Category Archives: coaching
Repentance that lasts a lifetime (part three)
For several installments, we’ve been considering the motivation that is common to human beings—to look good, feel good, be right, and be in control—yet largely goes unexamined. Then, contemplating what to do about it, we’ve been examining repentance.
Repentance that sticks.
In my coaching practice, not uncommonly our focus turns to patterns in the pastor’s leadership or relational style that undermine his or her effectiveness. I call this: “getting in your own way”. All of us, from time to time, behave in ways we regret.
Some of these behaviors become habitual, keeping the leader in Groundhog Day—repeating the pattern in one church after another.
The antidote is sorrow unto repentance.
And, that’s easier said than done. When you examine the impact your selfishness, preferences for control, irresponsibility, perfectionism, or irritability has on those close to you, it can open you up. Once opened up, you can allow yourself to be impaled by the horrible effects of your sin.
You’d think it’d just about kill you.
Funny thing is, the opposite is true.
As Paul notes in 2 Cor 7:11 godly sorrow produces concern, longing, earnestness, and indignation. And, it also produces the eagerness to set things right and a readiness to see justice done. Your heart is changed. Because it is, you are changed, too.
The result is freedom for you and the possibility of new intimacy with those you’ve harmed.
Hard to believe, but true.
Now, some of you have no trouble ruminating on just how awful you are… like a well-worn path across the schoolyard, you relive your errors and with ferocity you abuse and debase yourself.
Forgiveness?
Never! You say you don’t deserve it! You say you’re just that awful.
I say no.
You’re not especially awful, you’re just arrogant.
Arrogant.
You’re so certain you’re the special case. The one person beyond forgiveness, cleansing, restoration. The blood of Christ, you think, is insufficient to cover you, your sin. You discount the remarkable provision of Heaven rather than embrace the truth that you, special little you, are an ordinary sinner.
Not special.
And not at all remarkable in your unworthiness. You’re just as unworthy as everyone else.
Of course you’re unworthy.
That’s exactly the point of the atonement: God paid it all.
So, my invitation is to allow yourself be run through with the sharp sword of the sadness, pain and loss you’ve caused others.
Freedom waits on the other side.
Coaching Distinctions #12
Repentance that lasts a lifetime (part two)
Buried in the archaic curiosity of the King James translation is a gem: “…godly sorrow worketh repentance … not to be repented of…”. [2 Cor 7:10]
Repentance that sticks.
Consider that when God sorrows, it’s not the self-serving, feeling-sorry-for-myself kind of sorrow that leads to death. God sorrows for others.
There’s the key to deep and lasting repentance: you must enter into the suffering of others. In this case, the suffering your sinfulness has caused those around you: your spouse, your family, your coworkers, your friends.
A decade ago I was in a workshop participating in exercises and discussions designed to help me see my impact on those I claim to love. Like most everyone I know, I’d made a practice of overlooking how my preference to look good, feel good, be right, and be in control had affected those closest to me. There was so much frustration and sadness and hurt and resignation that I just didn’t see.
Didn’t want to see.
Until… one particularly powerful exercise about the value of life.
In an instant I saw myself as an analyst, with lab coat and clipboard, standing on the sidelines of my own life, carefully studying its complexities. Once I understood, I’d lay down my clipboard and lab coat, walk off the sidelines and into “the game” of life.
Trouble is, while I’m on the sidelines, I’m not in the game.
And, without me, people I love were suffering.
Most poignant, when our kids hit adolescence, the game-changers came with such ferocity and velocity that – for years – I couldn’t figure it out. So… I stayed out of the game. Annie, essentially, parented all six kids through the turbulence and discontinuous change of their adolescence– alone.
In the awful hours that followed, I drank deeply from the cup of their suffering.
Slowly, thoroughly I considered each child and what it would’ve been like for them to traverse the stormy uncertainties from child to adult without their dad… without my love, assurance, encouragement, tenderness, confidence, collaboration, sensitivity, and wisdom.
Not that I’d actually gone anywhere. I’d mastered the art of being present without being present.
Then, I imagined what it must have been like, instead, to get a steady diet of my disappointments, judgments, distance, comparisons with my [idealized] recollections of my own adolescence, demands, and ever-present distraction.
I chose to enter into the loneliness, confusion, isolation, frustration, loss, sorrow, fear, perplexity, discouragement, de-valuing, and opposition they likely experienced because of the way I’d chosen to be.
I let myself feel everything.
Deeply. Influentially. Unrelentingly. Sickeningly.
It broke me.
It devastated me.
It undid me.
THANK GOD!
Coaching Distinctions #11
The Formidable Four (part four)
When someone behaves in ways that don’t seem to make sense it’s usually due to one of the “formidable four” motivators: looking good, feeling good, being right, or, today’s focus: being in control.
The older I get the more sure I am that it is impossible to control anyone … other than myself.
And, controlling myself is a full-time job.
Ironic that we invest so much energy and effort trying to control that which is most uncontrollable: another human being.
Don’t believe me?
Try raising a child.
You may eventually soothe your bellowing newborn, but not before dozens of attempts to quiet her went unheeded.
Teenagers? We had six… at one time. Honestly, I don’t know if any of us were under control at all during those chaotic years.
Undaunted by the reality that we can’t control our kids, co-workers, congregation, or spouse, we continually employ strategies in an attempt to do just that.
The beleaguered clerk who, after being humiliated at work, comes home and browbeats her spouse.
A teen who, feeling powerless to communicate effectively with his parents, steals the car and runs away from home.
The spouse of the rapidly-ascending politician who suddenly comes down with a mysterious illness and can no longer make public appearances.
An elder who, being confronted, deftly pivots and attacks the semantics or logic of the person raising the concern.
The denominational executive, discouraged by the anemia in the churches under her influence, who travels from one seminar to the next hoping something will happen to stem the tide of attendance and financial declines.
A minister who pretends not to see troubling immorality among church officials, hoping it will all take care of itself.
These control strategies have enormous prices attached to them. Prices are extracted from the perpetrator and those connected to him. When I’m with a coaching client who’s operating out of the formidable four, we explore the impact on those closest to the client.
What prices are your loved-ones, co-workers, congregants paying?
What do you think it’s like to be in relationship with you?
The key is to drill down far enough until the client has embraced – both mentally and emotionally – the devastation caused others. This is slow, painful work.
To be impacted by the pain one’s control strategies have caused others is central to repentance.
The Apostle Paul noted: “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation…but worldly sorrow brings death.” [2 Cor 7:10] See, worldly sorrow is sorrow for myself.
But when God sorrows, God sorrows for us. [Lk 19:41] So, to truly repent from our commitments to the formidable four, the pathway runs straight into the suffering we cause others.
From this place, repentance lasts a lifetime
Coaching Distinctions # 9
The Formidable Four (part three)
Whatever we do, we do for a reason. Since we’re not crazy, there is always a reason behind our actions.
Every action.
When our behaviors are perplexing, it’s almost always because we’re unaware of our true motivations in the moment.
One of the most pernicious motivators is being right.
If you’ve ever sat with a couple heading for divorce, you’ve seen this. Each spouse has reached conclusions about their mate’s limitations, motivations, character defects, and willingness to change. Over time, they’ve found ample evidence to support these judgments — solidifying their commitment to what they’ve decided is true.
And, they’ve ignored many dozens of data points that disagree with this thesis.
As you labor to referee reconciliation you quickly discover they’re not having one conversation but two. Each lobbing evidence to support how right they are about how wrong their spouse is. The energy that each spouse invests to defend the “rightness” of their position is only overshadowed by the devastation that’s wrought on their relationship.
To be proven right is the “booby prize” in any conflict.
The desire to be right is a powerful motivator all across life. A pastor had developed the practice of predicting who was about to leave his church, trouble that would be erupting on his staff, and problems his ministry would soon be encountering. His track record was excellent: just about every departure, difficulty, and hardship he predicted did happened. Despite the devastation these events brought, he took solace in the clarity with which he’d anticipated them.
Crazy, I thought.
Why not labor to prevent these things from occurring? As we worked together, he developed strategies to undermine the problematic scenarios before they happened. And yet, before he gave himself to thwart these troubles he first gave up being right about their inevitability… and his ability to predict the future.
When being right will not serve you or them, my invitation is to give up being right about it.
The drive to be right is a lot like living with tunnel vision: you’re predisposed to notice what confirms your assumptions, and you’ll likely miss most everything that contradicts them. This undermines creativity, closes down opportunities, and locks you into outcomes that you may really not want.
I listen to political talk radio. There are several radio personalities that I like. They say what I think, promote what I believe is best for the country, and oppose practices I think are weakening us as a society. It’s easy to listen to them.
Also, as a discipline, I listen to the radio station on the other side of the political spectrum. I listen for what I can agree with and what I can consider that’s new to me. It is rigorous to listen not to be proven right, but to discover what I don’t know.
So, where in your life are you locked into being “right” about someone or something?
What if you gave up the preference to be right, and trusted God to surprise you with something new?
Coaching Distinctions # 8
The Formidable Four (part two)
It’s true. You never do anything for no reason.
So, whether you’re coaching yourself or someone else, it’s helpful to dig to discover what actually motivated apparently incomprehensible behavior. Four basic motivations are often at the root of such actions. I call them the formidable four.
Looking good.
Feeling good.
Being right.
Being in control.
We’ll examine the second one today.
Have you noticed society’s growing intolerance of anything difficult, painful, challenging, or distressing?
The desire to feel good and to avoid feeling bad are enormously influential in American culture and, sadly, in the Church today. It influences contemporary theology.
The ridiculous notion that ‘God’s great aim is to make you happy’ has helped undermine our stamina as people of faith. When distress occurs, we no longer interpret it as a normal feature of faithfully following Christ [Act 14:22, Phil 1:29, I Pt 2:21]. Rather, we consider it evidence that something’s gone wrong. Gravely wrong.
Consequently, we prioritize the deliverance from suffering over the development of our souls.
The result? An anemic witness and a society gone awry.
Feeling good quiets pastors when it’s time to forcefully confront a sinning member—particularly when she wields enormous power or money.
Feeling good keeps denominational leaders moving incompetent ministers from parish to parish—instead of directly challenging his dysfunction.
Feeling good invites elders to ignore a series of relatively mild, but troubling, ethical breaches—because to take decisive action might be misinterpreted.
Feeling good confines a senior pastor to the seclusion of her study rather than mix it up with church members who are unhappy or unpredictable.
Feeling good beckons Christians to ignore the impact of their self-centeredness on those God’s called them to influence.
Our Enemy, knowing this vulnerability, loves to pile on. When I’m facing opposition in one area of ministry, trouble will often beset another. Before long, the wheels have come off in a third area of life, then a fourth and a fifth. As the challenges mount, determination can evaporate into discouragement and morph into despondency.
To shield myself from additional difficulty, I can begin to withdraw from life.
My life.
This creates a vacuum. When I am absent from my own life, mayhem takes over. Since I’m not present, those who are accustomed to my participation try to make sense of my absence. Since they don’t see me, they make stuff up. And the rumors start. In time, the congregation’s confidence in the pastor’s leadership is so eroded that there’s no coming back.
When you catch yourself withdrawing from your life or ministry, my invitation is to trust God and leap back into the middle of your life.
Amazingly, you’ll usually find God there waiting for you.
Coaching Distinctions # 7
The Formidable Four (part one)
Last time, I suggested that no matter how astonishing, everything you do, at some level, made sense, at the time you did it. Almost always, in situations like this, you were motivated by one or more of the formidable four.
I once worked for a clinically-diagnosable narcissist. This psychological malady renders a person unable to recognize anything that disagrees with the favorable fantasy they hold of themselves.
One needn’t be a narcissist, though, to succumb to the first formidable foe: looking good.
Every one of us prefers to look good—particularly in the eyes of the people we decide are important to us. Those whose childhood was particularly punitive when a disappointment occurred will relate more closely to the motivation to avoid looking bad.
As kids, many of us made innumerable blunders when taken over by one or the other of these motivators.
Remember your first crush?
If you’re like me, you made a million mindless moves to appear as smooth and slick as your favorite Hollywood hero. In the decades since, our heroes may have changed, yet we’re still vulnerable to the desire to appear in as favorable a light as possible. Sometimes, even more favorable than possible.
Not long ago, I helped a pastor work through a difficult situation. He’d been caught preaching other ministers’ material, failing to fully credit his sources. As we unpacked Ralf’s failure he discovered he’d long felt inadequate as a rhetorician. He’d come to believe the swelling numbers in his congregation needed better sermons than he could bring. So, he “juiced” his messages by plagiarizing others.
For a brief season early in my business career, I enjoyed fairly stunning success. Near the pinnacle, I was flown by corporate jet to New York to receive some accolade for the performance of the business unit I ran. The return flight was so turbulent I expected to lose my lunch—literally—at any moment. Facing me, just inches from my knees was the Chairman of our parent company’s board. Rather than admit my intense distress, I tried to ride it out— barely avoiding a career-limiting disaster. Had my greatest fear been realized, the potential damage would’ve been far greater than the brief humiliation of admitting my weakness.
Ministers are particularly vulnerable to looking good.
It seems many congregations would prefer to follow an idealized image of a minister rather than an actual human being who, like every bible character, is flawed, needing the Savior. So, rather than model what it means follow Jesus amidst struggle and disappointment, ministers hide their scars, failings, and vulnerabilities from an adoring, albeit intolerant, church.
Detrich Bonhoeffer commented on this in Life Together: “The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everyone must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship…So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy.”
The tragic result, too often, is the eventual revelation of gross immorality, which mushroomed in the damp darkness created by the collusion of minister and congregation—both desiring to look good.
Coaching Distinctions # 6
Prices and Payoffs
Crazy people do things for no reason.
For the rest of us, there is always a reason for whatever we do. You might not like it, but it’s true.
We prefer to imagine that “something just came over me” when I chewed out the State Trooper while pulled over for speeding. Or, we claim innocence when we’re caught doing something impulsive and out of character: “I have no idea” where that came from!”
Here’s the thing, since you’re not nuts, you actually had a reason for doing what you did. True, you’re likely unaware of your motivations. I’m inviting you to consider that, if you’ll look honestly, you’ll be able to uncover why you behaved as you did.
When coaching a client who’s in some kind of trouble, one helpful practice is to examine the prices (costs) and payoffs (benefits) of the choices that contributed to the mess. It sounds something like this:
What prices are you paying, because of the choice you made?
What prices are being paid by the people on the other side of this difficulty?
What payoffs, or benefits, do you receive by making this decision?
It’s this third question that stumps most folks. The assumptive answer is “nothing”. So, I remind my client that they’re not certifiable, and to dig deeper. You see, no matter how incomprehensible your choices now seem to be, they made sense to you at the time. Inevitably, the client will discover that there was rationality behind the action.
Over the years I’ve learned that at some level, every decision made sense at the time to the person who made it. How it made sense is worth investigating.
Even more helpful is what comes next.
We collaborate to identify the beliefs that lay beneath that logic. For example, a pastor I’m coaching might realize that she distrusts an elder, and afraid of being manipulated like in her last pastorate, she’s unwittingly locked in a conflict she didn’t know was there.
Such a belief can be articulated this way: this [situation, person, experience] reminds me of that [something troubling from the past], so, I reacted as if I was in the same situation.
Problem is, this isn’t that and when I’m living in the present as if it’s essentially what happened before, I behave in ways that undermine my effectiveness now. What might surprise you is that this recurring drama plays itself out all the time.
You do it, too.
It’s also common to be unaware that you’re motivated by of these four powerful desires:
- To look good
- To feel good
- To be right
- To be in control
More on this next time.
The seedbed of envy
I remember it well. Helping with a character development workshop in Grand Rapids, my trainer, Lawrence Edwards, made this startling observation: Comparison is the seedbed of envy.
Huh?
Envy – that ugly, distasteful character defect that fuels pettiness, judgments, isolation, and division – grows in the soil of comparison?
I never thought about that before… comparison.
Hmmmm. I do that a lot, I thought.
It’s been how I orient myself in life.
“She’s much smarter than I am, but him — not so much”. “That guy’s career is in better shape than mine, I’m glad I’m not in her shoes”. “Shoot, I’m fatter than she is, but not as heavy as that slob…”.
Comparison seems so natural. 
In my marriage with Annie the thought stream is endless: which of us is messier, better with money, more consistent with the kids, more creative, less fun to be around, healthier, harder working, better with people, etc, etc, etc.
Comparison, I learned, breeds envy and it’s impossible to love the one I envy. Impossible.
See, comparison invites me to focus on all the areas where you and I are different. Rather than serving to bring us together, the practice of comparison divides, distances, isolates.
So while the differences between us may be real they don’t have to be important — at all. It’s possible to surrender the practice. It can be eradicated from your thinking. I can choose to focus on what we share; what we have in common; what connects us. The more I do this, the more rich and satisfying my relationships.
In coaching this practice is indispensable. To coach well, I ‘get on the same side of the table’ as my client. When a client perceives that we’re together, she’s less defended, more open to what I bring. Conversely, if you sense that I think I’m better than you, even if you believe you could benefit, you’ll likely resist what I have to say.
Ever sat with a couple heading for divorce? 
It’s terrible. All they choose to see is what divides them. As if they’ve made a ritual of examining and magnifying every difference between them while ignoring and overlooking the wonderful things they have in common.
Envy, jealously, resentment, bitterness – these grow in the seedbed of comparison. Unchecked, they’re deadly to intimacy, to collaborative effectiveness at work, to friendship.
Catch yourself comparing. Catch yourself ten times in the next week or two. With Thanksgiving family reunions on the horizon it shouldn’t be hard. When you do, choose to find something you two have in common — and focus on that.
Watch what God does in your relationships, and your heart, as you do.
Coaching Distinctions # 4
Leadership Courage Series
#7: A Culture of Cowardice (part three)
We’re seven segments into a series on Leadership Courage. This is our third pass exposing a Culture of Cowardice that I believe has dominated much of the Church in North America. I’ve confined my comments to North America because I have very little exposure to non-Western churches and leaders. Since the US has been exporting what we call “the Gospel” in earnest since WWII, no doubt we’ve packaged and shipped our cultural preferences along with it.
Regrettably, we may have exported a Culture of Cowardice to the foreign field. You who minister cross-culturally can offer your observations from around the globe, by commenting below.
Edwin Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve has been eye-opening. He identifies characteristics of chronically anxious families, communities, and societies. While I see ample evidence of these features in American society (just look at our national response to the “Crisis in the Gulf”) it has been stunning to consider how applicable these traits are to Christian churches in our day.
Two articles ago, I suggested that the insipid capacity of the typical congregation to tolerate discomfort has accelerated our orientation away from bold, courageous leadership and centered it on the most needy and emotionally-regressed among us. Last week, I opined that religious political-correctness has become so toxic to courageous leadership that Jesus
– not the “Flannelgraph Jesus”, but the historical Jesus of the New Testament – would embarrass many in church today.
Do you find this stunning?
It is my privilege to work with pastors in dozens of denominations—each with their own peculiar polity and priorities. Some systems locate leadership responsibility and authority with the pastor. Others load the pastor with leadership responsibility yet deny her or him the authority to lead. Still others withhold both leadership responsibility and authority from their ministers. Regardless of denominational polity, it has been my observation that no one has as great an opportunity to influence the culture and values of a local church than the Senior Minister. That is why I’ve dedicated my life to standing with and strengthening you.
You who stand in pulpits determine – more than anyone else – what your congregants talk about. To the degree that you choose your title or topic or text when you preach, you inject that into the “congregational conversation”
that takes place in the cars and restaurants and kitchens of those who hear. Now, you don’t get to determine what they say about your topic, but you do get to decide what that topic is.
Think about it.
Does your preaching provoke people to think? Do your sermons unsettle the status quo? Do your messages undermine the meaningless mediocrity of most of your members’ lives? Do you challenge your congregation to change?
If not, why not?
Read the Gospels—just the words in red—and notice how often Jesus did exactly that. Jesus stood as an interruption to whatever came between his hearers and the Kingdom of his Father. Jesus constantly provoked, unsettled, undermined, and challenged those he was with.
Didn’t he?
Jesus loved them enough to offend and oppose that which would do them harm—even when they cherished it as good, or nice, or comfortable. He loved the rich young ruler enough to spell out exactly what it would take for him to inherit eternal life. [Mk 10:21] Love motivated Jesus to challenge the rich guy. Love– not for himself, his own comfort, or reputation– but love for the other moved Christ to risk offending him.
I assert that it, too, is love that motivates you to pull back from challenging and offending and opposing the nonsense and mediocrity your parishoners hold as true. Trouble is, it is not love for them that keeps you from goring their sacred cows of compromise. No. It is self-love that fuels your commitment to censor your voice.
Isn’t it?
You don’t want to put up with the push back. There’s no point in stirring up a hornet’s nest. You’re already on thin ice with several stakeholders in the church. No need to rock the boat. You’re already tired enough. Besides, they’ve made you pay big time when your preaching got too personal a while back.
Thank God that Jesus didn’t fear offending the woman at the well—maybe she and her whole village would’ve perished–had he played it safe. What if Jesus chose to quench his zeal [Ps 69:9, Jn 2:17] rather than go after the powerful and popular merchants in the temple?
Courageous leadership is leadership with heart. With your heart fully exposed, fully engaged, fully at-stake. There is no virtue in being a jerk. I’m not advocating that you be oppositional just because you can. Nor am I suggesting that you blast away at whomever and whatever bothers you, just to get something off your chest. No, that would be selfish.
To risk your own security, your comfort, the way others regard you for another’s benefit—that is love! 
To stand powerfully resolute, because of love for someone else, in the face of ridicule and rejection—is exactly what Jesus did!
Didn’t he?
A decade ago, I attended a series of character development trainings. Each was designed to serve both as a crucible and a spotlight—to allow me to see aspects of my character and my impact on others that I was blind to.
Jean Marie is a powerfully incisive woman who had trained four of my children. She’d heard first-hand what it was like for them to have me as their dad: distant, demanding, disconnected, self-consumed, rigid, judgmental, severe, angry, cold. Then, she facilitated a workshop that Annie attended. She learned of Annie’s frustration, disappointment, loneliness, and anguish with a spouse like me.
For the next five years, Jean Marie served as a coach and trainer for me. I had never met anyone like her. Her love for my family and me was palpable, remarkable, undeniable, and unrelenting. And, so was her full-court press to challenge my self-consumption, to provoke me to consider my true impact on those I love, to undermine my commitment to remain clueless, to interrupt my many excuses and the beliefs that supported them, to oppose my hiding from life when I didn’t know what to do, to offend the arrogance of my belief that the way I viewed life was, in fact, “right”, and to unsettle the confidence I’d placed in my supposed innocence and virtue.
Up to that time, there were people who loved me and overlooked my childishness, selfishness, and playing small. Others, recoiling at the putrid odor of my self-righteousness would have nothing to do with it—or me. Jean Marie was different. She was sickened by the offensiveness of my hypocrisy, and yet she loved me steadfastly. It was her love that held me in the cleansing fire she brought.
Oh, that I would love so well!
What about you?
Leadership Skills Series: Being in Conflict
Principal #6- Consider Contribution
My mentor and hero, Dr. J. Robert Clinton notes that one of the five practices that distinguishes those who finish well is a commitment to life-long learning. If learning is central to life, it is critical in times of turbulence. Trouble is, the way most of us behave in conflict closes down the possibility of learning very much at all.
As humans, we want life to be tidy. Yet, life is seldom tidy—and conflict never is. To benefit from conflict—which I believe is always God’s intent – you need to take learning into hyper-mode. One almost-irresistible practice that undermines learning is to look to assign blame. 
Think about it: as soon as the culprit is identified, the energy is focused on building a case against the villain… proving just how wrong he or she is. Evidence is piled up. The case is closed. In this mode, learning shrivels.
The well-rehearsed cultural practice of racing to decide who’s at fault, who’s to blame, who is responsible for the breakdown ignores this startling reality: each person in the conflict has a contribution.
I challenge you to honestly review the details of any conflict you’ve been in to identify how you contributed – however small or great – to the breakdown. You may have contributed by not taking action that might have mitigated the hurt. You may have contributed by not being clear enough — however well-intentioned you may have been – such that the other party mistook your motives. You, like me, may not have cared enough to notice your impact on another, even when no malice was intended.
The opening provided by a conflict is to learn: to discover what you didn’t know beforehand. Get this, and you’ll never be in a conflict the same way again: there’s a gift in every breakdown; it’s the opportunity to learn what you don’t know you don’t know!
Failing to learn from your conflicts keeps you vulnerable to stumbling in the same ways again. Stumble into conflict often enough and you’ll see your impact diminished… greatly. Maybe worse, you’ll find people avoiding you, rendering you alone. As a leader, you cannot afford to be alone. Leaders champion those who welcome their influence to agreed-upon greatness. So, ignoring the provision of God to discover the ways you invite conflict and misunderstanding is deadly.
When you are called upon to referee a conflict, employing the concept of contribution can have dramatic results. For one, when everyone has agreed to banish the idea that one person is to blame, both parties are freed to look—really look — to see how they played into what didn’t work. When it is agreed that each party to the breakdown has a contribution, the judgmentally arrogant posture so common the “innocent victim” is stymied. At the same time, the self-deprecatory, subservient attitude of the identified wrongdoer is also thwarted. What results can be an honest inquiry into the nuances that provoked, cultivated, and prolonged the standoff.
When the community views conflict as a problem, a failure, or a sin, there is scant willingness to dig into the details to optimize learning. No, the press is to quick-fix it, with a rush to judgment, the dispensation of consequences, and far too often, the distancing of the designated scoundrel from the community. So seldom have the specifics been sufficiently studied, that any distinctive discoveries are embraced.
Frame a conflict as an opportunity for each participant to learn, and you’ll set the stage for real repentance and change.
Note: For more on contribution, I recommend the fantastic book: Difficult Conversations, by Stone, Patton, & Heen. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_9?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=difficult+conversations&sprefix=Difficult
