I realized I needed to be more courageous at helping advisors and helping clients.”

In some professions, constant self-forgiveness is the only way to survive. When Gary O’Hagan was a young bond trader with Solomon Brothers, he found that if he didn’t quickly let go of trading mistakes, he would be immobilized. When he made a mistake, he had to let it go, so he’d have the courage to trade another day. Gary reminisces, “I recall one day when I was managing the municipal bonds trading desk. For some reason, the municipal market was lagging in spite of other bond markets doing pretty well. I decided to take more risk and add to our position. I didn’t find out until the day was over that Congress was considering removing tax exempt status from municipal bonds. I could have and should have paused and dug in to find out why the municipals’ prices were dropping. Another bond house had done its homework, but I didn’t, and it cost the firm a lot of money.” Asked what happened after that, Gary responds, “Although we lost a lot of money that day because of my mistake, I was able to let it go the next day, and we went on to have a very good year!”

Letting Go of Others’ Mistakes

There is an apocryphal story about legendary IBM CEO, Thomas Watson. A high-potential junior manager reputedly made a mistake that cost IBM $5 million dollars. Devastated by his error, the junior executive offered his resignation, but Watson would not accept it. The young man was confused. “I don’t understand,” he told Watson, “I made a terrible mistake. Why on earth would you want to keep me?” Watson replied, “I just invested $5 million on your learning curve. Why would I want to waste that kind of money?”

The Forgiving Leader’s Perspective. Imagine that I have made a mistake that affects you or causes you harm. Forgiving you does not mean that I endorse what you have done. In the case of serious harm, it does not mean giving up my claim for justice. You are still accountable for what you did. When I forgive you, what remains is a belief in your probable good intentions (unless you are a very bad person). But when I forgive you, I allow my resentment and anger to recede, along with my negative judgments about you that would prevent me from considering you as a potential resource. When I forgive you, I continue to recognize that you have flaws, but I do not define you completely in terms of your flaws. I allow for the possibility that you have strengths that I can draw on in the future.

Without forgiveness, human life is virtually impossible. Intimate relationships with friends, family, and co-workers cannot exist without forgiveness. Without forgiveness, a leader’s organizational performance is artificially capped. The effective leader forms a relationship with followers with forgiveness at its core. The forgiving leader’s message to followers is essentially this:

You might as well know in advance that I will make mistakes, and so will you. As your boss, there are times when I won’t be doing my best work. There will be days when you’re not in top form, either. If you can’t forgive me for not always being your perfect boss, our relationship will be ineffective. It will be not only emotionally hurtful, but neither of us will perform as well as we should. If we can forgive each other for not being perfect, we will both be able to use each other as a valuable resource. We will be able to help each other be happy and perform at our best. It’s hard to imagine someone who has integrity but lacks responsibility or someone who has compassion but lacks forgiveness. Our moral competencies act synergistically to keep our day-to day actions lined up with who we want to become and what we hope to achieve. We each have relative strengths and weaknesses in our moral competencies. The more competent we become across the full spectrum of moral competencies, the more we will live in alignment. The more aligned we are, the happier we will be, and the more productive and successful our organizations will be.