Category Archives: conflict
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
Compendium (part five)
Leadership Courage Series # 39
The fourth trait to lead effectively in a Church caught in a culture of cowardice: Stand, as an exemplar, in the sabotage and backlash that must come.
A Christian leader is not simply someone who gets things done or who gets others to behave in desirable ways, in a religious context.
A leader is different.
She presences herself in life and relationships in a uniquely beneficial way. This uniqueness transcends behavior, skill, and knowledge. It’s best described in terms of being. A courageous leader’s way-of-being is distinctive.
Its exceptionality is that it provokes maturity in those she influences.
The difference is palpable. One difference is the way a leader is in the midst of sabotage and backlash. My Fuller Seminary Professor and mentor, Dr. J. Robert Clinton identifies leadership backlash as one of the most common methods God 
uses to develop leadership character. Backlash occurs when once-enthusiastic followers turn against their leader in the face of unexpected difficulties.
In A Failure of Nerve, Edwin Friedman elaborates: “Mutiny and sabotage came…from colleagues whose will was sapped by unexpected hardships along the way.”
It is the leader’s person and posture amidst this collegial sabotage that is so stunningly effective.
A courageous leader recognizes that backlash and sabotage are normal and are the product of evacuated courage in those disheartened by difficulty. The leader interprets backlash as an opportunity to:
a) model a way of leading that inspires confidence toward God, and
b) deepen the maturity and faithfulness of colleagues and followers.
The leader chooses to interpret opposition as provision from Heaven.
Consider Jesus. In John 6:66 many of Jesus’ disciples turned back and no longer followed him. Immediately, Jesus challenges the twelve: Don’t you want to go away too? He saw the departure of many as an opportunity to test the resolve of the leaders closest to him.
Embracing the reality of God’s sovereignty and apprehending the security of God’s unconditional love, she leans into the resistance with a posture of confident curiosity.
Grounding herself in the shelter of a loving, all-powerful God, the leader can reach for people for their benefit.
“God has this!” she might remind herself while stepping toward those who, unnerved by fear, have turned against her. Aware that God’s agenda is to grow all of us into Christ-likeness, the leader can stand, as Jesus did, for her parishoners’ progress into maturity.
Having taken full responsibility, before the Father, for his being and destiny, Jesus lives as if his actions, attitudes, and words are on purpose: to establish the Kingdom of God in the lives of men and women.
Acclimate yourself to the rigor of taking responsibility, before God, for your responses to your environment and circumstances.
After all, everybody’s watching.
The Adventurous Life #3
Why is it that the Christian life is such an adventure? What has your experience been, following hard after God, as best you know?
In my life, I repeatedly find myself in dilemmas that are completely beyond my ability. This was far less common before I surrendered my life to Christ. Now, it seems, the adventurous life beacons everywhere. It seems that God wants me in water just over my head—where I get to trust him as a way of life. Something inside urges me to sprint into the center of my untidy life and to look for God there, as my provision.
For example…
As a consultant, while traveling to meet the board, elders, and staff of a conflicted church, I discover I’ve been completely misinformed about the severity of the situation into which I’m about to step. All that I’ve prepared for three days of meetings must be scrapped, and there’s no time to adequately develop a new plan. I go anyway…
While leading a Bible study, I’m summoned to the phone and learn my son has been in jail for two days, out of state, and unable to reach me. I book a flight to leave the next morning…
Delivering groceries to the needy, I learn that a woman with whom we’d prayed has been cured of a severe infection. She insists that I go to see her friend. On the way, I learn that her friend is dying of brain cancer. We go anyway. I lay my hands on the woman’s head and pray for her healing…
Driving from church to a Father’s day celebration, traffic is inching past police cars and a fire engine positioned to block the view of drivers when there’s a particularly gruesome accident. Glancing to my right I see the wreckage of a blue Mustang convertible…
It is the car my daughter and son were driving– the car has flipped onto the hood, windshield flattened. There is no room for any human to have survived. Driver and passenger must have been thrown from the car … or decapitated.
There can be no other explanation.
Crying out to God, I jerk my car to the curb and sprint toward the shattered remains of Lauren’s car…
I’m shocked to learn that a massive sum of money is missing from a capital campaign. The only person with access to the funds is a nationally-respected executive with whom I’m scheduled to meet in the next few minutes. If the conversation doesn’t go well, it could undermine my career. I go and raise the concern, head-on…
While praying, I’m impressed by God (I think) to “deliver a message” to our Mayor. For the next several days, I endeavor to dismiss the thought as a ridiculous concoction of my overactive imagination. The longer I struggle, the stronger the conviction that I’m to make an appointment, sit down with the Mayor, and ask him a very specific question. I make the appointment, meet with the Mayor, and ask the question…
Paul says he pressed on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of him. [Phil 3:12] This “pressing on” suggests an ardor so intense, a struggle so severe, an exertion so demanding as to have required his all. I wonder if our pursuit of Christ’s calling to change our world would blanche in comparison to that of Paul.
Writing to the Church at Ephesus, about the ferocity of the spiritual struggle that is the Christian life, Paul elsewhere writes: “…and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand…” [Eph 6:13b-14a] I understand this to mean: “after you’ve given everything in you to stand, keep standing!”
A friend who, for more than a decade, has championed me to live a life of bold, decisive action, says it this way: Throw yourself into the middle of the room, and see what God does with it!
To fully participate in the life God has given us, knowing that in ourselves we’re not enough, is to apprehend the adventurous life.
See you there!
Leadership Courage Series #21:
Leadership in Culture of Cowardice (part twelve)
Leadership Courage Series #11:
Leadership in a Culture of Cowardice (part two)
After illuminating characteristics of a Culture of Cowardice and making sobering observations about how appropriately it applies to the Church, we’ve turned our attention to the kind of leadership that can serve to restore the Church to a place of redemptive influence in society. Edwin Friedman, in Generation to Generation defines a leader as a self-defined person with a non-anxious presence. Last week, we unpacked some of what it means to be self-defined, or as my CRM teammates prefer: “God-defined”.
Today, a non-anxious presence.
A non-anxious presence does not mean carefree, laid-back, detached, disengaged. It means an absence of anxiety.
As a powerful squall threatens to swamp their boat, the disciples are a mess. Anxious. Fearful. Panicked. Jesus … is … asleep. [Mk 4:38]
Non-anxious.
After benefiting from the miracle of the loaves and fish the crowd wants Jesus to seize political control, overthrow the Romans, declare himself King. His response was simply to withdraw to a solitary place, alone.
Non-anxious.
A non-anxious presence is easy to carry off when your leadership is well received, when people are saying great things about you, when folks are happy and grateful for you. A non-anxious presence is essential when anxiety appears omnipresent.
Recall the phrase: “Poor planning on your part does not constitute a crisis on my part”. The less mature are always attempting to enroll others in their disquiet, their “crisis du jour”. A perceived catastrophe on the part of certain members of the congregation does not constitute a calamity for a well-defined leader.
Do you think for one minute that God, up in Heaven, is wringing his hands 
over that leaky roof, or the lawsuit brought against the church, or the lousy turnout at the society meeting? I often remind my coaching clients that God is not looking down at them stunned, saying: “Oh my goodness, I didn’t see that coming!” And, since God is fully aware of your predicament, what do you suppose God wants to do in you as a result?
The self-defined leader chooses to interpret these “crises” as precious opportunities to develop mature disciples of Jesus Christ. Friedman is clear: the leader’s capacity to contain her own reactivity to the trepidation of others, to avoid becoming polarized, and to self-regulate while staying connected to those who behave as if in distress is key to both the leader’s differentiation and to catalyzing maturity in the culture.
Think this through, Christian leader:
a) How are you growing in governing your own emotional reactivity? Ask your spouse, your kids, your staff and elders: what evidence do they see of your growth in controlling your reactions when those around you are out-of-control themselves?
b) When individuals or groups are locked in opposition, are you becoming more apt to get “altitude”, above the fray, and remain curious? Are you getting better at living in the tension, without knee-jerking yourself to one side or the other, primarily to exit the tension of the issue being, as yet, unresolved?
c) When you react with frustration and anger to the low-tolerance frustration and anger of the immature in your ministry context, you’ve put yourself in exactly the same soup! The key is to manage yourself when in conflict and to stay in relationship with those who prefer to attack, blame, and remain irresponsible for their own being and destiny.
It takes stamina to continually define oneself to those who lack self-regulation. Sadly, that kind of stamina is not developed within a culture of cowardice. 
Nor is it promoted in the American education system that presses for togetherness over against the self-differentiation that is natural when honest competition and individuation is endorsed.
As Friedman noted some 15 years ago, most of us are leading chronically anxious emotional dwarfs. In many denominational systems, the church has become one of the hideouts for the immature.
Sad.
We could be the most powerful, clear, selfless, and confident people on the planet.
God-defined people with a non-anxious presence.
Leadership Courage Series
#5: A Culture of Cowardice (part one)
Who are the exemplars of courage in our culture? To whom does America look when seeking heroes to be our role models? Lady Gaga? Bill Moyers? Dennis Kucinich? Robert Downey Jr.?
It seems to me that the courageous have become an endangered species…and not just in society– but in the Church. 
Think about it.
Wikipedia defines an endangered species as a population “at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters.” Can you see that all three conditions are true of the Church today?
We’re left with what I call a Culture of Cowardice.
Back in the early 1990’s Dr. Edwin Friedman described America as “a seatbelt society” 
that is oriented more toward safety than adventure. In A Failure of Nerve he notes that America has become so chronically anxious that our society has gone into an emotional regression toxic to courageous, well-defined leadership. One effect of societal anxiety is a reduced pain threshold. The result: comfort is valued over the rewards of facing challenges. A culture like this has no stamina in the face of difficulty and crisis.
How well does this describe the contemporary Church?
In our commitment to “being nice” we prioritize togetherness over actually making a difference. In our desire to feel good we bury our heads in the proverbial sand while the culture around us sprints toward its own destruction. According to Friedman dissent is discouraged, feelings take precedence over ideas, peace over progress, comfort over anything new, and cloistered virtues over adventure. The press within church for togetherness smothers bold, daring, world-changing action – like we see in the Book of Acts – and those who are courageous enough to engage it.
What emerges, stunningly, is a culture that is so “nice”, so fixated on empathy that it organizes itself around the most immature, most dependent, most dysfunctional members.
Or, haven’t you noticed?
The average church in America has fewer than 80 in attendance and has been in decline for decades, fewer than 5% of their members tithe and the majority contribute nothing at all, and most fail to see a single convert to the Christian faith a year.
Who has hijacked the agenda in most of America’s churches? The least courageous, least responsible, and least emotionally and spiritually mature have taken most churches captive.
Courageous leadership, by nature, is decisive. And, the Latin root of decisive means “to cut”. But, it is not “nice” to cut anything away, to cut anything off, to cut anything out—even a toxic presence that – like a parasite – survives by sucking the life out of those who are healthy. To lead with heart is to stand for what’s best, simply because it is best—even when it is unpopular. Even when it provokes opposition from misguided stakeholders within the Church.
Courageous leadership, by nature, is clear. Such a leader is unapologetically clear about who she is, the difference she is committed to make in the world, her values and priorities. The clearer you are as a leader, the clearer people around you will be. And, therein lies the problem. As pastors, we don’t always like what that clarity reveals. As you become more and more clear as a leader, more and more people will decide they’re not “up” for going where you’re going. Stay foggy and many will stick with you, wandering in impotent ambiguity.
Courageous leadership, by nature, is disruptive. Courageous leaders routinely disrupt dysfunction. They regularly challenge their own preference for comfort—and that of those they lead. Many interpret their leadership as crisis-inducing. Friedman notes that crises are normative in leaders’ lives. These crises come from two sources: those that just arise, imposed on the leader from forces outside that leader’s control and crises that are initiated simply by the leader doing exactly what he or she should be doing. Yet, how reluctant is anyone in church leadership to lead in such a way as to invite a crisis for long-standing church members?
As a leadership coach and consultant to pastors, my life’s work is to champion Christian influencers to find their hearts and to fully re-engage them in this great, important struggle to stir the Church from its slumber. There is no altogether “nice” way to do this.
Just five verses into his story, Jonah is sound asleep below decks, aboard a ship imperiled in a brutal storm. The terrified captain races below, is stunned to find Jonah asleep — in so important a moment – wakes him demanding: “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your God! Maybe he will take notice of us, and we will not perish.” [Jon1:6] Get this: it was not a follower of Yahweh who stirred Jonah from slumber—calling him to take action with God lest the “community” they were part of be plunged to ruin.
Look around you. Is not the community around your church caught in a destructive storm? A moral, ethical, spiritual, relational hurricane that wills to destroy the fabric of American society? Don’t you see the storm buffeting the Christian faith—driving it to the nether regions of the culture?
To awaken the Church, her leaders must first rouse themselves. Then, embracing the opportunity provided by this life, they can stand clearly, decisively, and disruptively to awaken their churches to enter the glorious and dangerous fight for the redemption of the un-churched near them.
What else would a courageous Christian do?
Best Results from Problem Clients
I was honored to be interviewed by Dane Sanders on his live webcast a few weeks ago. His website, www.AskDane.com resources professional photographers to build and strengthen their businesses.
As Dane’s business coach, I was asked to do a show with him about working with difficult client situations– perspectives that are transferrable to most any occupation or calling. Plus, you can see how goofy I look on camera!!
Let me know how you find this helpful: www.ustream.tv/recorded/5144738
Leadership Skills Series- Being in Conflict
Principle #8- Who gets to choose?
This entry concludes the Being in Conflict series. At least for now. While there is much for a Christian leader to learn when in conflict — if you choose to apply it — today’s principle will keep you from falling into conflict, a great deal of the time.
So, if you’d prefer to minimize your participation in conflicts from now on, listen up!
As with each of the articles in this Leadership Skills Series, this principle will make a lot of sense to you… and I bet you rarely apply it. And this you do to your own relational and leadership peril.
Here it is: Principle #8- Who gets to choose?
Who chooses your choices?
Who decides your decisions?
Who determines your attitudes, whether and when you forgive, when and why you finally get off some offense or other?
The answer is ridiculously apparent: You do.
Simple.
Obvious.
“So what?” you say.
Here’s what: most of your conflicts erupt when you forget this simple, obvious reality: You don’t get to choose anybody else’s choices.
Now now.
Not ever.
You never have and you never will.
And yet, in your most challenging relationships, you behave as if you do. Don’t you?
Think about it.
You imagine that you choose how much your daughter is online. How much your wife spends on shoes. How and when your son does his homework. Right? You say: “We have strict guidelines in our home about how much time Sophia gets to be online. Susan has a strict budget—including shoes. Bert knows he has to do all his homework before TV.” And, you think that because these things are true, that Sophia, and Susan, and Bert are not deciding every single day whether and to what extent they live within these carefully-defined parameters?
I assert that they choose. Every time. Just like you did when you were a kid.
Their choice is always theirs—just as your choices are yours.
Most of your conflicts erupt when you forget that you only get to choose your choices. An autonomous human being does what every single human being does every single moment of every single day: she chooses. And you go berserk because you think somehow you’re entitled to choose other people’s choices. Don’t you?
Think about it.
Small things.
Dumb things.
Big things.
Important things.
Eternal things.
God, who is omnipotent, knows everything, is eternal and sovereign set it up that we get to choose all our choices. And, sometimes (maybe much of the time) God weeps over the choices we make.
I invite you to consider just how different your life could be if you lived as if everyone around you makes their own decisions—every time. Imagine a life when you’re not manipulating, pressing, challenging, shaming, guilting, or being “so disappointed” in the decisions of those around you.
Imagine the impact on those you say you love. Consider their lives when out from under the weight of your expectations, disappointments, and judgments.
Freedom?
What if you trusted people to make their own decisions and to live into the reality that those decisions open and close for them? You could sorrow with them, without being ashamed of them. The confidence you display in those near you might invite them to make great choices—surprising both you and them!
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
Leadership Skills Series: Being in Conflict
Principal #5- Who, before What and How
Thus far the focus of this Leadership Skills Series has been to resource you, as a Christian leader, when you’re in conflict. The first four distinctions, plus those remaining, will support you becoming skillful when you’re in “deep weeds”, as my pal and mentor Gary Mayes often says.
You, like me, are also called on to referee when other people are sideways. ‘Who,before what and how’ is the principle I employ virtually every time I get to help broker a breakdown.
It is grounded in the notion that God is committed to make us like Christ. To my clients who are Christian, I say: God’s trying to make a Christian out of you!
God is so committed to transforming us into the likeness of Christ, God will allow conflicts to surface the selfishness, judgments, entitlement, and arrogance that undermine our effectiveness as witness to the world.
God is so interested in our being authentic, that God will let conflict expose the manipulative game-playing and con-artistry each of us has mastered over our lifetime.
Said another way, God is more interested in the Who: the kind of person you are as you move through your life and relationships… than he is aboutwhat needs to be done to resolve the conflicted mess you’re in, and how you and the other party are to move on with your lives!
Got it? “Who, before what and how”.
The rub is, as humans we want to get out of the tension, out of the frustration, out of the discomfort of the conflict right now!
We don’t care much about the character of Christ being formed in us– we want the no-good bum to pay! We’re not all that interested whether the fragrance of Jesus is so evident that people around us begin to re-think what they’ve decided about Christ — we want to win!
Invite the battling parties to temporarily suspend their press for what and how. Ask them to consider what, in their own character, God is addressing through this upset.
As a human being, I prefer that my life be a certain way.
So do you.
Each of us has a “preferred version” of life and each of us has our ways and means to try to get life to behave the way we prefer. Trouble is, there are people in that life of yours, and each person has their preferred version of life, too… and their own ideas about the territory where your two lives intersect.
So, your preferred version of life has at least three committed opponents: reality, other people’s preferred version of life, and God—who is massively committed to developing you into the kind of person who lives an exemplary life. Your leadership development.
When your preferred version of life bumps up against reality, against other’s ideas about how life is supposed to be, or against God’s character-building designs for you— friction results!
Can’t be helped, ‘till something gives.
And, have you noticed: reality doesn’t give. God, thankfully is more committed to your development than you are. He rarely gives. So, rather than surrender your fantasy about how your life and the people in it should be, your “ways and means committee” goes to work on the people near you.
In dozens of creative, bullying, cunning, unrelenting, manipulating, shaming, fear-inducing ways you labor to undermine their commitment to their fantasy of life, so you can have yours!
All the while… God is after your heart.
Who, before what and how.
What would love do?
Leadership Skills Series: Being in Conflict
Principle #4b- contender, know thyself!
Last time I introduced the idea that you’re enormous advantaged, as a leader, when you’re honestly aware of your vulnerabilities. Ignorant of them, you undermine your own effectiveness.
These blindspots lead directly to conflict. Sometimes you’re aware of the row they produce. If you’re like most pastors I know, you hate when somebody brings a complaint about you to you. Don’t you?
The conflicts you never become aware of are far more dangerous. They’re the “sleeper cells” of terrorist activity hidden in the seemingly benign everydayness of your life and ministry.
In these conflicts, those you offend just move on, usually taking friends and family with them. So, you’re perpetually re-building your team, your staff, your leadership core, your congregation.
Rather than seeing conflict as an opening for intimacy and learning, you push back. Maybe, like most, you think that conflict means something is wrong… with you, with it, or with them.
Allow yourself to consider that conflicts are an inevitable and necessary part of every honest, committed relationship. It is impossible for you to know enough to not need other people: their ideas, perceptions, feedback, and experiences.
What if their disagreeing with you does not diminish you at all? Could it actually serve you? Could it serve whatever it is that the two of you are endeavoring to do?
In this blog, I’ll introduce you to a second area, regarding conflict, where it’s supremely important to “know thyself”.
How have you trained yourself to respond when you’re in conflict? What are your patterns, when it’s “on”? As humans, were predisposed to fight or flight. Some leaders I know do both.
What’s the problem with flight or fight?
When you’re fleeing or fighting, you’re not learning.
And, if you’re not learning any more about the conflict you’re in, about it’s genesis, about your part in its escalation, and about the clues you may have missed along the way—you’re setting yourself up to repeat this over and over.
So, when the impulse is to escape or to dominate in order to be right, my invitation is to get inquisitive. Imagine a crime scene investigator 
who interprets every case as something “bad”, something to do away with as quickly as possible… something to ignore (flight), or to conquer(fight) with great haste.
How many cases would actually get solved?
How much real justice would get done?
When you’re presented with another’s complaint about you, become a CSI agent: perceptive, curious, patient, attentive. Suspend the very natural impulse to get out of this—quick. Challenge yourself to learn as much as you can, and to model a way to respond to conflict.
If you’re like me, you have an Achilles heel in this area as well. As a child and teenager, I was about as likely as anyone to occasional bone-headedness. I was probably as vulnerable as the next guy to forgetting something I’d said I’d do, impulsively leaping before thinking things through, and failing to consider who else might be impacted by something I did or left undone. Rarely did I intend evil toward anyone, and when I learned of my mistake, I tried to repair the breach.
Yet, one of our family dynamics was that it was assumed that I meant to hurt or embarrass or slight another. So regularly and forcefully were my motives impugned that I became unsure of them, myself. I developed a hyper-sensitivity to accusations about my heart and intention.
To this day, I’m vulnerable here. When we disagree over tactics, over ideas, over differing ways to accomplish things, I’m fine. But, when you accuse me of intending evil, of purposing to hurt someone, of premeditated unkindness… my auto-pilot switches on:
I freeze.
I flush.
My heart races.
My mental mechanisms seem to seize up.
Instantly, I’m 11 years old again and I’m caught: my cruel, malevolent heart has been exposed and I didn’t even know it. In this condition, I’m lousy in a conflict! Fight and flight appear irresistible.
Because I’ve studied my vulnerabilities (with the help of a coach and counselor), I’m able to get altitude in real time … when it counts most. I’m able to coach myself in the moment, interrupt my emotional machinery, and return to the here-and-now:
CSI…
Perceptive…
Curious…
Patient…
Attentive…
