The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
The Conflict You Keep Delaying
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Conflict in church staff teams is inevitable. It will happen at some point. You have to expect it. But what happens when leaders keep avoiding it at any cost, avoiding conflict? Today on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, we're going to talk about the quiet cost of delayed conflict and why putting it off makes it even worse. We're going to walk through some practical tools for addressing conflict with clarity and compassion and courage. Hi there, my name is Todd Rhodes, and I'm one of the co-founders over ChemistryStaffing.com. And I'm your host right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Maybe you've felt it for weeks, and you know what I'm talking about. Maybe there's some sudden silence when somebody walks in. But instead of addressing it, you've just been looking the other way yourself. You've been waiting, hoping that it just goes away. But the truth is this morning, this is a hard truth bomb for you this morning. It's not going to go away. So let's talk about the conflict that you may be delaying intentionally and why waiting is slowly kind of working against you. It's going to break trust on your team. Okay. So let's talk about avoided conflict, okay? Because it, as I said, it doesn't disappear, it festers. Conflict can, let me use this metaphor, it can be like a small leak, okay? If you leave it unaddressed, that small leak eventually becomes a flood. My son a couple weeks ago had a problem in his apartment with his water heater, went bad, and it was leaking a slow trickle of water out the bottom of it, going onto his floor, and then a little stream across the floor just a little bit at first, but then it got into the carpet right in front of his front door. You know, what started as just a really small leak that happened one night. The next morning he got up and all of his floor was white. That small leak didn't become a flood, but it sure became something that he didn't want to have to deal with. So silence, when it comes to conflict and when you see it, silence doesn't equal peace. It often signals fear, it often signals confusion. It can even signal some disengagement if you're avoiding conflict. And here's the truth: the longer that you wait to address the conflict, the more stories people are going to make up. And those assumptions, they're not going to be overly kind. Now, maybe you're the kind of personality that you just like to avoid conflicts. I don't think anybody likes to deal with conflicts. Absolutely no one likes confrontation. There's a few people that like confrontation, but probably you're not one of them. But the longer that you wait, the longer that you wait to deal with conflict that you know is there on your team, the more it's gonna trickle from just a few drops into a stream into a potential flood. Okay? So why do we avoid it so much? We've seen it. We know that if we don't do something about it, it's not gonna get better. Nine times out of ten, it's probably gonna get worse. So why do we avoid it? And why does it always backfire? It could be a number of reasons why we're avoiding it. Feelings are involved. Maybe you like both people that are have a conflict and you just want to stay out of it. They're big Christian guys and gals and have their big boy and girl underwear on, they can work this thing out, right? You don't want to get involved and hurt their feelings. Maybe you need to. Maybe you just want to not rock the boat. Don't rock the boat, as the song says. Great theology there. Not really. Maybe you don't want to rock the boat, but maybe another reason is you just maybe you just deep down you feel unequipped or unsure even how to address it or what to say. So if you don't address it, here's what happens. Here's what happens instead. Your team morale is going to drop because everybody sees it. Everybody knows it's the elephant in the room a lot of times. Gossip can spread, passive-aggressive behaviors can become really normal. And you have to understand that leadership isn't about keeping everybody comfortable. Man, I wish it was. That would be a great thing to put on your job description. But leadership isn't about keeping everybody comfortable all the time. It's about moving people toward health. That's what real leadership does. All right, so how do you start? How do you start? You need to start right now. You need to start today. Don't wait for the perfect time because there's not going to be a perfect time. So what do I want you to do today? You say, Todd, I've got a conflict that I know I've been kind of looking the other way and I know I need to deal with it. What do I need to do? You need to start today, and the first thing you can do, get out a piece of paper, pull up your calendar right now, set a time to talk. Okay? Set a time to talk. Focus on behavior and impact, not on character or intent. Going curious, right? When you have this conversation, going curious, not combative. Help me understand this. Phrases like, here's what I'm seeing, here's what I'm noticing. Can we talk about how that landed when you said that? I want us all to move forward. And maybe you need to start with just one of the people that's involved in the conflict. Maybe it's a conflict that somebody has a conflict with you and you've been avoiding it. Maybe just sit down, start right now and get that on your calendar. Because you do, you do want to, and this is what you tell them. We need to be able to move forward well, and I want us to be able to move forward. And if you're the senior pastor, if you're the senior leader, you need to model it. The rest of your team is watching how you respond to not only conflict that you have in your leadership with somebody else, but conflict that other people have on your team, how you deal with it, because they're going to look to you for leadership in even those conflicts as well. All right, so here's the big idea, here's the thought for today. Conflict delayed is rarely conflict diminished. Okay? Conflict delayed, if you put it off, it's rarely going to go away. The conflict will not diminish. It will probably escalate. I'd love to hear from you today. Write me an email. Tell me, what's one hard conversation that you've been putting off? Or maybe you just had a hard conversation and you want to tell me, hey Todd, here's what happened. And you're right, or you're wrong. This thing blew up in my face. I would love to hear what you're going through. I love to read all of your emails. You can email me anytime, podcast at chemistrystaffing.com. And if you need help, you just need some outside eyes and ears to help you create that healthier team culture. That's what we're here for at chemistry staffing.com. Sure, we can help you hire a great new staff member, but we can also help you develop a really healthy team. That's what we're really passionate about. All right. So I hope you'll reach out to me, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. And I do hope that you will reach back out tomorrow and listen. We're here every Monday through Friday on the Healthy Church at Puckett.
