Show Grace: Brought to you by The Resource Exchange
What does it mean to Show Grace?
Showing kindness to someone even when you don’t share the same perspectives or you’re not in agreement can be one way we show grace. Be willing to coach, mentor, and teach others and demonstrate patience and grace. Focus on the next solution, not past situations. Support others to learn from their mistakes. But what does this look like?
…Showing Grace in the workplace is about our everyday behavior and the respect we show to one another
from our colleagues, our clients, our community, and yes, to ourselves as well. It is about honoring the perspectives of others whether we agree with them or not. It is about how well we honor our commitments to them. It is about following through on our responsibilities.
Take time to put yourself in the others’ shoes, truly, recognizing that as hard as we might try, we can never fully know what the other is experiencing. But we can recognize the enormous barriers they may face, often daily, to help us better understand how to support the other person. Showing grace is about thinking about others first. It is an act of kindness without the expectation of something in return. It is a recognition of our human connectedness.
It can be hard to show grace when another person is coming at us with their frustrations. Yet, show grace by stopping to listen to what they are experiencing and recognizing how challenging it is for them. Don’t simply tell them you are sorry, work to create a solution.
Grace may be observed in the way that we interact with mistakes. Do we immediately judge and criticize, or do we mentor and help others, or the team learn from mistakes? When we interact with people with different perspectives or views, how do we talk to them? Do we show respect for their right to hold their perspective, or do we judge and speak harshly? Workplaces can be tense due to the demands and workloads each of us manage. But this reality is not likely to change anytime soon, so what can we do?
We can show grace by:
- Not taking someone else’s bad mood personally
- Offering to help to others we notice may need assistance or support
- Welcoming new members to the team
- Choosing not to participate in gossip
- Doing nice gestures for others
- Including everyone in a meeting in the discussion
It is also important to Show Grace for yourself.
- How do you talk to yourself when you face a challenge or make a mistake?
- How do you respond to compliments?
How do you set boundaries for yourself and what you can do?
Show grace this week, tell us what it looked like and…
how it made you feel?