Justice, Mercy, and Grace: Tear Drops on the Wall

I live in the suburbs. I have a two-car garage. I have 5 kids and a wonderful wife. They have stuff. Accumulated stuff. Stuff that makes only one car fit snuggly in our two car garage. I have stuff leftover from last year’s garage sale that we “needed” to keep and re-sort through… because…. well… it’s important….

So, in our annual “Get out of bed, we are cleaning the garage” ceremony that is so welcome to all involved, we all had the wonderful opportunity to clean the garage so that we can actually open the car door and get out of the car when it is parked in side.

As the saying goes, “When the garage is happy, EVERYONE is happy!“

This annual event was blessed with wonderful weather and hot coffee on an early Saturday morning. I was up at 8:00 and we were in full swing by 11:00 (…with two 17-year old daughters and sons ages 19 and 20, things take a while to get moving on a Saturday morn…)

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Cleaning was much easier and more fun this season as we have done this drill enough times for the kids to know that complaining and arguing just makes the task last so much longer. We actually had a very productive cleaning and reorganizing session that day. Since much of everything was already organized and sitting in crates, the bulk of the labor involved getting everything out of the garage so that I could use a leaf blower to blow out all the dust and leafy fall debris.

It is Important Stuff

In going through the organized stacks of stuff, the kids (…ahem… young adults) came across papers collected from their years in elementary school a decade ago. They opened up the classroom assignment papers and read aloud third and fourth grade assignments involving their personal lives. These were fill-in-the-blank questionnaires for the kids to reveal personal things about themselves. These are priceless and were very fun to re-examine so many years later.

We all laughed out loud about Ninja Turtles, ex-boy friends, and wanting to be astronauts circling the globe to look down on all the people. We also shared in recollections moments of triumph in sports and disappointments in relationships that fell apart. We also spoke about many of the mental images that stood out in our memories as the years pass by.

My oldest son Drew, age 20, recounted having to spend his punishment time with his nose in the corner. I told him that when I was a young kid and spoke a bad word, that I had to put my nose in the corner for 30 minutes, I said that at age 10, one minute seemed like an hour with your nose in the corner.

Drew told me that when we made him put his nose in the corner one time that he recalled seeing his twin sisters’ tear drop stains on the wall. He said that it made him think of the punishment suffered by all who disobeyed the house rules.

Our conversation turned to the responsibilities that a parent has in raising children with structure, compassion, and justice. That raising children was a difficult task, but that it was made easier with clear rules and clear consequences laid out for all. And that sticking to the rules and the consequences, with fairness, mercy, and grace in mind, that even-handedness was clearly one of the top priorities with raising multiple kids under one roof.

When I asked him if he felt that his parents were fair with their “systems” of rules, consequences, and family justice, he said yes. The other kids later concurred that, for the most part, they felt that their parents tried hard to be just and fair.

When I asked them how this paralleled to the idea of leaders leading teams in the workplace, they all felt that clarity, fairness, and balancing  justice, mercy, and grace are all HUGE in creating an environment where they would want to work.

With rule-breakers, remember these three principle of effective leadership:

Justice: When you GET what you deserve.

Mercy: When you DON’T GET what you DO deserve.

Grace: When you DO GET what you DON’T deserve.

It is up to a fair-minded leader to understand when to administer justice, when to yield with mercy, and when to bless with grace to followers who break the rules.

In any or all of these circumstances, onlookers will be watching and keeping a mental score of how you handle things. Be wise and seek counsel with mature leaders to help you decide which to administer, how often, with what frequency, and for what duration. Remember that people will keep a memory of the tear drops on the wall and will be monitoring your administration of fairness, equity, and justice.

So how are you going about setting up fair rules of play? Are you clear about potential repercussions and consequences for breaking the rules? Are you doling out fair and just rewards and consequences for behaviors? What do people think of your leadership efficacy with regard to fairness with wrong-doers? I would love to hear your thoughts, so please share!

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Tom Schulte is Executive Director of Linked 2 Leadership &
CEO of Recalibrate Professional Development in Atlanta, GA USA.
He can be reached at [email protected]

Image Sources: bertramfamily.com, jjgarvinfamily.blogspot.com