Merciful

What it looks like

• Chooses a lighter penalty, or none, when the person is sorry and the harm can be put right.
• Gives someone in their power time to pay, a chance to fix a mistake or a fresh start.
• Does not use a position of power to humiliate someone who has already lost.

Fits when someone with power chooses compassion instead of the harshest allowable response

Not when leniency would expose others to preventable harm or erase accountability

How to say it

Replace the brackets with what the person actually did.

There is no resume line for this one: it describes how someone uses power over others, and on paper it can read as going soft on rules. Describe a fair outcome you reached, such as a payment plan or a second chance that worked, or let a reference say it.

• [Name] uses authority with mercy: when [a tenant, student or staff member] [fell behind or broke a rule] for [a reason beyond their control], they [gave time or a second chance] and still held the same standard for everyone else.

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• [Name] is kind to classmates who make mistakes, and when leading a group they give others a second chance instead of a telling-off.

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• The boy had taken two apples from the crate by the door. The grocer looked at his thin wrists, put two more in a bag, and told him he could sweep the step on Saturday to pay for them.

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