Recently a coaching client told me:
“I’m really trying to be more collaborative but I can see it in their eyes; they don’t trust me. They remember the old me – how can things get better if we can’t get beyond this?”
This is not the first client who has found it hard to change because others still remember the past
Which brings to mind my favourite Tony Robbins quote:
“Everybody’s got a past. The past does not equal the future unless you live there.”
It strikes me that any kind of change – whether inside you, within teams or even between whole nations – involves the ability to let go of the past. I think change requires forgiveness.
What I learnt about forgiveness by going home
It was April 1989 and I had been looking out of the airplane window, ever since we crossed the Zambezi River from Zambia into Zimbabwe. It was autumn and the bush below was losing its summer green, revealing small settlements, the occasional herd of elephant and long, straight gunmetal grey roads breaking up the red earth stretching all the way to the horizon.
As the plane bounced down onto the runway, I realised that I had been away for half my life.
But I felt that I was coming home
Walking across the tarmac I wondered what lay ahead. I was a white woman with a British passport – I potentially represented colonial white privilege.
Was the past another country?
Moyra Mackie
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
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