Long ago, Aristotle said: “The energy of the mind is the essence of life.” Today, there is a great deal of research on the importance of managing our energy for optimal performance in every area of our lives. We know that emotions play a pivotal role in harnessing or depleting mind energy. One emotional response that is not talked about often enough, in this context, is forgiveness. It is one of the least understood qualities and one of the most difficult to practice. And yet, forgiveness is one of the quickest paths to salvaging a great deal of wasted personal energy.

To forgive someone is to waive our right to resentment, anger or other negative reaction to something they have done that justifies our response. This is not about condoning or excusing their actions, but about intentionally deciding to let go of a sense of offense at snubs, ego scuffs, disappointments and other garden variety occurrences that pull our strings. Making forgiveness a part of our operating system is a key aspect of emotional intelligence: it is taking ownership of our own emotional reactions.

Forgiveness is not just a “nice to have” quality. There is now scientific evidence that a lack of forgiveness leads to increased stress and anxiety, and chronic conditions such as heart disease, hypertension and diabetes. One of the pioneers in the field of forgiveness research is Dr. Fred Luskin, Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects and a Senior Consultant in Health Promotion at Stanford. In this provocative and inspiring video, Dr. Luskin makes the most compelling case for practicing forgiveness. It is well worth watching, as is reading his book, Forgive for Good: A PROVEN Prescription for Health and Happiness.

Some fortunate individuals have a natural disposition for forgiveness, just as some are naturally gifted with a sense of humor. For the rest of us, what can we do to make forgiveness a part of our repertoire of behaviors? Here are some practical tips:

• Focus on a higher purpose in your life. Long ago, I read a quotation which said: “The size of a man can be measured by the size of the thing that makes him angry.” Resolve to let go of interpersonal abrasions, distress at unwarranted criticism, grudges and other petty vexations of the spirit that can be a regular occurrence in human interactions. Clearing this emotional mind clutter frees your mental energy to focus on your higher purpose, the worthwhile goals that contribute to your success. What you focus on grows.

• Consider taking a Forgiveness Measurement Test. Evidence shows that those who are inclined not to forgive are more susceptible to anger, anxiety and other negative emotions. Self-awareness, of course, precedes self-management. To increase your self-awareness in this area, consider taking The Heartland Forgiveness Test which is a free, 18-item online questionnaire that measures our disposition to be forgiving. Another free survey is the VIA Survey on Character Strengths which identifies 24 character strengths that define what’s best about people. Forgiveness is one of those strengths.

• Remind yourself frequently of the bottom-line benefits of forgiveness. Not only does forgiveness lead to greater emotional and physical well-being, but experiments have also shown that forgiveness results in greater productivity and an increase in sales. For example, an experiment with financial advisers after the stock market crash of 2000, involved training participants in emotional competence skills and forgiveness, and then tracking the impact of the training on sales and quality of life. Productivity increased by 25%, with a corresponding 10% increase in sales. In addition, the stress levels and quality of life of participants showed significant positive change.

• Stop talking about your grievances for a while. If you often feel a need to talk about people and issues that have irked you, consider that every time you repeat the story to others, you reinforce the residual grudges and take a step back in your ability to overcome resentment. Put a limit on the number of people you share these stories with. Better still, declare a personal moratorium on ruminating and complaining about the same issues and see what happens.

• Help establish a culture of forgiveness. If you are a leader, there are many initiatives you can take to set the right tone when it comes to forgiveness. Encourage the practice of kindness and grace by modeling forgiveness yourself and create a shame-free environment that makes it safe for people to admit to mistakes without the threat of repercussions. Discourage triangulation amongst your team. Triangulation refers to a dysfunction within a team, where team member A complains about team member B to the team leader rather than to team member B directly, so that the team leader is forced to be the go between for the two. Triangulation is a form of corporate infantilism. More often than not, this funneling of information through a third party exacerbates the conflict and does not encourage team members to resolve their issues in a mature manner.

• Take exit interviews with a grain of salt. As a leader, you owe it to your people to practice due diligence in all policies and practices that can have an impact on their well-being at work. One such area is the exit interview. While it is a useful tool for companies to gain important information, they can also be used as unfair instruments of revenge by disgruntled or malcontent people. Don’t discount them but don’t accept them blindly either. Use your good judgment and intuition about the people involved and the situations so that you can use the feedback fairly.

• Every day, resolve to practice the best form of revenge. There is a great deal of truth in the old adage that the best revenge is living well. I love this quote from Frank Sinatra: “The best revenge is massive success.” If you are struggling with issues of resentment and past hurts that are derailing you, keep this thought at the forefront of your mind every time you experience negative emotions. Ask yourself, how is my resentful attitude holding me back from living my best life?

Forgiveness helps us function on a higher level on the humanity scale. It is a front row ticket to peace of mind and, once mastered, gives us a definite personal advantage. Multitudes of people today are concerned about creating a better world. Perhaps one of the ways to change the world is to make forgiveness a household word, to find opportunities every day to practice it in your life. Forgiveness is a wise energy choice.

Copyright ©2010 Bruna Martinuzzi. All Rights Reserved.

“If there is any one secret of success,” said Henry Ford, “it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own.” This is empathy. Not an easy undertaking, even though scientists have now proven that we are indeed wired for empathy. In this fascinating video by Nova Science, we see how mirror neurons, also dubbed Gandhi’s neurons, act as a “neurological Wi-Fi” to help us connect with other people’s feelings.

Almost one hundred years after Henry Ford’s pronouncement, Dave Patnaik, in Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy shows how a variety of global successful organizations, from Nike to Harley Davidson, benefit from integrating empathy for the consumer as an integral part of their culture.

Empathy is our ability to recognize and identify with the concerns other people have. In short, it is our capacity to care for others besides ourselves. Not only does the ability to empathize make us more successful in our professional and personal lives, but it is also the decent thing to do. It’s the path of the mensch.

With our overloaded psyche and our fast-paced lives, our empathy skills can become corroded. How do we practice empathy? Here are a few pointers:

1. Don’t Take for Granted the Most Important People in Your Life. Is your unwavering focus on the finish line causing you to unintentionally neglect your family’s emotional needs? If so, you might derive inspiration from the poignant words of Brian G. Dyson, a former CEO of Coca-Cola: “Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them-work, family, health, friends, and spirit-and you are keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls-family, health, friends, and spirit-are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.”

2. Understand this Universal Human Fear. A fundamental fear experienced by most is the hidden fear of not measuring up. Recognize this and do your part to genuinely make those in your circle of influence feel that they are enough. It’s a powerful act of interpersonal philanthropy.

3. Cultivate an Executive Presence. Much has been written about what executive presence is but one thing is certain: those who possess it have “social generosity.” We invariably walk away from them feeling energized and better about ourselves. This is because they have empathy, the quality that makes them sense our need to feel important. They see us not as we are, but as who we could become. Simply put, they care about how we feel. What a wonderful gift it is, to be able to bestow this on those we encounter. One could argue that it is indeed impossible to have executive presence without empathy because a major requirement for executive presence is the ability to connect with others.

4. Stop Negative Listening Habits. Adele Lynn isolated six negative listening habits, including the Rebuttal Maker (listening long enough to formulate his rebuttal), the Advice Giver (jumping too quickly to give unsolicited advice), the Interrupter (more anxious to speak his words than to listen), the Logical Listener (rarely asking about the underlying feelings or emotions attached to a message), the Happy Hooker (using the speaker’s words only as a way to get to his own message: “That’s nothing, let me tell you what happened to me”), and perhaps the worst of all, the Faker (pretending to listen). Do you inadvertently fall into any of these poor listening habits? Self-awareness precedes self-management. Making someone feel that they are truly listened to is the most foundational aspect of empathy.

5. Beware of the Pygmalion Effect. How you persistently view someone that you closely interact with can have an effect on how they perform—a self-fulfilling prophecy. People are very good at sensing how we view them. We translate this through a multitude of micro gestures: frequently checking email while they talk to us, picking up the phone when they enter our office, or looking away when they speak at meetings. All of these seemingly insignificant gestures are posters with a clear message: you are not important. Put yourself in their shoes for a moment and try to experience what that must feel like. Developing empathy involves putting our foot on the brake for a moment to ponder such issues. Our First Nations people have a beautiful saying for empathy—it is: “Walk a mile in my moccasins.”

Empathy helps us forge positive connections with others. It’s a state of mind and a way of being that act as a catalyst to help us create positive communities for the greater good.

My article was first posted on American Express Forum. For more tips on practicing empathy, read my book: The Leader as a Mensch: Become the Kind of Person Others Want to follow.

Here are my thoughts on how to be a Mensch in 2010. I hope they inspire you in your life’s journey.

I am blessed that Guy Kawasaki posted my article in his American Express Open Forum site and that so many of Guy’s followers tweeted the article to their network. We need to spread the concept of being a mensch far and wide for a kinder and better world.

1. Give people gifts whose value is beyond price. This means giving someone a second chance, giving someone the benefit of the doubt and giving others a reason to want to work for you besides earning a living. It entails giving others latitude, permission to make mistakes and all the information that they need to do the job. It means giving them the authority that goes with that responsibility and giving them due credit for their ideas.

2. Resolve to become known as a talent hunter. The biggest hunger in anyone’s eyes is the hunger for appreciation. Genuinely acknowledging others is high octane fuel for the soul.

3. Share ideas and information that can enrich others. To that end, derive inspiration from Charles Leadbeater’s words: “In the past, you were what you owned. Now you are what you share.”

4. Spend more time in that wonderful space of the ‘beginner’s mind’. This means replacing “Been there, done that”, with: “Tell me more.” It translates into moving away from pushing into allowing, from insecure to secure, from seeking approval to seeking enlightenment. It’s forgetting about being perfect and enjoying being in the moment.

5. Don’t tell people what they can’t do. Show them what they can do. If some of your habitual phrases are “Let me explain why that won’t work” Or “Let me be Devil’s Advocate for a minute”, read Tom Kelley’s book: The Ten Faces of Innovation: Ideo’s Strategies for Beating the Devil’s Advocate & Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization.

6. Minimize the space you take up. When you enter a crowded coffee shop with a partner, don’t hog two tables to spread your papers around.It’s a form of theft.

7. Become a relationship anthropologist. Know the difference between a conversation and a discussion. A discussion involves issues or right vs. wrong; it is an exchange of facts, opinions and data. A conversation is an exploration of another person for the sole purpose of learning about them.

8. Be happy for others. The exact opposite of the word envy is farginen. It’s what happens when you celebrate others’ accomplishments as you would celebrate your own. Take a moment to absorb the spiritual beauty of this concept by viewing this video clip that explains Generosity of Spirit.

9. View all promises you made in 2009 as an unpaid debt. Promises imply trust, but trust is fragile. It’s like a Christmas tree ornament—one slip can shatter it. And we all know that once it’s shattered, it’s very difficult to restore.

10. Get rid of one of the biggest clutters in our lives: Grudges for real or imaginary slights. Raise the bar on your own behavior by forgiving and moving on.

11. Help others caress the rainbow. This means show them how to have hope. There is a tremendous positive psychological capital in us if we intentionally resolve to tap into it to help others.

12. Be conscious of how others feel about themselves when they are in your presence. We cannot control everyone liking us, but we can control how others feel when they interact with us. After spending time with you, do others feel better about themselves?

(For more tips on how to be a Mensch, see my book, The Leader as a Mensch: Become the Kind of Person Others Want to Follow)

I was interviewed recently by Guy Kawasaki on “How To Be A Mensch in Business” — Below are a few of Guy’s questions.  For the complete interview, see Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop site:  http://om.ly/?rpO   

Kawasaki: What qualities define a mensch?

Martinuzzi: A mensch is an individual who is decent and honorable in all of his undertakings—he or she is the same person privately and publicly. This is a person of high integrity, someone that you would feel totally comfortable doing business with. A mensch’s word is as good as his signature. One of the hallmarks of a mensch is empathy and compassion, a genuine caring for his fellow man. A mensch will always look for an opportunity to do good in life, to be of help to the community. When you are in the presence of a mensch, you feel good about you—you sense a total absence of artifice, you know that you are in the presence of a genuine human being, one who will not deceive you, undermine you or try to diminish you in any way.

Kawasaki: Many business people are very successful and rich and the antithesis of mensches, so why should we aspire to be mensches?

Martinuzzi: First, let’s define what the antithesis of a mensch is. This would be someone who lacks empathy, compassion and integrity—an individual who is self-serving, focused only on his own needs to succeed and acquire wealth. One would argue that those who accomplish their goals despite this way of doing business, might find success, but not significance. I love Peter Drucker’s exhortation to make your life your end-game, to ask yourself frequently: “What do you want to be remembered for?” Significance is making a positive difference in the world. Success without significance is hollow. Rabbi Hillel’s beautiful words say it best: “…if I am only for myself, then what am I?”

Kawasaki: Suppose that a person wants to become a mensch, what are the steps to take?

Martinuzzi: Here are eleven quick tips:

 1.  Consistently act with honesty. Watch the small integrity slips.

 2. When someone has wronged you, continue to treat them with civility.

3. Are you in the habit of making hasty promises that you know, from experience, you are unable to keep? Think back on what promises you made, to whom, and see if you can fulfill some of these.

4. Help someone who can be of absolutely no use to you.

5. The next time something goes wrong on a project, suspend blame and ask: “What can we learn?”

6. Hire people who are as smart or smarter than you are—whose talents surpass you—and give them opportunities for growth. Not only is it the smart thing to do but it is also a sign of high personal humility.

7. Improve the way you communicate with people: don’t interrupt people; don’t dismiss their concerns offhand; don’t rush to give advice; don’t change the subject. Allow people their moment.

8. Resolve to do no harm in anything you undertake. If you are certain that you don’t have the competence to take on something that is offered, consider that you might be doing harm to someone by accepting it anyway.

9. Become aware of your stance at business meetings. Are you known as the devil’s advocate—the one who is quick to shoot down others’ ideas? Jumping in too quickly to negate an idea can derail the creative process for others. Often, valuable ideas are the result of the initial “crazy” thought.

10. Resolve to become a philanthropist of know-how. What knowledge, expertise or best practices can you share with colleagues, customers and other stakeholders as a way to enrich them?

11. At the end of each day, when you clear your desk before you head home, take a few minutes to mentally go over your day. Think about significant conversations you had, meetings you attended, emails you sent, and other actions you undertook. Are you proud? Could you have done better? Getting into this habit of introspection will pay dividends in the long run. 

For more tips, see my book: The Leader as a Mensch: Become the Kind of Person Others Want to Follow

Since the publication of my book: The Leader as a Mensch, I am often asked what a mensch is.  Here is a brief explanation:  Mensch is a German word meaning human being or person, It has no gender. In Yiddish, it is a popular word with deep connotations. It has been variously translated as a man (or woman) of integrity and honor, an upstanding individual, a decent person with admirable characteristics. It describes an individual who is higher on the evolutionary scale, a person in whose presence we feel safe; a person who makes us feel good about ourselves. It is someone we want to work for, someone we want as our spouse or business partner – it is someone that we would welcome as a friend.

Among the admirable characteristics of a Mensch are humility, authenticity, integrity, fairness, accountability, dependability, conscientiousness, empathy, composure, optimism, generosity and appreciation to name a few. There are no organizational assessments for menschhood. You know when you are in the presence of a Mensch. They have a calm presence and they exude credibility. They earn respect without demanding it. They will often lead from the side, just by the sheer force of their example, whether in the boardroom, classroom or living room. These are individuals with high emotional intelligence. To be called a Mensch, is the greatest compliment one can give you.

Guy Kawasaki, a mensch himself, explains the concept of the mensch more eloquently in his popular blog: How to be a Mensch.  Have a look.  It’s well worth reading as is everything Kawasaki writes. 

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/how_to_be_a_men.html

You can also view a video clip of Guy talking about the importance of being at mensch at the Stanford Technology Ventures program.