The Inner Development Goals 2.0 - Bringing Forgiveness into Leadership

In this episode, we explore forgiveness as an essential yet often overlooked capacity in leadership. Inspired by the updated Inner Development Goals 2.0, which now include forgiveness, we ask what it really means to forgive in a corporate context — and why it might be one of the strongest acts a leader can take.
We look at how resentment and hurts drain energy, how unresolved conflicts hold teams back, and how forgiveness can help rebuild trust and release energy for growth and collaboration. And we challenge the idea that forgiveness is a sign of weakness — and rather requires strength, self-awareness, and courage.

Key insights

• Forgiveness is not weakness.
  It takes strength and courage to face what happened, to let go of anger, and to move forward.
• Forgiveness and accountability can coexist.
  You can forgive someone and still hold them accountable — forgiveness doesn’t mean there are no consequences.
• Healing relationships frees up energy.
  Letting go of grudges restores focus and vitality — for individuals, teams, and the whole organization.
• Forgiveness can help make change successful.
  Acknowledging past disappointments, frustrations and hurts is essential before a team can truly move forward.

Reflection questions

• What makes you feel hurt, what makes you angry, and what creates negative feelings?
• If you are in the process of forgiving, reflect on what might this be teaching you? And even if you are still feeling hurt, how might you use this pain as a positive force for growth? 
• Where might you still be holding a grudge — maybe over many years — and is it time to forgive? And who do you need to forgive?
• Is there anybody who you might have hurt? And isn't it time to actively approach that person and reach out?
• As a leader, how can you be more observant of your team’s emotions and the impact of your own behavior?
• How can forgiveness become a force for learning and growth in your team?

Introduction to The Inner Development Goals (IDG)

Our episode introducing the IDG: https://podcast.secondcrackleadership.com/1659493/episodes/10816920

More information related to the IDG at innerdevelopmentgoals.org

About Second Crack
More information about us and our work is available on our website: secondcrackleadership.com. Contact us now to explore how we can support your leadership development in a company-wide initiative or with individual executive coaching: hello@secondcrackleadership.com.
 
Connect with us on LinkedIn:
Martin Aldergård
Gerrit Pelzer

Transcript

[00:00] Gerrit: Yeah, in everyday life in the corporate world, you can feel somehow hurt or wronged. And you spoke about the typical human reaction. And for me, I think the initial reaction is typically: I want to retaliate or take revenge, right? But this desire to retaliate, even if it's deeply human, it's never getting us anywhere.

People get angry at at each other. People hurt each other, mistakes are done, et cetera. The importance is to release the energy instead of keeping on blaming, keeping on trying to find out ways to back stab another team. How can we move forward, how can we learn and actually become better and grow? 

[00:54] Gerrit: Dear listeners, a warm welcome to episode number 52 of Second Crack The Leadership Podcast. If you're new to the show, this is where we explore complex leadership dilemmas and paradoxes, and where we invite you as our listeners to self-reflect. I am Gerrit Pelzer. I work as an executive coach and I bring to my coaching a combination of Western science and Asian wisdom.

Joining me today, as always is my dear friend and business partner, Martin Aldergard. Martin specializes in driving change and transformation within organizations. And what we both have in common is that we always put people at the center of our work. Hi Martin. It's wonderful to be recording again with you today.

[01:44] Martin: Hi, Gerrit, and likewise, and today we're going to come back to IDG, the Inner Development Goals and Forgiveness. And this is going to be exciting because what possibly might forgiveness have to do with corporate leadership?

[02:03] Gerrit: And why are we talking about it today? So maybe to give a little bit of background. Martin, you attended the recent IDG Summit, and we have actually explored the Inner Development Goals before we make sure we put a link into the show notes. It is still until today our most downloaded episode and recently the IDG have been revised and perhaps we'll have a separate episode on this. And amongst others, "forgiveness" was added as one item. And Martin, what excited you about forgiveness in the context of the IDG and leadership?

[02:46] Martin: I have thought about forgiveness in the past is something I deal with when it comes to family, to friends, but not often in a corporate setting. I haven't been in a meeting or in a leadership development program where we have spoken about forgiveness explicitly. And I then read about this topic, and I think it's fascinating and super important for all leaders to understand and incorporate in their toolbox. So I think it's something really wonderful that IDG has recognized this and now in the 2.0 version, added forgiveness as a critical skill.

[03:30] Gerrit: Yeah, it's amazing that you say that, and I've never thought about it, but in all the leadership trainings I attended, nobody ever spoke about forgiveness. I must admit, when I taught the leadership module in an executive MBA program of Institute for Management, I, I hadn't thought about it either, and I will certainly add it. And at the same time, when you mentioned forgiveness that you would like to speak about. I thought, oh, you know, this, isn't that an overwhelmingly big topic? Because when I think about forgiveness, I really think about the conflicts that are going on today, I mean, the, the wars that are going on today. I think when people are, for instance, murdered and, and the relatives of the victim are supposed to forgive somebody, which you know, happens, these are these huge issues. And when I think of forgiveness in the corporate world, uh, it suddenly seems so tiny, right? Like it, it really doesn't matter in, in the greater context. But I think no matter how big or small the issue actually is, there are very similar principles that apply, right. Martin, what do you think?

[04:49] Martin: Yeah, I think so. I can recognize from my projects and my client engagements, and also being a manager and a leader in a corporate setting, people getting hurt. There are emotions, there is anger, there is feeling of betrayal, there is feeling of being unfairly treated. There is gossip, there is office politics. There is so much emotions, negative emotions also, perhaps it's just human. And using forgiveness as one tool or one method of dealing with this could be really interesting.

[05:28] Gerrit: Yeah, and I think in everyday life in the corporate world, you can feel somehow hurt or wronged. And you spoke about the typical human reaction. And for me, I think the initial reaction is typically: I want to retaliate or take revenge, right? So the extreme case, you punch me in the face and my immediate desire is t o punch back. But this desire to retaliate, even if it's deeply human, it's never getting us anywhere. I mean I'm leaning again towards these big examples of, of war, people have been killed. And then the typical reaction is, oh, you know, now we need to kill your people, we need to kill even more. And so things, when there is the idea of retaliation, typically it only leads down a a downward spiral. It things escalate further. And also, if I'm coming back now to the smaller level, I feel personally hurt because somebody has done something that feels very unpleasant, if I hold a grudge, if there is resentment, it's not helpful either. I mean, we started also in preparation for our discussion today, there is so much research indicating that holding a grudge, this resentment, can lead to mental ill being, including depression. And it can cause even physical harm, right? Like cardiovascular problems. And so the, the resentment does not solve anything.We keep stuck, it depletes our energy. And if I make now again, the bridge to the corporate world in an organization that can also be conflict, resentment between teams, between individuals and the friction that is then caused either between individuals or the groups that keeps the organization from reaching its full potential. 

[07:34] Martin: Absolutely, and, and there is so many things to unpack in what you're saying. First of all, you know, feeling anger and even hate towards somebody, it eats you up, it's like a cancer, it takes away your energy. But as you also saying there, there are medical conditions, even depression. And compare that, then replacing that with the positive emotions, of belonging of even love, and how constructive that can be. The other side, how much energy do we then burn in trying to get revenge? You know, my boss didn't see me, or I feel unfairly treated, why did he get the promotion, I didn't get the promotion. There's a million reasons.

[08:17] Gerrit: And, and if I can pick this up, Martin, imagine there is, let's say, with this promotion issue, you keep thinking about it. And imagine I was the boss and I didn't even realize that you felt hurt. You know, it doesn't bother me at all, I keep on living my happy life. You are the one who suffers. And it reminds me of this old famous saying: That hate is like taking poison and expect someone else to die. So, you only suffer from it yourself.

[08:47] Martin: Hmm. How can I as a leader now use forgiveness in a constructive way, because to me it's clear as, as a leader I need to deal with. If, if I have this going on in my, my organization, it doesn't matter whether I caused it or it is between two people in my team, or it is between two teams. I need to deal with this for this two individuals or these teams or the whole organization to be able to move forward. Spend the energy on the right things.

[09:21] Gerrit: Exactly.

[09:22] Martin: So my thinking now is, I need to deal with this as a leader. But then I'm thinking in my own role as a leader,

forgiveness, on one side it sounds like a weakness, you know it's like giving up. But on the other side, isn't forgiveness about courage, about strength?

[09:43] Gerrit: Absolutely. I think forgiveness has nothing to do with weakness. I think there is maybe this misinterpretation something wrong happened, cause you don't want to address the conflicts. "Ah, nevermind. It's, you know, it was nothing big." So you're making up these excuses , but that has nothing to do with true forgiveness. I think the true forgiveness, requires strength. I saw also on the IDG Summit, the two people who were actually literally fighting against each other in the past and became friends and imagine what strengths that needs. But coming back maybe also to this, uh, how to approach forgiveness.

I think the first step is whether it's in the organization, somebody else, some others, or you yourself. I think it's recognizing that I or others have been hurt or wronged. And I think it requires this insight, and we are here on the cognitive level, that we need to realize that neither retaliation nor ignoring what has happened will be helpful , it's, it's not leading anywhere. And then we need to again, take this cognitive decision to forgive. This is, I think, the relatively easy part. But what then needs to follow is this true emotional forgiveness . So for first step, you have wronged me and I say, okay, I, I will forgive Martin, but I might still be thinking about it. I may still be holding this grudge, but then gradually with this conscious decision to forgive, I will eventually also get to a stage of true emotional forgiveness. It may take a while, but once we achieve this, then we also have all these positive benefits that we mentioned earlier: improved physical and mental health, for instance.

[11:39] Martin: Forgiveness is also a, a road to rebuilding trust or increasing trust in the relationship. And this is then also a step by step process. 

I'm assuming dialogue and talking about it is so important because I might, I might hurt you unintentionally. As a leader or as a coworker I might do somethingtotally unintentionally, I might not even realize it. So some of us needs to bring up this conversation and we need to start to talk about it and listen and trying to be in the other person's shoe.

[12:20] Gerrit: Well, I think there are two aspects here. One is we can approach it actively and talk about it in terms of conflict resolution, but I think it is also possible to forgive without actually talking about it. So forgiveness can sometimes be, I would say the first step is, like I said before, the the decision to forgive. It does not necessarily involve the conversation, but I wanted to take actually a step back what you said earlier. And we spoke many times in the podcast about "systems thinking" and how everything is interlinked. And I think the first aspect here is to ask this question, well, what caused the other person to behave in that way? And maybe from their perspective, maybe they had even good intentions. Maybe from their perspective, they did not really think that they did anything wrong, because rarely people are simply bad or evil, right? So, understanding why they acted in this way that, I or others may think is, is completely unacceptable. And then I think we also need to ask this other very difficult question. How might I have contributed to this situation? Have, have I done anything that triggered this behavior? Maybe not. But I think we need to at least ask this

[13:56] Martin: Yeah. 

[13:56] Gerrit: And then when we have a better understanding, or at least an idea why the other person acted this way, we can eventually feel empathy. Because often what I also experience is that many people, when they hurt others, they act from a place of weakness or fear. And from this very limited perspective of weakness or fear, they could simply not think of another approach to the situation they were in. And, and when I think of the times when I felt hurt or wronged, in the corporate world, there was, let's say, gossip involved or backstepping, I, I think immediately of two people. And one was gossiping all the time, spreading wrong news, talking behind people's back. Or an another person that always tried to say something negative about other people. And I realized, well, you know, these people feel small. They want to be bigger but they don't trust in themselves that they can grow. So their only way to at least appear big is by putting other people down. And eventually we can feel sympathy for these people. We can feel sorry for them.

[15:22] Martin: And again, there's many different layers of this, but your last point here resonates a lot with me, and if I'm looking at myself as a leader of a team that has these symptoms of gossiping and blame, backstabbing, I need to think about what can I do to make people seen, to make them feel bigger without having to gossip. What can I do to recognize people , to create more positive conditions for my team.

[15:55] Gerrit: And, and that requires strength from your side, right? Because, let's say the weak person would say , "oh, the moment, I recognize others, don't I appear small?"

[16:05] Martin: Mm-hmm. I read somewhere that a weak person can never forgive. Forgiveness is for the strong person.

[16:16] Gerrit: Yeah. Yeah,

[16:16] Martin: You, you cannot forgive out of a position of weakness, so, uh, that, that is also interesting. Gerrit, I'm thinking now about as a leader, if somebody does wrong either towards myself or, or towards somebody else in the organization, without talking to them, without bringing this up, how can I expect people to change? And what, what if it happens again and how many times can I actually forgive somebody for the same things? And when does it stop and I'm saying, you know, out!

[16:49] Gerrit: Yes, i, I think that's very important. We can actually pick up the thread from before. So I think there are instances where the forgiveness is, how should I say, it's single-sided, for lack of a better word. Right? So it's just something happened to me personally and, I, I let it go and I forgive and I don't need to talk about it.

At the same time, I recall a situation where there was a huge conflict in an organization , and two groups have formed within the leadership team. And myself and a Thai partner of mine, Atcharee, we were called in for a conflict resolution, for a mediation. And these are of course the situations, if there is such a conflict in an organization, you can't just practice this forgiveness and hope that things will change by themselves. So the, there are certainly situations, like you said earlier, you need to address it and there is an aspect of forgiveness and resolving conflict. And maybe another aspect, as you said before, somebody violates the company's values, well, you can't tolerate this for forever, right? Because otherwise you create much bigger problems later.

[18:11] Martin: There is a lot of of proactive things I can do as a leader, right, to, to build the conditions and also to talk about this, what is acceptable, what is absolutely non-acceptable, perhaps even, non forgiving. You've been in the chemical industry, safety violations. I mean, how much can you forgive, so to say, a safety violation? And, and the more we can talk about it, highlight what are our standards, then of course it also guides people to be more comfortable. Where can I take risk? Where can I not take risk? What is bendable? What is discussable, and what is totally non-negotiable? And what this also then leads me actually to think about is there something that is unforgivable? I mean the, this is perhaps not black or white.

[19:11] Gerrit: Yeah, Martin, I think when, when I looked into forgiveness and I read a lot of articles, when I see how people can forgive another person that they have, for instance, murdered a relative, I think there's nothing in the corporate world that can't be forgiven. And it's very interesting that you spoke about safety in the chemical industry. Whenever I saw violation of safety regulations even when accidents happened, I would say in almost 100% of the cases, the people had good intentions. They wanted to do something quickly to get a product out. Something was going wrong in a production step and they wanted to save a couple of tons of product and to prevent it going to waste. And in the end, eventually they, they got hurt themselves. And at the same time, there are things that are hard to tolerate. I remember one employee who injured another person, and, uh, he was at the end of the day fired. So you can, I think in a way, again, in the corporate context, you can maybe forgive a person, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there won't be any consequences. But I think that is now it's a very slippery slope that we are on here.

[20:32] Martin: Hmm mm-hmm. To me, the key takeaway is , we need to talk about standards. We need to talk about expectations, and the more we talk about it, we define this, this slope of what is accepted, what is not accepted, and what are consequences. I think, uh, having a mindset as a leader of, uh, believing people's best intentions and being forgiving.

[20:59] Gerrit: Yeah.

[21:00] Martin: It, it doesn't mean that we, that we don't hold people accountable, that there are no consequences. It is more of, like you say, even if I forgive a murderer, it doesn't mean that the guy doesn't end up in jail. And, and forgiveness is perhaps more then my own inner peace and that I can move on. And I thinkin a team, things happen. People get angry at at each other. People hurt each other, mistakes are done, et cetera. The importance is to release the energy instead of keeping on blaming, keeping on trying to find out ways to back stab another team. How can we move forward, how can we learn and actually become better and grow? And I think then a process of forgiveness is needed so I can let it go.

I'm thinking of another aspect, in term of change management, corporate transformation. And, and we know a lot of organizations, they go through even bigger transformations and rarely are they really successful. And then suddenly the project is kicked out, or there is a new MD or a new CEO coming in, or a new country manager coming in to fix it. And this guy coming in and saying, okay, now let's start with a blank sheet. They don't spend time to look into what possible hurts are there, left from past changes. And people not feeling involved, people feeling overpowered from the head office or not listened to. Or the typical is: "if you would have listened to us two years ago, we would've told you this is not going to work. And now we're exactly where we said we're going to end up, and nobody listened." And then this new guy is flying in and saying, okay, let's start with the blank sheet and see what we can do. And people getting cynical and angry.

[22:56] Gerrit: Yeah , and it's again a wonderful example we say we explore these complex leadership paradoxes and dilemmas. Because this "we start on a blank page", I think it makes perfect sense, right? Sometimes you have to close the chapter of the past and only look forward. And at the same time, as you said before, if these emotions are not resolved before, it's very hard to get everybody on this new blank page.

[23:27] Martin: Mm. Yeah, and, and what I learned from this is that we really need to recognize the past. We cannot just forget it. And sometime this means also letting people express what happened in the past. And one way to do this is also to bring up, for instance, a conversation about what are the hopes and the fears of our team, of the organization. And when we are talking about the fears, that is typically where we can also find sources of what has happened in the past, because we don't want that to be repeated, et cetera. So there are dialogue tools that we can use, to bring out this. And then something that has felt like a negative weighing on the shoulders of people, as they get a chance to talk about it and they feel that they really listened to it, listened to them, it's like it's gone. We don't need to excuse what has happened in the past. We need to show by role modeling that also past leaders, past projects also acted out of best intentions. The importance is just to listen. Again, as a leader, I don't need to have the answer to why it happened or to why you feel like that, people would express that by themselves. And then typically in a room full of people, in a room full of middle managers, you would feel the atmosphere in the room change from something negative, the atmosphere is shifting to a much more positive atmosphere. I believe that is when this team is ready to move forward.

[25:19] Gerrit: So if I just reflect on the conversation that we had so far. I think about these two aspects: 1) I feel personally hurt. 2). Somebody else feels hurt and I may may not be involved in it, but I realize there's something going on in the organization and in both cases I need to decide whether it's this, again, I don't have a great word for it, what I call before the single-sided forgiveness. Is it just me who has to forgive or is it something that I better address proactively. And I think if, let's say other people in the organization are involved, your role as a leader is probably to address it. And then besides the pure forgiveness, there is this aspect of, conflict management in this situation. What, what else should we add there?

[26:17] Martin: To me it's using the process of forgiveness for whatever purposes among the ones that you mentioned, it's not about being nice. It's not because I want to be nice that I, that I forgive. It's really about freeing up energy.

[26:33] Gerrit: Hmm.

[26:35] Martin: First of all, inside myself. As a coworker or as a leader, i, I can forgive you without even talking to you. It frees up my own energy to something more constructive. And, and of course if it is in, in a bigger team or in the organization, guiding the organization to move forward in, into a much more positive climate, a much more positive way of working together.

And on the other side, forgiveness is not to forget, it's not to accept anything. And then we said it's a slippery slope, it's, it's not black or white. And, and my take on it was that proactively, I would prefer to have a dialogue and a conversation about this with my team. What are the real values, not only the nice values in the office lobby, but how do we work together, what can we expect from each other, what is acceptable, what is so to say non-acceptable.

 Yeah, that sounds like we have covered some key aspects about forgiveness in a corporate leadership context, and as we typically wrap up the episode with reflection questions, Martin, do you have any?

Yeah, I think one important reflection is to observe when you feel hurt.

[27:55] Gerrit: Mm-hmm.

[27:56] Martin: Try to observe what makes you hurt, what makes you angry, what creates this negative feeling? And as a leader, be more observant on your team, on the people that you lead. How might your behavior have impacted their feelings? Which means, of course it might be body language, it might be something non-verbal. And if I'm in the process of forgiving something, reflect on what might this also teach me. And how can I use this, even if I felt hurt, how can I use this pain for something more constructive as a positive force to grow? 

[28:43] Gerrit: Beautiful. Yeah. I have two questions. One is: where might I be still holding a grudge, maybe over many years already and is it time to forgive? And who do I need to forgive here? The second one is, as we spoke earlier about the fact that sometimes we hurt people, other people unintentionally, sometimes without realizing it, maybe reconsider: is there anybody who I might have hurt? And isn't it time to then actively approach that person and ask for forgiveness?

[29:29] Martin: Mm-hmm. Those are also great questions. I think coming back to where we started, the IDG and now the IDG 2.0 leadership framework, I think it's more and more powerful and it is put together from the wisdom of so many, practitioners, academics, researchers in the field right from all around the world, and I think this is the big beauty of the IDG is really co-created by so many people and so useful.

[30:05] Gerrit: Fantastic. And I'm really grateful that you brought this up because I hadn't thought about forgiveness as a subject for the podcast. This concludes today's episode. If you would like our support in developing your leaders, be that in a company-wide initiative or through individual executive coaching, please do not hesitate to contact us via hello@secondcrackleadership.com. Second Crack leadership is all in one word, and if you enjoy the podcast, please remember to subscribe and tell a friend about it. And if you could leave a positive comment or rating. We would certainly appreciate that.

Bye for now.