“What exactly is corruption?” was the leader’s uncomfortable question that began the meeting. Although it took a large pry bar to get the conversation moving at first, the presiding leader gently kept the input focused on “purely definition” at first. At the onset, the comments around the room included almost poetic things such as “violation of virtue,” “impairment of integrity,” “corrosion of character,” “perpetration of moral principle,” “ethical decay or decomposition,” “bribery – the tangible payoff for wrong,” and “departure from the good and the right.”

After the group warmed up to the coldness of the topic, they were encouraged to be more personal with the definition, as if it were going to be applied directly to the organization they led and to themselves, the leaders within the organization. The comments then included things such as “the decline of ethical strength,” “the slow spoiling of truth,” “the quiet departure from the originally pure,” “the slow creep away from the initially correct,” “secret festering scandals,” “extortion of blind obedience,” and “self-protective mismanagement.”

I was asked to observe the meeting and periodically offer observations, comments, and advice on the quality of their group processes and interactions. I do this often, and I was generally quite impressed with the honesty and trust I had observed so far, but I noted a large pause and significant discomfort in the room when someone who had been mostly quiet so far said, “corruption is the generally acceptable use of extortion-like power by the elite few seeking to profit at the expense of the unknowing whole.” Since the elite few were the ones in the room, the following stillness was memorably penetrating. After a long silence, and just as a few group members started to get up, I stated my first verbal observation: “I think we have found both the start of a meaningful conversation and the definition of corruption that is most piercingly relevant for this group.”

The group regained composure rather quickly and began a solemn and difficult discussion of the evil in which they had chosen to be entangled, the cancerous corruption both they and society had previously deemed acceptable. Unmasking corruption as an outsider or as a newly positioned leader is heroic and commonplace, although it is often the disguise for disingenuous self-aggrandizement and a host of hidden agendas. However, dealing with our own acceptable corruption is another matter entirely; facing our own evil without flinching is the hallmark of adept personal and organizational transformation.

Leaders can never be perfect regardless of our illogical wishes and expectations, but it is both possible and logical for leaders to know and deal with their dark side appropriately. It is right for leaders to name and heal their own evil; as the ancient proverb states, “Physician heal thyself.” For this self-attentiveness, Flawless leaders gain incremental respect, loyalty, and admiration from followers. Flawless leaders know that being appropriately authentic is the exposure of their own hypocrisy. Consider Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” where the Emperor walks around naked displaying his “new” clothes while everyone around him colludes in agreement with his self-deception. Everyone around the Emperor already knew of his hypocrisy, as it is with leaders. Flawless leaders discuss and deal with their own hypocrisy. Only then can we authentically and honorably deal with the evil in our own organizations.

I was partnering with Paul, a CEO of a large company that was going through significant change. Paul said he wanted help in getting every leader in the organization engaged in the change and becoming a valuable partner in creating the necessary details associated with imbedding this change deep within the massive global organization. We designed a series of work meetings over several years that were vital and dynamic interchanges centered on both a unifying and resonating purpose and on the full engagement of all leaders. The top six hundred leaders in the organization worked together across all hierarchical and organizational boundaries and truly created a rare competitive advantage with high leveragability within their industry. Paul impressed everyone at the series of meetings as an excellent speaker, a master facilitator, a trusted leader, a polished professional, a brilliant strategist, and a management guru. The organization was now positioned well to take advantage of several significant and profitable growth opportunities that no other company in their industry would be able to copy for at least a few years. It would have been wonderful if the story ended here.

Paul then started a new initiative to downsize the leadership staff in his organization and remove many of the “redundant” leaders that had, incidentally, toiled with him to create the advantages he now enjoyed. He did this to meet a special secret bonus incentive that he alone enjoyed as part of his compensation package. Paul was facing a scary fact he had avoided for a long time: he was not at all grounded in who he was. He was not a leader who lived out the values he preached during all those inspirational meetings he had hosted over the last several years. He was actually somewhat deceitful, self-serving, disloyal, and in his own words, corrupt. He immediately lost the trust and loyalty of the remaining leaders, and the best of them took offers from other companies shortly thereafter. Paul’s window to take advantage of his extraordinary positioning within his industry quickly closed around his wily methods and glossy techniques. Paul harmed his organization and those within it by hoarding power and valuing self-protection over principles and purpose.

Let’s face facts. We are all, at least a little, like Paul: deceitful, self-serving, and disloyal to varying degrees and depending on the situation. We are all human. As leaders, we don’t like to admit it or face it all that often, but we are human. Paul was so competent, so perfect, so god-like, that he didn’t face the fact that he was merely human, and that he had a dark side that needed to be navigated in order to lead effectively. Paul had been a “good-boy” for so long that he had over identified with that role, causing him to literally not know himself or even be aware of who he really was. He ignored his dark side; he refused to admit it was there. He was a ship captain who ignored the bad-weather reports and obliviously careened into the perfect storm. Knowing your dark side, facing it, becoming familiar with it, accepting it, and being vulnerable enough to discuss it appropriately takes its power away and enables you to navigate its unavoidable storms.

Our religious leaders, our esteemed paragons of virtue, while attempting to lead us into the intimate worship of the Almighty, too often trip up struggling with illogical wishes to be God. To “follow” is to engage, to move toward, to pursue with commitment. To “worship” is to regard with great admiration and devotion, to honor, to revere. In short, to worship is to “honor;” to follow is to “engage.” These two words have powerful implications for leaders, religious or otherwise, and it’s uncannily easy for leaders to confuse these two words. Leadership is simply the result of following. If people follow you, you are leading, regardless of whether you have a leadership position or appointment. Leadership does not respect titles. On the other hand, if people worship you, you become nothing more than another useless deity with a small “d.” The adoration you receive may feel great, but in its intoxication you are deluded into weakness, poor productivity and demise. Leaders’ choices create paths toward others’ following or worshipping. Inspiring followers is the path to productivity; engendering worshippers is the route to disengaged adoration.

I got a call from Nick while I was about to travel home from some client work. I had some time before my flight, so we met for a quick lunch. Nick was the senior pastor of a mega church in one of the largest cities in the southern United States. His multimillion-dollar organization had thrived for years and people just adored him, but Nick was frustrated by the lack of ownership and engagement of the people in his church. It seemed to him that everyone was content with coming to hear him speak and “tipping” him by throwing some money in the collection plate. However, if he really wanted to get anything meaningful done in his organization, he had to hire staff to accomplish it. He used the words “confined” and “trapped” to describe how he felt when trying to get the thousands of people that attended his church to actually collaborate together to do something good in the world.

As I listened to Nick explain his situation and his feelings, it became clear to me that he had created the world in which he lived. He was no victim; he was the architect. He was also gripping tightly to his viewpoint of reality. He had not often embraced disagreement and divergent points of view, even on minor issues. He liked control; he had strong desires to be liked and feel important. When I asked about the things he feared most, rejection was the first thing to come out of his mouth. When I asked him to describe his ultimate definition of love, he talked about giving honor, respect and admiration to the one being loved. Within a few minutes, it was clear: Nick was a paragon locked in a paradox. He was addicted to receiving the glory, honor and power. While he was intending to direct all those sentiments toward God, he somehow unconsciously grabbed a bunch of it for himself. A deep sadness enveloped Nick as I explained that he had been manipulating his entire congregation to revere him as a god without realizing the disenchanting side effect of disengagement. While Nick thought he was pointing people to God, he was mostly pointing them to himself. Nick is an all too poignant example of religious leader paragons stuck in the paradox of confusing worshipping with following.

The reality is that most of us have deep unmet needs and desires for love and acceptance. As a human living with other humans, it usually just works out that way. Many leaders attain leadership positions to fill their deep needs to be regarded in a loving and accepting way, or at least in an honorable way; and, herein the problem begins. These unmet needs really get in the way when influencing people to actually engage, or follow. Thus, the current milieu is that many leaders are unconsciously striving for others to worship them instead of follow them. Compounding this, countless followers enable these leaders because they are looking for surrogate parents or gods they deem worthy to both worship and blame. All too often leaders are too willing to take all the blame in order to receive the elixir of adulation, and followers are all too willing to trade meaningful contribution in order to have someone to blame when things go wrong.

Submitting to the seductions of worship is a weak attempt to fill our unconscious dark-side voids of acceptance, significance, and competence. To flawlessly lead, leaders must first expose, discuss, and navigate their needs to be worshipped, and then embrace their own irrelevance in service of purpose. Once they address and work through these issues, they can powerfully engage their followers in the business of following, and guide followers back to the uncomfortably productive place of personal and mutual accountability. Flawless leadership requires great confidence and optimism, yet it also requires profound humility; humility that respects and honors all human life as equal. When leaders violate this sacred principle by accepting worship as a defense against maturely resolving vacuums of emotional health, they dehumanize others and themselves in the process.

Productivity in the worshipping organization dwindles for two reasons. First, that personal and mutual accountability has been exchanged for obeisance to the leaders, a trade that just naturally sucks the initiative and intensity out of completing meaningful work in a cooperative fashion. The second reason is the time displacement factor: there are only twenty-four hours in every day, and the total time and effort of collectively and collaboratively serving a worthy purpose is diminished by all that manipulative regarding and honoring of the leader.

Flawless leaders resolve to appropriately reject and redirect the unhealthy admiration of others because they serve a worthy purpose from a place of emotional wholeness. The emotionally weak and principally undisciplined accept, encourage, and sometimes force worship. The flawlessly strong, through connection to and understanding of their vulnerabilities, redirect the energies of undue admiration into cooperation, accountability, engagement and service. A flawless leader’s foundational strength is emotional health and maturity. Flawless leaders are simply self-healed flawed leaders, leaders who learned to heal from the wounds of past rejections, broken relationships, dishonorable betrayals, and voids of self-respect. To respect and honor all human life as equal is healthy; to worship one life as if it is above others is eventually destructive.

When is worship most seductive for you? What voids and vacuums does worship promise to fill for you? What shifts must occur to eliminate others worship of you and enhance their following?

Most leaders avoid openness and vulnerability like the plague – some even view it like kryptonite. However, for the flawless leader, vulnerability is not optional; it’s oxygen! Without vulnerability and openness, a leader is trapped in a world that is severely limited by her own perceptions and assumptions.

A mandatory vulnerability for flawless leaders is forgiveness. Forgiveness is often the only key that can dislodge a leader stuck in the trap of her own perceptions.

“He knew that our enemies by contrast seem always with us. The greater our hatred the more persistent the memory of them, so that a truly terrible enemy becomes deathless. The man who has done you great injury or injustice makes himself a guest in your house forever. Perhaps only forgiveness can dislodge him” Cormac McCarthy, Cities Of The Plains.

Forgiveness is just too abstract to discuss without making it personal with examples. Forgiveness must be experienced viscerally. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables illustrates this eloquently. Jean Valjean, the main character, spends nineteen years in prison for stealing. He is released after being hardened and calloused by excruciating cruelty during his long sentence. Now, a former convict, he must carry identification that informs everyone he is lecherous and dangerous. After wandering four days in a merciless world that summarily rejects him, he is shown kindness by Bishop Myriel, who gives him a warm meal and shelter for the night. The tough, indifferent Valjean only knows a world of judgment, threats, and survival, and returns the first gift of love he has received in almost twenty years by stealing the Bishop’s silver and leaving in the night. The next day the authorities return with Valjean in custody to restore the stolen silver to its rightful owner. The Bishop unexpectedly swings open both the door and his arms widely, and warmly greets Valjean as a long lost friend. He exclaims he is overjoyed that Valjean has returned. Myriel then explains to the gendarmes that Jean had evidently forgotten to take the silver candlesticks that he had given him also. The police leave, and Jean Valjean’s hardened heart of stone melts as the Bishop explains that he forgives him. The Bishop’s gift of the silver is to start a new and honest life, a life full of love and power. Hugo’s tale then expounds on the beautiful transformation that occurs in Valjean’s life – a life that essentially becomes an enormous expression of compassion and kindness, a huge enlivening ripple in the sea of humanity from one flawless leader’s act of forgiveness.

From this story we can clearly see the raw anatomy of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a three-part harmony that Myriel evidently knew well. It is 1) a recognition of evil and harm, 2) the willful abandonment of judgment and rightful resentment, and 3) authentic acts of undeserving kindness toward the harmful evildoer. While the evil of Valjean is necessary for forgiveness to occur, the clarity of self-identity and transcendent capability of Myriel is even more necessary. Hugo’s scene of forgiveness occurred more because of whom Myriel was than because of what Valjean had done. Let us also make no mistake, Myriel’s act of forgiveness was not selfless; it was appropriately self-caring and self-honoring. He was grounded in firm submission to a powerful purpose: the healing restoration and transformation of others. For by compassionately freeing himself from his wall of wounds, his vexing victimization, and his addictive prison of resentment, Myriel was able to lead Valjean toward his own freedom. Flawless leaders must first scale their walls of wounds, like Myriel, before they can free others.

The lack of forgiveness is rooted deeply in most all societies. In Hemmingway’s short story The Capital of the World, he writes of a Spanish father who decides to reconcile with his son, Paco. The remorseful father places an ad in a newspaper saying “Paco, Meet Me At Hotel Montana Noon Tuesday. All Is Forgiven, Papa.” Caught up in the emotional desire for reconciliation when making the newspaper ad, the father did not realize that Paco is such a common name in Spain. On Tuesday, eight hundred young Pacos showed up at Hotel Montana, looking for their father’s love.

Flawless leaders are willing to abandon power in favor of love, vacate condemnation in favor of compassion, jettison judgment in favor of acceptance, shuck self-protection in favor of vulnerability, ignore independence in favor of relationship, and forsake fairness in favor of forgiveness. Anger and resentment are appropriately human responses to injustice. Forgiveness is an appropriately super-human intervention of healing and restoration.

What resentments limit your leadership? What forgiveness would set you free?