The Business of Forgiveness: Why Letting Go Makes You a Better Leader

The following is adapted from Saying the Hard Parts Out Loud by Maranda Dziekonski.

Forgiveness isn’t a word that shows up very often in business. Conference rooms and Zoom calls are full of other words: accountability, performance, execution, results. Forgiveness usually gets filed under personal development or therapy. But the longer I’ve been in leadership, the more I’ve come to believe that forgiveness is one of the most practical skills a leader can develop.

Resentment Is Expensive

If you carry resentment long enough, it shows up everywhere. It creeps into how you evaluate people, how you react to mistakes, and the stories you tell yourself. Leaders who hold on to old grievances eventually pass them down into the culture around them. Teams feel it. People become cautious, defensive, and distrustful.

I didn’t learn this from a leadership book. In a way, I learned it from my mother. My childhood was chaotic. There were times she simply disappeared and left my brother and me alone. For years, I carried a lot of anger about the normal childhood I never had.

Distance changed that. With more than two thousand miles between me and my hometown, I started to see my mom differently. She had a very difficult start in life, her own trauma, and cognitive challenges. She didn’t have the tools to do things differently. That doesn’t erase what happened, but it changes how I carry it.

Forgiveness Isn’t Access

Have I forgiven my mom? I’m working on it! That doesn’t mean she gets to come back into my life. Having compassion for someone and giving them access are not the same thing. You can wish someone well and still keep your distance. Boundaries let me forgive on my own terms.

Forgiveness at Work

The same lesson showed up early in my career in the Bay Area. A new senior executive joined to oversee my part of the org, and I put him on a pedestal before he’d done anything. Some of his advice was a little off. He told me to choose a different seat in meetings, since mine was better reserved for senior leaders. He told me not to be the first to speak. I took it seriously and faded into myself.

Soon my responsibilities shifted, and a so-called promotion pulled me away from the work where I’d had the biggest impact. He was driving those changes. Eventually I no longer trusted the direction, so I resigned.

At the time, I imagined him plotting to undermine people. Now I smile at that version of myself. Executives are just people. Often they’re smart and sometimes well-intentioned, but they’re still people with egos and blind spots. Letting go of that resentment freed me to take the lesson into my own leadership.

My simple marching order became this: don’t ever make someone on your team feel small just because you’re trying to build something big.

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For more advice on leading with forgiveness and compassion, you can find Saying the Hard Parts Out Loud on Amazon.

Chief customer officer, speaker, board member, executive coach, and builder of high-performing customer organizations, Maranda Dziekonski brings more than twenty years of experience across startups, scale-ups, customer leadership, and other functions. She helps companies grow through stronger customer relationships, scalable post-sales strategy, people-first leadership, and a deep belief that business results and human connection go hand in hand. Twice honored as a Top 100 Customer Success Strategist, Maranda was a Top 25 Customer Success Influencer Judge in 2020 and a Top 25 Customer Success Influencer in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. She lives in California with her husband, Andrew, and son, Lucas.