Forgive us our sins

‘So what do you do?’ asked my ten-year old daughter, a few months after I had joined Barnardo’s as its UK Director of Corporate Resources. She had been learning about Dr Barnardo as part of her Victorian studies and was no doubt intrigued to find out how many ‘ragged boys’ I had personally rescued. Or maybe it was an enquiry birthed from the hope that every child has, which is to discover that their parent is some kind of superhero.

In an attempt to answer her question I decided to tell her all the things I had done that day at work as it had been particularly varied. She listened intently to my explanation and then in an exasperated voice said, ‘Yes, but what what do you doooo?’ At that moment I realised any thought I might be harbouring that I had reached a position of significance were brought firmly down to earth with a bump and I had been served a cold portion of reality pie.

(I recently related this tale to my former boss at Barnardo’s and he said ‘That was a something your colleagues often used to ask too!’ He was joking…I think)

It was the poet Robert Burns who wrote, ‘Oh would some Power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us’ and it is a plea that has stayed with me. When I look back at my life I am most grateful to those friends and colleagues who had the courage, and indeed the love, to take me gently aside and tell me they thought what I was doing or planned to do was wrong. (I still remember, with a chill, the peculiar sound a door makes when a colleague comes into your room, closes it gently behind them and says tremulously ‘Do you have a moment?’. It is usually a prelude to a resignation or a telling off, neither of which make for comfortable hearing). They weren’t always right in their assertion, but it often caused me to adjust my plans to address problems I hadn’t foreseen by myself. 

The person who has done more to keep my feet on the ground than anyone else is my wife, and I try really hard to listen to what she is saying because I know her advice comes from a heart that wants the best for me.  She isn’t always right either, but her strike rate percentage is in the high 80’s so she is worth taking note of.

(Sally also has an unerring habit of recording, for posterity, my pratt-falls. Long standing readers of this blog will recall a picture of my bloodied face after flying over the handlebars of my bike Spills, thrills and the allure of the familiar. She was at it again recently, insisting on taking a photograph before helping get me to my feet, after I had been unceremoniously dumped on the ground by Molly following my disastrous attempt to skirt around an obstruction in the road).

The ability to accept you have done something wrong, that you made a poor decision or indeed that you don’t know the answer to something is an attribute that is seemingly denied leaders in these days of heightened public scrutiny and unconstrained social media comment. Even ‘sins’ committed in a person’s youth and which are immortalised in juvenile Facebook posts are open season for people to pick on as evidence of their inelligibility to lead ten or twenty years later. The possibility that a person might have matured, might have learned from their past and started to act differently is an anathema to many social commentators. There seems no space for forgiveness in the public sphere, which makes a dangerous breeding ground for hubris and deceit and we are more poorly governed as a consequence.

As a Christian I find that particularly hard to accept as the Bible teaches that ALL have sinned, ALL have fallen short of the mark, but there is redemption and forgiveness open to ALL who ask God for it. The Christian walk is one of experiencing a new beginning with a past that no longer condemns us. How refreshing it is therefore when we find a leader who is conscious of their dependence on others, who has the strength to acknowledge that they don’t know all the answers without feeling it undermines their authority and who accepts that maybe, just maybe, they could have done something better. That is the sort of leader I want to follow.

Disability has its own way of cutting through hubris too. The sense of invincibility that surrounds leaders at times is shown to be an illusion in the face of muscular dystrophy or any number of other conditions where you are no longer master or mistress of your own destiny but are instead reliant on the support of others. In some regards perhaps it makes you a better leader because it forces you to acknowledge your own weaknesses and in so doing opens the way for others to acknowledge theirs too.

My advice to aspiring leaders? Make sure you have a ten-year old in your life and learn from them.