RESTORING CULTURES

Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last tooth-some morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you give back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is what you are wolfing down is you. The skeleton at the feast is you.¹

—FREDERICK BUECHNER

The insights of this quote become real when we notice that our best grudges follow us wherever we go. Grudges start when we didn’t get something we wanted (promotion, pay raise, or recognition), or we got something we didn’t want (nasty teammate, moronic boss, or a layoff). Grudges can be professional or personal, but interestingly, regardless of what or who harmed us, all grudges fester for the same three reasons:

1.   We take an offense too personally.

2.   We blame the offender for how we feel.

3.   We create a grievance story.

At the individual level, grudges that are real gems elevate stress, increase our heart rate and blood pressure, and compromise our immune systems. At the organizational level, grudges rupture relationships, and they decrease the trust and commitment needed for performance. When people don’t feel valued or respected, they quit, file claims, miss work, or disrupt teamwork. Here, the connection between grudges and leadership is obvious. Of all people, leaders need to get this right and avoid behaving in ways that are driven by grudges. Leaders’ grudges can cascade a long way through an organization and cause massive egress. Despite our knowing all this, grudges and other dysfunctional behaviors still happen in every organization. The question is whether relationships will be restored.

OK, if grudges don’t travel well, how about revenge? No doubt, revenge can be quite cathartic. Michael McCullough’s research makes clear that anger is a moral response to solve a problem and accomplish a goal. A “Don’t tread on me” philosophy keeps us safe when we can’t count on police or military to protect us.² In other circumstances and not uncommonly, anger can be destructive. Epictetus offered an alternative to grudges and revenge, “If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase.”³

A critical skill that repairs a ruptured relationship is forgiveness, which research suggests few people consider as a way to cope with life’s blows. Dr. Frederic Luskin, who founded the Stanford Forgiveness Project, put it this way: “Holding on to a grudge really is an ineffective strategy for dealing with a life situation that you haven’t been able to master. If it’s bitterness, you hold it with anger. If it’s hopeless, you hold it with despair.”⁴

Resentment, a cousin of revenge, shifts our attention away from flourishing to ruminating on past personal affronts. Buddha cautioned that being perennially ticked off, sad, or depressed serves no constructive purpose: “Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”⁵

Icons like Buddha and Jesus truly forgave those who caused grave harm. Remarkably, relatives of the nine victims killed in a shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, committed by white supremacist Dylann Roof offered forgiveness at his bond hearing.⁶ Chris Singleton, whose mother was killed by Roof, said, “The narrative of forgiveness is submitting and it means that you’re weak, or people would think that. But I’ve realized that forgiving is so much tougher than holding a grudge.”⁷

This amazing standard of granting grace is beyond what most of us can imagine doing under similar circumstances. However, the research on forgiveness reveals a lower standard that might be more within our reach. We don’t forgive for the sake of the offender. We forgive to stop ourselves from being consumed by hate.

Those who struggle with forgiveness might have too many unenforceable rules or might try too hard to enforce the ones they have. For good reason, we get mad when a driver cuts us off. No doubt dangerous driving is wrong, but do we have the power to stop the person from weaving in and out of traffic? It is far easier to change our thinking than to get unenforceable rules obeyed, with the result that we live more peaceful lives.

Acquiring the skill of forgiveness involves taking affronts less personally, blaming the offender less, and even trying to understand the offender. The French expression “Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner” means “When you understand everything, you can forgive everything.” Our goal isn’t necessarily to reconcile with the offender. Our goal is to replace our toxic anger with realistic optimism.⁸

Most of the time, we forgive for reasons that are quite mundane. We give our spouses, partners, kids, and teammates a pass for minor offences, and they do the same for us. We might forgive to keep the relationship in a good place or because doing so might be good for us in the future. The cost for destroying a relationship might be too high. When we value the relationship, we tend to forgive easily and often.⁹ Despite our failings, our ability to cooperate is how humans learned to go to the moon and make better light bulbs. The benefit of cooperation can only be had for the price of being tolerant about other people’s mistakes because teammates, partners, and family members will sometimes let each other down.

When it comes to better performance, compassion, appreciation, and optimism work better than revenge, despair, and victimhood. At work, forgiveness helps coworkers rebuild positive relationships following conflict. In addition, when companies ask customers for forgiveness when they make mistakes, it helps rebuild customers’ trust.¹⁰ Yet, smart and capable managers often fail to lead their teams effectively because they are not skilled at forgiveness and they don’t know how to repair ruptured relationships. Building forgiveness as a leadership skill isn’t about being a wimp. Leaders skilled at forgiveness strengthen performance.

Embrace your “inner Edie” by asking “What’s next?” rather than “Why me?” Replace victimhood with strength. A shot of gratitude combined with a reality check that life isn’t always fair can dial back a 100-pound grudge to perhaps a 20-pound grudge. The grudge is still heavy, but it’s no longer crippling. Instead of focusing on our wounded feelings, thereby giving power to the person who caused our pain, a life well lived is our best revenge.¹¹ Mahatma Gandhi gets the last word:

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.¹²

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

All cultures must respond to violation of virtues, values, or codes of conduct. The difference is how they respond when, not if, injustice happens. Our responses to injustice can go one of two ways—into retribution or into restoration. Restorative justice is an evidence-based way to limit the performance impact of grudges and other forms of dysfunctional conduct. While restorative justice originated in the criminal justice system, its core philosophies and tools contribute to an inclusive business culture founded on respect.

The purpose of retribution is to determine policies that were violated, laws that were broken, who is guilty, and the punishment the offender deserves. The purpose of restorative justice is making people better. This is achieved by the offender and offended sharing their experience of what happened, discussing the harm that occurred, and creating an agreement to repair the harm.

Restoration denounces harmful action while respecting the humanity and dignity of everyone in the process by giving them a role to repair the harm. The goal is to fix the problem, learn from the experience, and reintegrate everyone back into the culture. The practical issue is this: All teams experience relationships swinging back and forth between rupture and repair. The better teams do a better job repairing inevitable ruptures.

Restorative justice isn’t about being a doormat. In fact, the process is demanding. Restoration might mean an apology, an action, or a payment. The goal is for offenders to take responsibility for their conduct, to understand the harm they caused, and to make things right. The goal for the offended is agency: replacing powerlessness and anxiety with having an active role in restoring justice.¹³

Restorative justice views crime or code-of-conduct violations as indicators of broken relationships. To repair the relationships, repair the harm. In schools, restorative justice offers alternatives to zero-tolerance rules (Chapter 8). An emphasis on punishment is replaced by equipping students with insights on how to avoid or confront bullying. For example, a 2007 meta-analysis of all research projects described in restorative justice conference papers published in England between 1986 and 2005 found positive results, specifically for victims. The victims were more able to work, to resume their normal life, and to sleep well. Both offender and offended gain appreciation for each person’s perspective.

Restorative justice has been used to keep peace. For example, Barbara Masekela, Nelson Mandela’s chief of staff, reported that South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission got the country to take a step back from the brink of civil war.¹⁴ In medicine, morbidity and mortality (M&M) conferences and root cause analyses (RCAs) are conducted to learn from errors or near misses—to determine whether death or potential injury could have been prevented. Specifically, M&M conferences and RCAs are part of healthcare’s emerging commitment to developing a “just” culture, perhaps not coincidentally that the virtue of justice is explicitly named here. Ideally, a culture emerges where people are energized to reduce failure rather than fear admitting failure.

The US service academies offer interesting examples of restorative justice. At West Point, the catalyst for the adoption of restorative justice was improving the retention rate for cadets who violated the honor code. A West Point education costs taxpayers over $300,000 per student. Retaining a pipeline of bright, well-trained soldiers is important for the country. Thus, the impetus to adopt restorative justice at West Point was also partially mercenary.

Restorative justice at West Point gives cadets who have violated the honor code an opportunity to atone for their error and remain enrolled at West Point. This isn’t to suggest that cadets who violate the honor code get an easy pass. Instead, the restorative justice process is rigorous. Violators enroll in a program that lasts about six months or longer to discuss where they have been, where they are now, and where they are going. They commit to creating a reflection journal focused on how to make ethical decisions under stress. They learn to link their conduct to a higher purpose, since the nation expects military leaders to behave ethically. Journal topics strive for ownership for what they did versus adopting a victim mentality.

It takes time to avoid denying responsibility, to blame others or external circumstances, and it takes time to finally own the mistake. Since this restorative justice program has been deployed, about 70 percent of cadets who violated the academy’s code of conduct were retained after successfully completing the restoration process. Prior to implementing this commitment to restorative justice, the retention rate at West Point for honor code violators was virtually zero.¹⁵

Similarly, the Naval Academy came to grips with the question of what to do with cadets who failed. They concluded that a flawed person is not a failed person. As West Point concluded, the Naval Academy assumed that restoration takes time—six months to one year. The restorative process at the Naval Academy involves asking a senior officer to commit to the cadet’s potential for redemption and the officer’s commitment to helping the cadet achieve this. The senior officer puts their reputation on the line by asserting their belief that a cadet deserves another chance. The senior officer can elect to work with the cadet directly or can advise that another person is in a better position to help the cadet. In the end, an officer must affirm that the academy can take the cadet at their word, that the cadet knows what is right, and that the cadet has the courage to act ethically. If not, the cadet must resign.¹⁶ This restorative justice process is designed to avoid continuing to beat up the offender since shame and blame do not change behavior. The process also involves mentors, journals, projects, and public speaking—none of which is mandated.

Finally, the Air Force Academy examined ethical breaches among colonels and generals. The pattern of what went wrong was clear; officers were fired for character issues, not incompetence. This raised a question about the state of honor at the academy. When leaders are people of high integrity, others also exhibit integrity. When leaders are people of low integrity, followers see themselves the same way and give themselves license to behave with low integrity. The Air Force Academy concluded that people follow leaders who care about them and who are people of character and not just competent.¹⁷

All organizations experience ethical breaches—some more and some less, but none can claim zero. So, the difference isn’t whether an ethical breach will happen. The difference is how organizations respond to inevitable transgressions. Restorative justice is not about letting a person off the hook. It is a rigorous process to ensure that the person genuinely apologizes, acknowledges, and atones. Importantly, restoration strengthens a culture far more than retribution.¹⁸

RESTORATION

Given sufficient time, we can restore relationships by learning to take three steps forward: apologize, acknowledge, and atone. The first step is an apology. When done well, we examine our conduct and conclude that we need to say I’m sorry. The barriers to an apology include bruising our ego sufficiently to accept that we are not so perfect. Still, let’s recognize that refusing to apologize does have a short-term upside. When we dig in and fail to apologize, we give ourselves an integrity booster shot for defending our honor. Unfortunately, over the long run, by refusing to apologize, we tick off the offended and we lock ourselves into denying responsibility and blaming others.

The second step to restoring relationships is acknowledgment. We can’t restore trust until we define the harm that was committed. This involves more than a lame apology that says something to the effect that “It isn’t my fault that you are hypersensitive, but since you are, I am sorry.” Instead, we accept that when it came to virtue, we came up short.

The final step is to atone, or tikkun olam, a Jewish concept that means “repair the world.” Atonement is incredibly hard to do in part because we have to give control to the person we harmed to decide whether they will forgive. In other words, we run toward rather than away from the harm we caused. It is incredibly difficult to replace dysfunctional behavior with functional behavior. Should we manage to do so, genuine remorse and restoration are signs of moral goodness and accountability. We can find the experience oddly embarrassing and liberating at the same time. We have overcome our mistake rather than allowing our mistake to define us.¹⁹