The Art of Forgiveness: Differentiating Transformational Leaders

July 24, 2013 Leave a comment

The Art of Forgiveness: Differentiating Transformational Leaders

Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries INSEAD – Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise

April 18, 2013
INSEAD Working Paper No. 2013/52/EFE 

Abstract:      
This article explores the subject of forgiveness and its importance in the context of leadership. Forgiveness is one of the factors that differentiates exceptional from mediocre or ineffective leadership. When leaders forgive, they dissipate built-up anger, bitterness and the animosity that can color 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. Individuals, organizations, institutions, and societies can progress when people are not preoccupied by past hurts. After taking Nelson Mandela as an example of a leader who practiced forgiveness on a transformational scale, a “forgiveness questionnaire” helps readers to assess their own ability and inclination to forgive. The Lex Talionis or law of retribution, emerges, however, as an essential part of the human condition. To understand forgiveness dynamics, its meaning is deconstructed; the forgiving personality is analyzed, and forgiving and unforgiving leaders are compared using traditional conceptual frameworks and a psychodynamic lens. The journey toward forgiveness and its various stages is explored, and pseudo-forgiveness described, with a warning that forgiving doesn’t imply merely forgetting. The mental and physical costs of a non-forgiving Weltanschauung are discussed, and suggestions are made for how to become more forgiving, a process wherein self-reflection, self-understanding, and self-expression take a central position.

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Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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