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Love as a Forgiveness Strategy

EPISODE 29

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Why is it important to learn about forgiveness in the workplace? Because it is one of the most important things about our humanity. Unforgiveness in business can lead to inefficiencies, lack of innovation, and profit loss. In this week's episode, we unpack why unforgiveness is the silent killer in an organization's culture.

 

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Feel the love! We aren't experts - we're practitioners. With a passion that's a mix of equal parts strategy and love, we explore the human (and fun) side of work and business every week together.

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Jeff Ma
Director

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MohProfile

Mohammad Anwar
President

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ChrisProfile

Chris Pitre
Vice President

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frank_danna

Frank Danna
Director

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Transcript

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Jeff Ma
Hello and welcome to Love as a Business Strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business, but we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from. We believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. I'm your host, Jeff Ma. I'm a director at Softway, a business-to-employee solutions company that creates products and offers services that help build resilience and high-performance company cultures. I'm joined today by my good friends, the same usual suspects, Mohammad Anwar, President, CEO of Softway. Hey, Moh.

Mohammad Anwar
Hey, guys.

Jeff Ma
Also Vice President Chris Pitre. What's up, Chris?

Chris Pitre
Hey, guys.

Jeff Ma
And last but not least, Frank Danna, hey, Frank.

Frank Danna
Hey, guys.

Jeff Ma
Frank's in a mood today. Each episode, we dive into one element of business or strategy, and we test our theory of love against it. And gentlemen, we have a tough one today. This is one of our six key pillars for our culture of love. And but it's not really something that is brought up a lot in work and business. We're talking about forgiveness. And I'm really glad I've assembled this particular group because I think amongst the four of us, we've had to practice much forgiveness along our journeys. And I think we continue to do so, right? So before we can, before we can dive into this, this is gonna be fun. Before we dive into this, we have icebreakers and executive producer Maggie has informed me that we're doing some what she calls this or that's this or that. So I'm gonna pop this open. Take a look. And in no particular order. Let's start with start with. Let's leave Chris for last. Let's start with Frank. Frank, crunchy tacos or soft tacos?

Jane Figueiredo
Soft tacos, Jeff. Crunchy tacos with too much work. So what happens when you get a crunchy taco right? When you when you break, like when you crunch into it the first time, you have a higher risk of the bottom breaking and then everything falling out of it. And it's honestly like more work than it has to be. Soft taco. It's simple. It it. It protects the stuff inside. You know what I'm saying? All the way through to the end of the meal. Soft tacos for life.

Jeff Ma
Sounds like you need better crunchy tacos. Anyways, Mohammad.

Mohammad Anwar
Yes?

Jeff Ma
A night in watching Netflix or a night out on the town?

Mohammad Anwar
Why are you laughing?

Frank Danna
Is this a pre COVID question? What's going on?

Jeff Ma
Yeah, let's, let's just say COVID is eradicated.

Mohammad Anwar
Stay in watching Netflix. Any day. I'm not a outgoing person. I don't like to go hang out party, or any of the things, so Netflix is the answer for that question for sure.

Jeff Ma
Fair enough. All right, Chris. Chocolate or vanilla?

Chris Pitre
Vanilla. all day, every day. Absolutely. Every night. So for, for me, I'm not a chocolate fan. And that was a if you watch love and hip hop, you know what I said, but anyway. Vanilla is always in season. Always.

Jeff Ma
All right. Well, back to forgiveness, guys. So like I mentioned, and if you follow along the show, we've actually covered, we have six key pillars to our culture of love. We've covered many of them already. This is a very difficult topic at times for some people. And I want to start by kind of just addressing kind of the elephant in the room really of forgiveness. We're talking about work and forgiveness. What is up with that? And I want to start with Mohammad here. Because what where does, why are we talking about forgiveness? We're talking about business? Where does forgiveness belong here?

Mohammad Anwar
Ultimately, businesses are run by people and humans, right. And when you're looking at decisions and how people interact with each other, and our behaviors, we're all human at the end of the day. And forgiveness is a big part of humanity. It's how we have relationships that can either strengthen because of forgiveness or break down completely because of unforgiveness. And I think we'll cover we have covered unforgiveness. But there's definite place for forgiveness in business indirectly or directly because of the fact that no business can be done without humans. And as long as you're dealing with humans, we're going to have to talk about forgiveness in the workplace.

Jeff Ma
Is there I guess, for anyone are there like statistical or very hard to kind of direct lines to draw from forgiveness to business outcomes?

Chris Pitre
Well, I think for me, like, I don't have clearly a book of statistics on, you know, forgiveness in the business setting. But what I will say is that typically the way it manifests, it turns into silos. It turns into team and organizational conflict where certain departments just don't talk to each other because of, you know, previous leaders who didn't get along or had unforgiveness and how they pass that along to their teams. So we think about storytelling, and many businesses, marketing sales, not being able to get along because of their leaders not getting along. IT and literally the rest of the business having conflict because IT leaders and the rest of the business not getting along. So you have these storytells and we probably live and work in organizations that are, you know, exhibiting this to this day. But I think that the business outcomes I get impacted are, you know, the bureaucracy that gets created around it, the inefficiency that happens because people just don't want to work together or talk to each other because they're holding on to something that either they experienced between each other, or someone told them that they should be mad about, so they will operate or work against that. And I think there's that natural tendency within organizations once there is, you know, a, I guess, an allowance for unforgiveness to where you see the leaders themselves, build processes and procedures that reinforce and institutionalize that unforgiveness.

Jeff Ma
You used unforgiveness as a term. I know, that's something that we it's like, just like one of the top, you know, five words that come up in our conversations. Because it's maybe, you know, listeners aren't necessarily using that word. But why is it so common? Why are we always talking about this topic?

Chris Pitre
Well, I think, you know, we, I just went like microcosm. Let's go like, even more smaller than that. If you have an employee, or in a team where one person makes a mistake, chances are, that mistake follows them for the rest of their career, or at least long enough to hurt them from getting promoted, or getting a new opportunity, or getting the chance to lead an initiative or an opportunity. And I think that is in the smaller scale, what unforgiveness does to people, it puts you in this prison that you can't get out of, because everyone wants to remind you of the crime that quote, unquote, you committed. And so as we think about unforgiveness, and why that word is so, so commonly used by us, but maybe not so much in other businesses, because it's a odd sort of concept to really talk about, it's typically reserved for your personal relationships outside of work. But it does, really, when you look at the things that are happening around you, and the problems that your business is facing, it probably has a huge, you know, factor or plays a huge factor in all of those ails and issues. And also, because it's rarely talked about, it never gets addressed. So those issues really never, never get resolved. And it feels in certain situations, inappropriate to talk about forgiveness, because it dotes on this side of, oh my gosh, that's an emotional topic. And we're in business, we're all adults here, we shouldn't be talking about hurt feelings and situations that made us feel weak, etc. Because the business at hand says that we should be strong, virile, committed, knowledgeable, you know, tough, thick skinned, and all of those things. But rarely do you ever hear someone say, that hurt me inside the business world, right? That made me feel like x, that was not a good feeling to listen to you say XYZ about me or the team. Typically, you just go into retaliation.

Frank Danna
And for most people, it also looks like grudges, you know, so if we were using the term like unforgiveness that many people may not be familiar with or used in the workplace, but if you have a grudge against someone, or you walk in dreading working with someone, and as a result of that, like your work husband or work wife or someone that you're close to at work, you find yourself gossiping about other people, or talking about others putting other people down. That's usually that's that's usually those grudges or resentment. That's what what we define as unforgiveness. And it can it can pop up in the least, you know, expected moments, where we're having a conversation with someone that we trust, or that we care about in our workplace, and suddenly the conversation shifts to someone that we don't like, and that we we think is doing a bad job or doing the wrong thing. Right. And And here, we would look at that and say, there's that person is harboring unforgiveness towards someone as a result of something they did or something they said or something they didn't do or say.

Jeff Ma
I think I think for me, one thing to add to that is just that, I think for the every person, that's just hearing this and it sounds like this big like a grudge and like this big kind of thing that hangs over all of us. It. To me, a lot of this is way more subtle. Like, it's just like, you know, one, maybe you just, it wasn't a great experience working with somebody or they said or did one thing one time and it's just in the back of your mind or may not even clearly come up. It's just that impression you have of someone else just based off of you can't even track back to what it's based off of. It's just a subtle kind of sense you have someone that is also unforgiveness for me.

Mohammad Anwar
Yeah, I think decision making. Like if you look at a pure business transaction, or business decisions, a lot of the times unforgiveness seeps seeps in, people don't realize it don't recognize it. For example, as a business owner, maybe I had a bad experience with a certain type of customer or certain supplier or certain employee. And every time I'm going into making another decision, because I may have had a bad experience or a bad situation from something that happened in the past. If I'm reminded of any of the situations, I might change how I make the decisions based on my past historical unforgiveness. For example, if I may have had a employee that did something, and it was bad. For me, it hurt me or it hurt the business. And any new employee or any other employee who reminds me even slightly of that past employees experience, I may make decisions that is not in favor of this new employee, regardless of whether this new employee had hurt me or done the mistake. And we see that happen over and over again, in businesses, decisions is past failures, or past issues. And results are not let go, you're not able to let go either of yourself, because, hey, I made a bad decision in the past. So I never want to do this again. And you're not looking at it rationally. You're just like, no, in the past, it didn't work. So it's not gonna work now. Oh, no, I, that that person, I've tried that before, it's not going to work. And we think we're making sound business decisions. And we try to convince ourselves, rationally that it didn't work in the past, it ain't gonna work again. And when you really dig deep into it, you can uncover that it's coming because of unforgiveness, something happened in the past, that you're holding on to latching on to and every time you're reminded of that situation, it's impacting your ability to make a decision that you should. And and I see that happen with me personally, I've seen I've had to catch myself from being able to make such poor decisions or make judgments around certain folks, because of my past experiences, it has nothing to do with this new person, or this new employee or this new supplier, if I just got the remnants of that remembrance that, that that I had in the past. And that's it, I'm going to punish the new person, because of the past person's experience or the hurt, or the unforgiveness that I may have had. And I've seen that impact my ability impede my ability to make better business decisions. And I, to be honest, I didn't have self awareness of it at all for a long period of time.

Frank Danna
Yeah, when you when you said that, Mohammad, I actually started, I wrote down, some people would call what you're talking about sound judgment. Like if someone made a mistake, the they would call it, okay, I'm making this the making this based on historical data and trends from this individual. So how do you reconcile that against, like, what you're saying is not allowing that to impact the decisions that you're making? Because I think a lot of people are thinking, well, if that's not a sound judgment, what would a sound judgment look like?

Mohammad Anwar
Because I think you have to, like, look at the situation for its moment in time where you are in and give the individual the benefit of that individuals, you know, qualities and traits and the, the rational that they're bringing to the table without right, looking at someone else's actions that may have had a historical, you know, a blow up or a bad result. So you have to be able to separate those out. And you have to be able to look at it for what it is, and and not cloud your judgment with historical things that may have happened. And I've seen a lot of leaders do that. Well, no, I I've used a creative firm before. I don't trust designers. You know, that's it. Like it's like I used the creative agency and they suck, so I don't trust creative agencies, I've, I've gone into pitch meetings where I feel like I'm being punished for the previous agency they hired or previous consultant they hired and I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I'm paying the price for what happened in the past with their engagement. And I recognize that very clearly. And I've had to make our customers or clients realize, look, I understand what happened in the past, was the past. And it, it happened, and it's unfortunate, but you got to give us a chance to come in and start with a clean slate, you can already start us, you know, behind the starting line, because of someone else's performance in the past, like, don't, don't punish me, or my company for the other company's mistakes and bad experiences you've had, I've had to, I've had to face that quite a bit. And I see, I see a lot of business owners or leaders make the same judgment or, you know, poor decisions, just because they think they're, they're learning from their mistakes, but they're really holding on to unforgiveness.

Frank Danna
Wow.

Jeff Ma
I think on the on the flip side of that, you know, talking about how you know that that indirect unforgiveness, I'm right now in my mind, I'm just swarmed with thoughts of just that direct unforgiveness that's not directly apparent. We use like a lot of our what we just said, now, we've all used the word like historical or history, it really just comes down, it comes down to that history, right? Like, I'm, I'm actually thinking about my wife right now. Because, you know, they say familiarity breeds contempt. And it's like, we've had guests over the house who spill spill a glass of water or something, and was like, Oh, no, it's okay. Let's just clean it up, whatever. If I spill a glass of water at home, you know, it's like, like, what are you doing? Are you like, are you not watching what you like? It's just like, why is that response so different? And when you really think about it, it's that it's just unforgiveness. Because we're all human, we make the same mistakes. But that, that simple kind of thought that Oh, like, my husband should be more careful. Like, he's like, you know, someone better, and you have different expectations. And that's a form of unforgiveness, as well.

Chris Pitre
Yep. And it leads me to a famous quote, that familiarity breeds contempt, right. So the more you work with someone, or live with someone, or, you know, build a relationship with someone, chances are that closeness, that ability to sort of let your guards down breeds this ability to find contempt, or to have a disregard for things that matter to them. Or for, you know, the things that she or the races that you give to others, you don't extend to those folks. And I think that in corporate environments, you see that a lot where when teams especially really close intact teams, where they've been working together for a really long time, they start to develop that contempt. And a lot of times it's unseen, like this creeps in. Right? And, and that is oftentimes the hardest thing to admit to. It's also the hardest thing to call out. Because, again, you guys have been working together for so long. And to say, hey, yesterday when you went off on me, because I forgot to put a coaster underneath the cup. That hurt my feelings, right? Like that's, it sounds silly when you say it. But unfortunately, that's exactly what happened, right? And having the courage to share that type of emotional vulnerability with someone is scary, especially in the workplace, because we don't know how they're going to take that and respond to that.

Jeff Ma
So let me build off that a little bit. You're starting to talk about I guess, we've been talking about unforgiveness. And what you just started broaching as a topic was, how do you get to forgiveness? So let's, let's break that open. Like we've talked about all the ways this can manifest. But so how do we fix it? How do you if we're in that team, where everyone's familiar, and they all have hidden contempt, how do you how do you undo that?

Chris Pitre
No, go ahead, Frank.

Jane Figueiredo
I was gonna say I think it starts it starts from words. And then it ends in actions. And that's really how you begin to what we call walk out forgiveness, right is when we're able to recognize a moment that has hurt us or that has bothered us, or we start to sense the feeling that something may be creeping up in us that is ultimately going to create contempt in myself. And I'm just speaking personally, even with this group of people right here. The first thing I need to do is address the issue head on and say, Hey, I'm actually struggling with this, I feel this way and have a conversation about it. And there may be that moment where you actually have to use the words you know, either Can you forgive me or the other person asks for forgiveness, or there's this reconciliation that takes place because if you never have a reconciliation, if you never acknowledge that there was a problem in the first place, then you're not ever going to be able to move past the problem, because the problem is still in front of you. But once you get past that, it's it's that walking out of the of the solution towards forgiveness.

Mohammad Anwar
But I think Frank, there's a there's a preliminary step before that. I think in the workplace it's missing, which is self awareness. So you'd be surprised that people don't even realize that they are holding on to unforgiveness. People don't even recognize that there is a problem, there's hurt, or there's issues there. They don't understand that that's the cause for how they behave, or how they interact or how they're making decisions. And so while your solution is is definitely applicable, there's a prerequisite to that which requires people to bring about self awareness. And that self awareness is can only be achieved through introspection, right? Being able to recognize within and looking within and understanding your emotions and going deeper than just the surface layer like reflection and trying to understand the why behind your actions and your behaviors and uncovering that. That truth and unforgiveness. That is probably the hardest challenge to get people across that realization stage. But once people realize that everything you said, Absolutely, is applicable. So I just want to make sure we cover that.

Jane Figueiredo
Yeah, I think I think I jumped in from the perspective of a high performing team, right? Like, I think I jumped right into being like with this example of this group of people. But you're right there is that prerequisite it is introspection, and developing that understanding of who you are, how you behave, why you behave and kind of under unpacking that.

Chris Pitre
And I think also just getting past that introspection. And starting with those words, Frank, I think what a lot of people want to do is approach approach the situation or conversation, how they feel it should be taken, if they were on the receiving end. And sometimes you really have to take into account Who are you talking to? And how, how are they going to respond? And think about how do I broach this topic without sort of causing a breakdown, when really, you want to build things up and get to a place where you can overcome it. And so having that ability to really think about, okay, this person, probably would not respond well, to this, this or this, I probably shouldn't just go out and accuse them of, you know, wrong intent, or ill intent, because I felt that I probably, you know, need to address it or approach it in a way that's gonna help them understand that there was an impact that they created, whether they intended to or not, but I'm not here to, you know, accuse them or assume that they intended to hurt me or intended to do what they did, without considering my feelings, or my, you know, concern, just considering me. And so I think that that is a huge part of reconciliation is knowing how to use your words, to ensure you don't create a situation that is, you know, worsening, because, you know, it feels accusatory, or it feels like you are, you know, trying to attack them and all of those things that can sometimes ruin the conversation that needs to happen.

Jeff Ma
I, I think when Mohammad was talking about introspection being the first step, I was thinking about myself, and I realized that, if, you know, I get a lot of help with that, actually, I think that one thing that can go hand in hand with that introspection, is also focusing on building real relationships, and trusts. Because if I think of any group of people, I think of the four of us, I feel very different, interacting with the four of you or three of you, then, you know, really any other group and every group feels different when you enter that space with another team, another meeting, there's a different aura. And I think that I've had a lot of help along the way. Because when I struggle with introspecting, on my own, I know that I have a relationship with you guys, we that we, we we I'm not saying we don't have it, we have tons of unforgiveness here. But we also address it very directly. And we've we've just had conversations that I think many would be shocked by right, like, we just, we, we just kind of, we don't feel afraid. I feel like the fear is different. We're not afraid of being kind of judged or bringing up a feeling that might be looked down upon or, or anything like that. And so I I really thank you guys personally, actually, because I feel like you guys have helped me introspect quite a bit when I don't see it myself, because you're not afraid to kind of say, Jeff, I think you're holding on to something here. I think there's something here where you haven't really gotten over it. And I'll be like, Well, okay, that hurts. That stings. But you could be right. And I appreciate that feedback. So yeah.

Frank Danna
I mean, for me, like, I'll tell you a story. When I was 13 years old, I had a friend of mine, who stole $10 from my house, right, like, walked into my room. We're hanging out. I don't remember what we were doing, probably playing Mario Kart, and I walk out for a few minutes and my money is gone. Like there was $10 there, it's no longer there. Come to find out that he took it right. And he came back to my house. His mom brought him back to my house. He handed me the bill and said, you know, please, please forgive me. And I and I never really forgave him, because I never every time I looked at him after that, the only thing I saw was someone who was a thief like in my mind, I kept seeing that $10 bill like, hover above his head, like, like the Sims, right? And, and it actually drove the way I interacted and engaged with him for years after that. And it never really left my mind. But when I have grown and matured and started to consider, like our friendship in this group of people here, I have at one point in time held unforgiveness to each of you. But I literally don't remember what that is. Like, I don't remember.

Jeff Ma
I stole the $10 from you, I'm sorry.

Jane Figueiredo
Jeff, I still don't forgive you. But I think it's interesting though. Because once you recognize the power of what real forgiveness looks like, I'm no longer driven by the pain and hurt that was caused, or the pain that I felt from from each of you or from people that I care about. Because that's not what defines a relationship. And so once you have that, and you're able to, like Chris, you mentioned overcome it, then that transgression, that issue that you faced, no longer drives your relationship. And that is very important. Because if you tell someone that you forgive them, or you walk through that reconciliation phase, but in the back of your mind, that thing is still driving the the way you treat them the way you consider them. It's you haven't really forgiven that person, in work or otherwise.

Chris Pitre
And I think the other, I guess, the other interesting thing that I've heard is that forgiveness is a journey that you take not a line that you cross, which means that it's not an overnight thing, I'm not, we're not up here saying that you're going to, you know, decide to forgive somebody, and that's the like, bam, like, forgive them or go back to the you know, it's, you know, square one, we can, you know, just kick off where we left off. But that's not what it is, right? Sometimes, depending on how deep that hurt was, or how deep that pain was, or, or how much introspection you have to go through. Because sometimes that person may not be the one that truly needs to be forgiven. It could be somebody from your childhood, and that co worker just sort of brought open or you know, cut open a deep seated hurt. And that is a deeper type of, you know, sort of forgiveness journey to take. But it may end up with you going back to that person or that coworker and say, oh, by the way, when you said this, it took me all the way back to the fifth grade, or people laughed at me and called me names. And I reacted in a way that was unseemingly. And I want to apologize and let you know that like I'm working through it, right, like, have that type of conversation is something that feels super weird. But it's one of those things where now if I were to have that conversation with you, Frank, you have a little bit of insight into me, and what makes me tick. But also, you'd be very careful about your words, not to say that you're scared to talk to me or give me feedback or, you know, work with me, but you would just be thinking like, Oh, I know that that's a sensitive subject. So I'm gonna broach that conversation differently next time, or I'm going to have a, you know, a one on one versus a group conversation about it, you start learning how to actually work together in a real and true and genuine way, which to be honest, is what companies really need, especially in times like today, where there's genuine conversations, there's real relationships, and there's a genuine interest in seeing everyone succeed around you, versus the, I'm in it for myself, and I'm just gonna do what I need to do to make sure that my name isn't sort of ruined, or my chances of succeeding or not succeeding or not, you know, paralyzed or ruined.

Mohammad Anwar
I think I'd like to talk about forgiveness and its impact in the workplace, from a leader to non leader standpoint. So obviously, we've given a lot of examples of personal life and also how leaders may be holding on to unforgiveness and making poor decisions. But something I do want to point out is unforgiveness does exist from, you know, people reporting into the leaders towards the leaders as well. And that's what really hurts the culture of the organization. And you know, leaders are responsible for starting it, right. Like they're the ones who make the decisions that start start off the cycle of unforgiveness. And then pretty soon, the reporting employees also build unforgiveness towards the leaders and you get into the cyclical battle where, you know, leaders, even if they're become self aware, and trying to get out of this, the cyclical problem of unforgiveness, they're unable to get out, because, you know, their employees are unable to forgive the leaders for their past mistakes or past behaviors and so forth. So, to take it back to that, like something I learned in my journey here at Softway. You know, I'm human, I've made a lot of mistakes. I've made a lot of bad decisions. I've treated people very poorly. I've, I've made really bad policies in the organization that has benefited me and hurt our employees. And when I did become self aware, and had realizations that I was leading my company from a place of unforgiveness and mistreating my employees and team members, I began a journey to change and undo the things that I had done by changing back the policies or making them better. And I'm trying to change my behaviors and everything that I possibly could. And, you know, in my journey, which I still am on, I decided to poll our employees back in India when I was visiting once, which are over 100 employees in a town hall meeting and asked if trust had improved between myself and them. And, you know, I was quite confident in the moment in time that after all the things I had done to change myself that I would see far more, you know, hands being raised up. But to my surprise, only two people out of hundred plus employees raise their hand saying that the trust had improved. It's I was obviously very disheartened, very affected. And I walked away from that town hall trying to understand what just happened, I thought I was making such headway. And doing everything I was trying to change my behaviors and how I treated employees and so forth. So a few days went by, and I went back, I had a chance to address my whole company, again, in the India office. And I remember asking for forgiveness, I apologize in that company, meeting, and I told everybody that I, I needed to seek their forgiveness for everything that I had done, how I treated them for all the policies that have hurt them. And I remember myself becoming emotional and, and even crying, and walking away prematurely from that meeting. And the few days later, again, on the last day of my trip to India, before I head back to Houston, they arranged a farewell gathering for me in which they gave me a book that was filled with messages of encouragement and love. And the title of the book was, we love you, and we trust you, Moh. And that day, of course, I was so emotional, I start crying again, this time with happy tears. But it was a big, big realization for me. And that I am happy to share with any new leader or any leader that's out there is that, you know, you cannot proceed to build trust or get into good books with people by changing just your actions and behaviors. You also have to do what is most important, which is to seek forgiveness and apologize for our actions and behaviors. So while we're on the topic of forgiveness, I felt like I wanted to share that story, which was a big realization for me, that it didn't matter how much I change how much I transformed how much I brought back policies that would benefit the people. But they were holding on to stuff. And I don't blame them. I blame only myself because I did the things that I did. And if I don't step up, and apologize as a leader, I'm not going to start the process of reaching a state of forgiveness, and start to heal the culture of this organization. And I think many leaders, and even non leaders out there inside a corporation struggle with that they struggle with just straight up taking ownership and apologizing, because ego and all the other humanistic elements come in the way of us just apologizing. And I think that's a very important stage in achieving forgiveness inside of the organization. And it's as simple as just apologizing, that is very hard to see, quite honestly, from leaders across a corporation, so that was a big learning for me. And I it doesn't mean I don't make mistakes. It doesn't mean I don't have unforgiveness doesn't mean I don't mistreat people. I still do, that's why we're all humans. But I think what's important is recognizing that once you have the self awareness that you may have hurt people, intentionally or unintentionally. You have to be able to seek the forgiveness as well.

Jeff Ma
Thank you for sharing that, Moh. And then I'm going to attempt to do the takeaway here. I'm going to try to round the corner and close this out from what I heard today. So how does this tie in to love and how does it apply to a listener? Well, I'm going to quote Chris, first of all, one of my favorite quotes, he always says unforgiveness is the biggest silent killer of organizational culture. So it's, in other words, it's it's a very real factor. And for some reason, it's not addressed. It's a silent killer. We don't talk about this, we don't think it's a factor that you know we just get our head, put our heads down and get the work done. We don't consider this a factor that is impeding our progress. And it creates toxic cultures and bad decisions, right? So what's the takeaway? What do we need to do? Well, it starts with self awareness. And what kind of self awareness what kind of searching should you be doing an in an acknowledgement should you be having it's awareness of where you cannot forgive others is where you have unforgiveness towards others. understanding where that comes from is one. It's also understanding where you might have created unforgiveness in others, where you might have mistreated and behaved poorly. And finding those two out is a long journey that we're all still on. And we can get help for sure. But ultimately, your goal is to try to find ways to break that cycle. Because while one is being done to you, and one is you doing to others, ultimately, it's a cycle, they feed on each other. And unforgiveness breeds more unforgiveness. And that's where those toxic cultures come from. So once you can, once you can take that big step and start that journey of uncovering those things, then you then you use the love, you have the love to build the relationships that can remove the fear of discussing these things and bring them up with each other. And you have the courage to ask for forgiveness, and to start repairing that. And, and as we've discussed, you know, real outcomes and business results will follow as well. And so that is forgiveness in a nutshell. But then I missed anything. It's just smiles and nods cool. Yeah, smile. All right. Well, gentlemen, I appreciate you for having this dive. It's been oddly introspective, just in this moment for me. So it's been really fun. Can't wait to go misbehave with you guys a little bit more and continue forgiving each other for it. And for the audience here at Love as a Business Strategy, we are posting new episodes every Tuesday. Thank you for coming along on this ride. If there's any business topic that you haven't heard of, or you'd like us to cover some more, please do let us know, at softway.com/LAABS. And if you enjoyed this, we do appreciate a five star review on Apple or Spotify. That does help us out. So with that, appreciate you guys, Chris, Frank, Moh, we will talk again soon and we'll see you all next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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