Workplace trauma lurking in your subconscious?

Did you know that forgiveness is a powerful tool in leadership arsenal?

You discuss the merits on Sundays and sometimes even Wednesday night, but why haven’t you allowed it into your workplace?

I speak with clients everyday who are taking on new roles, but expressing angst about moving forward based on something that happened to them in the past. So we work on what it takes to truly let that go. At it’s core is something that many of us have been taught in the faith realm:

Forgiveness is for you not necessarily the person who wronged you, but why do we not consider it as a key weapon on our leadership arsenal. This year, I’ve been challenging organizations and their leadership to be courageous and introduce big, fuzzy, non-corporate ideas like trust, peace, patience, kindness, goodness.

While facilitating a client through a mindfulness exercise to move them forward, it dawned on me that this particular exercise was absolutely an exercise in forgiveness. It wasn’t an exercise to indict the other person or to free them. It was a way to free oneself.

Mind you, we have learned to do this for family members, friends, even our exes… (some of us have..others may be still working on it.) But what if I told you that in my experience, we rarely practice it for past, deep hurts in the workplace.

Here is a link to the mindfulness exercise that I mention above. Get into a quiet space, block off your calendar. Hit the do not disturb button. Turn off all your notifications. Try it, and see what it does to help you release what’s behind you and move you forward.