Forgiveness is one of the factors that differentiate exceptional from mediocre or ineffective leadership. When leaders forgive, they dissipate built-up anger, bitterness and the animosity that can colour individual, team, and organizational functioning. Forgiveness offers people the chance to take risks, to be creative, to learn and to grow in their own leadership.
Nelson Mandela is a prime example of a world leader who has shown the way to lead through forgiveness. At Cape Town’s city hall on February 11, 1990, having been released after what seemed to be an eternity in jail, he greeted the cheering crowd as their symbol for hope and freedom. “I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all.”, said he. In that …show more content…
R. Kets de Vries compares this instance with another in which a political leader didn’t show tolerance. Comparing Nelson Mandela’s philosophy of leadership and forgiveness with that of Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, he elaborates that the role and significance of forgiveness in the life of a leader is paramount. Mugabe was bitter to his own people, the whites and the blacks who held opposing views. What followed was the occupation of farms of white people by militant supporters of the leader, backed to the extent of armed attacks for the same by Mugabe. Zimbabwe faced severe economic crisis, and the lives of people living there became miserable due to the constant fear and terror. This example goes to show how forgiveness is absolutely essential to leadership in the political …show more content…
There can be various steps involved in the process. For example:
• Acknowledge hurt & anger
• Empathize with the offender
• Recognize God’s forgiveness
• Extend forgiveness
• Maintain forgiveness
As the steps in the process have been identified, we can now have a look at a model for forgiveness. In particular, our goals are to (a) elaborate a theoretical model that locates forgiving in the context of a basic motivational system that governs people's responses to interpersonal offenses, (b) report on our empirical examination of several of the social and psychological variables that were expected to influence the capacity to forgive a particular transgression, and (c) describe the development and evaluation of a short battery of self-report measures for the assessment of forgiving.
All of these can be accomplished through the elaboration of Mcullough model for forgiveness. According to this model, the determinants of interpersonal forgiving can be theoretically located in four conceptual categories. The four components are:
1. Social—Cognitive Determinants of Forgiving
2. Offense-Related Determinants of Forgiving
3. Relational Determinants of Forgiving
4. Personality-Level Determinants of