2004 is the tenth year of holding this vision. To celebrate Monday 15 March 2004, she have provisionally booked the Royal Albert Hall, London, England for an evening event with music, and speakers on the subject of forgiving. 

She has seen the possibility of forming many local Forgiving Focus Groups as one way of holding that intention.  For more details contact Anne via this link: Anne Naylor

Forgiveness, if it is spoken of in the context of work, is usually limited to good relationships between colleagues … at a personal level but not as a professional matter. For example, Judi Neal, the inspirational director of the Association for Spirit at Work, refers in her on-line course “The Four Gateways” to forgiveness at work only in this one aspect, concerning "conflict between co-workers." 

By itself, the aspect still matters, yet perhaps we can see why it is important to ask about the possibility of more extensive forgiveness at work, when we hear Stephen Neill say:

Forgiveness recognises the wrongdoer as a person. He has done wrong, and about this there is no pretence.  But this is not the whole truth about him.  He is still of infinite value as a person, since every person is unique and irreplaceable by any other ... (A Genuinely Human Existence)

Does this realisation of personal worth allow us the possibility of taking forgiveness at work further … that is, into issues of professionalism and between different levels of employment.  Developing the practice of forgiveness is not just a moral or spiritual endeavour.  It contributes to the creativity and inter-personal depth of an organisation.  And perhaps most importantly, it allows organisations to better understand its responsibility towards employees as well as clients, to talk through and learn from what went wrong, on all sides, rather than continuing with a veneer of unimpeachablility!

Of course, where the consumer is king, it may seem at first unlikely that the virtue of forgiveness is anything other than a romantic ideal, inappropriate in the tough decision making of board rooms and shop floors.  UK Channel4's very fine series on the emergence of the idea of the "self-as-consumer" in the 20th century, The Century of the Self (written and produced by Adam Curtis), concluded by saying:

If even government and religion have to meet the demands of the self-as-consumer, who is the lord and king in all transactions, then an employee who resists that tacit agreement about where power lies will be expendable.

So in what ways, and with what benefits, would it make sense for representative leaders of organisations – business and professional – to show forgiveness to an employee, when the normal option would be to remove him or her summarily?  And how would it make sense for an employee to forgive the leaders of a company or organisation when they exhibit corruption, favouritism, or whatever?

Forgiving is a fundamental possibility in all personal relationships – both forgiving and receiving forgiveness.  I have suggested (ForgivenessNet Insights) that in order to catch a glimpse of the larger scale of forgiving, relationships should be considered in four aspects:   

Leaders represent "the many," in their relationship to each employee, and illustrate the many-to-one form.  It may be appropriate and possible for an organisation to forgive an employee after professional misconduct or incompetence, if the leaders of the organisation have the power and confidence to work for the transformation of the employees attitude or personal situation, or the employee wants to undergo intensive re-training. 

And also, we need to add, if the company or profession believes it is right for its own values and future to weather the possible outcry from consumers.  If an organisation's core values (the ones it reveals in practice, not its words) have little connection with forgiveness, it will find little reason to develop or foster forgiveness with its employees, unless it leads to good publicity!  (See David Augsburger's comments in Can we forgive institutions? and link to the longer ForgivenessNet article The values implied by forgiveness.)

The many-to-many strand of forgiving seems to be a matter of developing a whole culture or ethos. Leaders have to initiate this, as Nelson Mandela did in South Africa.  Charles Handy has suggested that one of the signs of creativity and health in a business is that it fosters this cultural norm of forgiving,  He is particularly concerned to ask whether a business is ready to take risks and place high value on learning from its mistakes:

I asked an American the secret of his firm's obviously successful development policy.     He looked me straight in the eye.  "Forgiveness," he said.  "We give them big jobs and big responsibilities.   Inevitably they make mistakes, we can't check them all the time and don't want to.  They learn, we forgive, they don't make the same mistake again."

He was unusual.  Too many organisations use their appraisal schemes and their confidential files to record our errors and our small disasters.  They use them to chastise us with, hoping to inspire us or to frighten us to do better.  It might work once, but in future we will make sure that we do not venture far enough from the beaten track to make any mistake.  Yet no experiment, no test of new ideas ... means no learning and no change.  (The Age of Unreason  p 60)

What of one-many?  We are asking here whether or not one employee, however senior, can extend forgiveness to the company which behaved wrongly.  Inner or passive forgiving is possible and desirable for individual health; but what of active or practical forgiveness? 

Most of my examples show that this is that hardest form.  Employees who have shown up an organisation's bad practice or incompetence (this may include their own complicit actions as well), or those who whistle-blow, are already being disempowered by the company or leadership even before they are actually fired.  They may sue for wrong dismissal, of course, or for company malpractice … but the steps we take to embark on a legal suit harden hearts, and make forgiving even harder.