Episode 55: Finesse - Grace Under Pressure

Hey, Friend!

Every organization, even every church has a culture and a climate. The culture is what matters to us, how we do things here. The climate is the essence - what it feels like to work here and to be here.

In today’s episode, I share how you can use finesse to protect and enrich the climate of your organization. It involves three options:

1. Preventative Measures (building trust)

2. Maintenance Measures (addressing conflict)

3. Repair Measures (honest, non-threatening conversations)

I pray this blesses you,

Becky

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You know what a land mine is?

(00:02):
They are a problem
We see them in war movies.
Somebody is driving a military vehicle down a dirt road or walking through a field and
all of a sudden without warning they encounter this land mine.
This circular, hidden, explosive device that can be triggered by pressure, proximity, or

(00:23):
time to cause destruction.
In ministry, a land mine can be a hidden issue that when triggered can cause emotional,
relational, or even organizational damage.
Because ministry is about people and people, including those of us in ministry, are often
triggered by stress and burnout, anxiety and depression, overwhelm, and heartache, even

(00:49):
poor communication.
Even if this triggering doesn't cause emotional, relational, or organizational damage at the
very least, it creates conflict.
So, how do we navigate land mines in ministry?
Let's dive in to today's episode.
Hey, friend, are you a people-pleasing, conflict-avoiding leader?

(01:14):
Is your secret relationship with fear affecting your leadership decisions?
Do you want to learn how to build credibility and confidence or to navigate difficult conversations?
Do you long to manage your time without sacrificing your family or self-care?
Welcome to leadership becomes her.

(01:34):
I'm Becky Burroughs, your host and a minister in life and leadership coach with over 50 years
experience in leadership.
I firmly believe God has given you everything you need to lead well.
You have the toolbox.
You just need to learn how to use the tools.
So, get comfy or start a mindless task.
You know how to pause or rewind if you need to.

(01:56):
Let's get started.
Okay, so I posed the question, how do we navigate land mines in ministry?
And I'm going to suggest that we do so with finesse.
There are several definitions of finesse in the dictionary, but the one I like is grace

(02:20):
under pressure.
Finesse is not needed so much when things are going well.
No, I need finesse when things are not going well.
When I am feeling every shard of my brokenness, when the baggage of my life is too heavy to
bear, that's when I need to know how to function with finesse, grace under pressure.

(02:43):
You know, Jesus was full of grace.
John 11:6 says that from that fullness, we have received grace and more grace.
Grace served on top of grace.
Jesus dishes out grace in heaping, huge, serving.
So the question is, how can I be stingy, extending grace to someone when I receive it so lavishly?

(03:09):
This is going out of your way to give compassion, kindness and love to someone even if they don't
deserve it, they don't appreciate it, or they don't return it.
And that is so hard to do.
And as a minister, we have to learn how to navigate these land mines in ministry to not

(03:29):
only protect people and their emotions or relationships, but also to protect the organization,
the church and your ministry.
Every organization, every church has a culture.
It also has a climate.
The culture is defined as what matters to us.

(03:50):
How we do things here?
And the culture of a church is different everywhere you go.
No two churches have exactly the same culture, what matters to them because it goes beyond
scripture really.
It can be seen in the environment.
It can be seen in the curriculum in a particular ministry or what preacher chooses for his sermon

(04:14):
series, the core values of a particular congregation, their policies and procedures,
their goals and objectives.
And if you've worked at multiple churches, you know what I'm talking about.
So one of the first things you need to learn to do when you start working in a church is
learn their culture and it is not going to be exactly as it was in the last church you

(04:38):
worked in or even the church in which you grew up.
But every church also has a climate and the climate of a church, even the climate of your
individual ministry is the essence.
It is what does it feel like to worship here?
What does it feel like to work here or to serve in this ministry?

(05:00):
It is the general mood and climate can be affected by a lot of things.
The look and the smell of a church are even of your wing, let's say, the attractiveness,
the general cleanliness, the emphasis on health and safety measures, the warmth and the friendliness,

(05:24):
the structure of the way you do things, the flexibility of it, it is going to affect the
feel, the confidence and the calmness.
And so your overall church is going to have a climate, how it feels to be there, how
it feels to worship there.
But then when they step into your area, the area that you are responsible for in your ministry,

(05:48):
it is going to have its own climate.
You as the minister, let's say you are a children's minister or a student minister or whatever,
it is going to affect how people feel about being in your area, how they feel about serving.
But that is not the end of climate.

(06:09):
Climate is also affected by how we talk to people, how we talk about people, about the kids,
about their families, about our teammates, because again, it points to how it makes people
feel.
This includes the level of mutual respect that we have, how we protect each other's time

(06:31):
and energy and how we show value to each other.
So it is a good time to ask yourself as a minister, do I protect and enrich the climate
or am I one who pollutes and contaminates it to what degree am I part of the problem?
So I am going to suggest three ways to protect and enrich the climate with finesse, grace

(06:57):
under pressure.
There are preventative measures, there are maintenance measures and there are repair measures.
Let's look at preventative measures.
This is when you get in front of the conflict by building trust and extending grace, which
goes a long way to preventing the conflict, thereby protecting and enriching the climate.

(07:20):
I am a huge fan of the work of Brene' Brown and I am also a huge fan of acronyms and Brene
uses an acronym that I think is so appropriate to taking preventative measures to protect
and enrich the climate with finesse and she calls it braving, the seven elements of trust
and each letter stands for a word.

(07:41):
So I am going to tell you the words that the acronym braving stands for and then we will
dive into it a bit.
Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault, Integrity, Non-judgment and Generosity,
braving.
Let's take a look at them.
So again, the purpose of the preventative measures is to protect and enrich the climate with finesse,

(08:05):
grace under pressure, by getting in front of the conflict, by building relationships, trust
and extending grace, boundaries.
Basically, we all need them and as a minister, I set the tone for having boundaries, I respect

(08:26):
your boundaries and you respect my boundaries.
You are willing to say no and it is okay to say no to me because I respect your boundaries
and I am willing to say no when I need to.
I am willing to establish and set clear boundaries, not boundaries that are invisible and always
moving to where people don't even know what my boundaries are.

(08:50):
The second one is Reliability.
Pretty simple.
I am going to do what I say I am going to do.
And I am going to expect the same from you.
In the church, this means staying aware of my competencies and my limitations so that
I don't over promise and I am able to deliver on commitments and balance competing priorities.

(09:12):
I am direct, I am honest, I am consistent if I am reliable.
Accountability.
This is where I own my mistakes and I apologize and I make amends.
I admit when I don't know something, vault, I am committed to not sharing information or
experiences that are not mine to share.

(09:33):
I need to know that my competencies are kept and you are not sharing with me any information
about anybody else that should be confidential.
So if you come, for example and you try to talk to me about someone else, I might say,
have you talked to that person about it?
Well no, I wanted to talk to you.
I am sorry, you are going to need to go talk to them.

(09:54):
Let me know how that works out.
Holding them accountable.
Integrity.
This is where I choose courage over comfort.
I choose what is right over what is fun, faster, easy.
And I choose to practice my values rather than simply professing them.
I talked in earlier episodes about credibility and credibility is when you have values and

(10:18):
your habits reflect your values.
Integrity.
Non-judgment.
I ask for what I need and you can ask for what you need and we can talk about how we feel
without fear of judgment.
And finally, generosity.
Where I extend the most generous interpretation possible to your intentions, your words and

(10:40):
your actions, thereby extending trust.
What we tend to do is we make assumptions and we interpret what others are saying in a
way that feeds into our secret fears.
So for example, if I secretly fear that you don't respect me, that is the lens to which
I'm going to interpret everything you say or do.

(11:03):
So what we're suggesting here is with generosity extending the most generous interpretation
possible to your intentions, to your words and to your actions.
And this will go a long way by preventing conflict, by building that trust and extending
grace.
You can read more about braving in Brene' Brown's book Dare to Lead.

(11:26):
Another way to protect and enrich the climate is by taking maintenance measures.
And basically these are just basic strategies for managing conflict.
Think of conflict as a toolbox and you have several tools in your toolbox and you have
to decide which is the best conflict management tool for the particular toolbox, for the

(11:50):
particular conflict that you're in.
The problem is that we all have favorites.
We have a favorite way of handling conflict and we choose that tool even when it is quite
possibly the worst tool we could choose for the situation, much like always picking up
a hammer even when the project calls for a wrench.
And if you're wondering which of these conflict management tools Jesus would use that I'm

(12:14):
about to talk to you about, I have studied Jesus interactions in the Gospels and I found
evidence that he used all five.
The five conflict management tools that I'm suggesting you have at your disposal are
this, to compete, to compromise, to collaborate, to avoid and to accommodate.

(12:34):
And I'm going to briefly talk about each one.
I will dive deeper into these in later episodes.
To compete is, think of the person you know that always wants to lay everything out on
the table.
We've got an issue between us.
I can tell something's wrong.
We got to talk about it.
That would be a competer.

(12:55):
They are absolutely insistent.
That's the best way to get rid of conflict is just to hit it head on.
And there are times when that's exactly what you need to do.
I always maintain you need at least one competer on your team because this is the person that
is capable of taking quick action.
They can make unpopular decisions.
They know how to stand up for issues that are important.

(13:17):
They know how to protect themselves and others.
For example, let's say there's an emergency situation.
Someone starts choking.
It is the competer that's going to think fast and know what to do.
They may be the first one to call 911.
They may be the first one to apply the Heimlich maneuver.

(13:38):
They're capable of taking quick action.
And so this is a very good skill to have.
Therefore the competer, what they have to do is decide does this situation call for that
or do I need to pick up a different tool?
So to be good at competing, you've got to be able to argue or debate.
You've got to be able to use your rank, your position, your influence.

(14:01):
You've got to know how to assert your opinions and feelings, stand your ground, state your
position clearly.
And again, sometimes this is exactly what's needed.
Especially in high pressure, really, really important situations, but it's not appropriate
for every conflict.
The second tool in your toolbox is accommodating.

(14:22):
When should you accommodate?
When you want to be reasonable.
When you want to create good will.
When you want to keep the peace.
When you want to maintain perspective.
And so for example, let's say that a team is discussing how they want to do something.
And you're sitting there listening and you say, wow, that's really important to that person

(14:45):
that we do it that way.
I don't necessarily agree, but I don't feel as strongly about it as they do.
So I'm going to keep my thoughts to myself and we're going to go ahead and do it their
way.
And usually we accommodate when someone feels more passionately or maybe they have a bigger
investment in whatever you're talking about than you do.

(15:06):
And again, it sounds very peacekeeping, but there are dangers when you accommodate too much.
First of all, there are some skills required in accommodating.
And this is when one of the skills is when you're willing to forgo what you want for
what someone else wants.
It requires selflessness and the ability to yield.

(15:27):
But if you do it too much, let's say you're in a meeting and you're discussing what you're
going to do for Easter next year.
And all these ideas are being thrown into the room.
And you've got a good idea too.
If you withhold it because others appear to feel more strongly about their ideas, then

(15:48):
everybody loses because they don't get your input.
It could be that if you say, you know, something else we could do is this, that might fire an
idea that somebody else is holding back.
Or the people that appear to feel strongly about their idea, maybe they're just doing that
because it's the way we've always done it and they know it will work.

(16:09):
But they're not even considering other ideas.
And then when you submit your idea, they're like, wow, we could do that.
Or, and then it causes other people to come up with even different ideas.
So you have to, you can still accommodate without holding back, giving your idea, but waiting
to see how the team feels about it.

(16:32):
And then if they feel more passionately about doing something else, you accommodate.
So the third method, a third tool you have in your conflict management toolbox is to
avoid.
I coached a woman a couple of years ago who very proudly said, I am a complete conflict
avoider because I am a peacemaker.

(16:52):
Here's the deal.
being a conflict avoider doesn’t automatically bring peace.
If you can avoid conflict and let go of what it is that that you're bothered by or in conflict
about, then great, do that.
But what happens all too often is we don't want to deal with conflict so we avoid it.

(17:14):
Let's say a person says something that that makes you angry, but you don't want to get into
the conflict.
So you say, I'm just going to let it go.
And you think because you haven't dealt with it that you have successfully let it go.
A couple of weeks pass and the person says something that on a normal day you would be able

(17:35):
to just let it go.
But because you have stuffed the conflict instead of dealing with it, you react much more
in a much bigger way than you would have because you realize that there is nothing this
person says that I'm going to see clearly because I'm seeing it filtered through this anger

(17:57):
I still have that I thought I let go of.
I actually had that happen to me.
Someone said something to me that was hurtful and I didn't want to deal with it.
And so I said, I'm just going to get over it on my own.
And I thought I did until some time passed and that person said something else and I had
this visceral reaction.

(18:18):
And I thought, okay, you in fact did not get over it, you stuffed it and now you can't take
anything this person says in a good way.
So I went to them and said, I need to talk to you about something that you said to me a couple
of weeks ago.
I thought I had let it go but apparently I haven't because when this thing happened today
I reacted in a stronger way than I would have.

(18:40):
And so I shared with this person what they said and how it made me feel and they were like,
oh my word, I had no idea.
It was just a wonderful conversation.
Had I not done that, I would have continued to stuff the next thing they did and the next
thing they did and everything they said or did from then on would have been filtered
through this anger that I've got simmering below the surface.

(19:03):
And so there are times when avoiding conflict is quite literally the best thing you can do
and there are other times when it's the worst.
Here are some examples of when you should avoid conflict.
If someone comes to you complaining about somebody else and you say, have you talked to that person
and they say, no, I wanted to talk to you.
Well you need to go talk to them.
They have a right to know what you're saying about them.

(19:24):
I'm going to give you a week to talk to them and then I'm going to come back around and
see how it went.
Or I've actually been in a situation where I heard someone say, I'm going to give you
a week to talk to them and if you don't, I'm going to tell them what you're saying about
them, which really gets their attention that I'm not a person that you can gossip to.
It's also appropriate to avoid conflict if the time is not appropriate.

(19:49):
Let's say you are about to get up and make an announcement at church and someone walks
up and sits down beside you and they want to tell you something real quick and you know
you don't have real quick.
You've got to get up there.
You go, you know, this sounds important.
Let's meet after service.
That is avoidance.
You're avoiding doing it in the moment until you can do it at a more appropriate time.

(20:11):
Or let's say you've got a raging headache and somebody wants to come have a hard conversation
with you and you know it's not going to go well because your head is pounding.
To put it off until another day is avoidance and that is very appropriate.
When should you avoid?
When you need to leave unimportant issues alone, when you need to reduce tension, when you

(20:34):
need to buy some time, when you know your limitations, when others need to own the
conversation, it's not about you or when you recognize the issue is actually just a symptom.
The next one is collaboration.
Collaboration is an important conflict management tool.

(20:56):
You know the idea is that two heads are better than one.
Let's integrate our solutions.
Let's learn together.
Let's merge our perspectives.
Let's get commitment by bringing people into the room.
Let's improve our relationships.
Let's get buy in.
To collaborate you've got to be able to listen, understand and empathize with non-threatening
confrontation and identify underlying concerns.

(21:19):
But it's possible to over collaborate.
I have worked with people that cannot make a decision on their own.
That feel like that they've got to involve everybody because it may not be important to
you but what if it's important to the others, I'm going to send an email out to everyone
and get their opinion on this on unimportant issues.

(21:41):
And so you find yourself all day long in this email thread or this texting thread about
something that one person should be able to decide all by themselves.
And finally, the last conflict management tool that you have in your toolbox is compromising.
When do we compromise?
When we're resolving issues of moderate importance.

(22:04):
When we need to reach a solution and we haven't been able to by any other means.
When we need a temporary solution.
When we're dealing with time constraints or if we are needing to back up, we've tried
the competing, we've tried collaborating, that didn't work, then let's just compromise.
So to be a good compromiser, you've got to be able to negotiate, find a middle ground and

(22:25):
make concessions.
But it could be said that compromising is a lose-lose because nobody gets what they want
or what they need.
You compromise.
And so it's important to compromise on things that are not important, for example.
You and I are going to lunch together.
You want pizza?
I want barbecue.
So we've got a standoff here.
And we try collaborating.

(22:47):
We've tried all kinds of things.
And finally, we go, OK, let's get pizza today and then next Tuesday, let's get barbecue.
That's a compromise.
Or, you know, well, what if we go to an American, a restaurant
that has American food that serves both pizza and barbecue, we could do that.

(23:07):
You know, it's not going to be as good.
But let's compromise that way.
I'm going to take that same example and show you how we can use the other conflict management
tools.
You want pizza?
I want barbecue.
We start arguing about it.
I try to convince you why barbecue is better.
You try to convince me why pizza is better.
That's competing.
Or we don't argue about it.

(23:28):
I just accommodate.
I want barbecue.
You want pizza, but you seem to want pizza a lot more than I want.
Barbecue.
So I'm just going to say, OK, fine, we'll go ahead and we'll go ahead and get pizza.
Or maybe we, you say you want pizza.
So I say, OK, I want pizza too.

(23:48):
And I don't even tell you that I really want barbecue.
Or you say that you want pizza.
And I want barbecue.
And so we put our heads, we put our heads together and come up with a solution that makes
us both happy.
And maybe the example I gave for compromise is actually collaboration where we say we'll
do one this Tuesday and the other next Tuesday.

(24:09):
And maybe the compromise is that we don't have pizza or barbecue.
We both settle on a hamburger.
And then finally to collaborate is where we put our heads together, we create a schedule
whereby every month you get to choose one time.
I get to choose one time.
So my whole point is, regardless of the fact that we all have preferred methods for dealing

(24:32):
with conflict, we have all the tools in our toolbox.
And it's important to determine which tool is the most important tool to use in the
situation.
So how do I protect the culture and the climate of my organization with preventative measures
by extending grace, finesse, as we talked about, grace under pressure, with maintenance

(24:56):
measures by being willing to have those hard conversations.
And finally with repair measures.
And this is where you look for an opportunity when we're not battling against anything, we're
not at odds, we're getting along well to have a real conversation even if it's tough.

(25:16):
Where you come back around, in fact, I've actually called it the come back around.
Let's say you and I are really having some kind of conflict on Monday.
And we resolve it as best we can in the moment using one of the conflict management tools.
And then I wait a day or two and come back around and say, I want to revisit that conversation.

(25:38):
And I want to know how that felt for you.
And I want to share how it felt to me.
And let's see if there's a way that we can avoid that kind of conflict in the future.
I really want to understand you and your perspective.
If I come into that come back around that conversation with the purpose of understanding

(26:00):
you more than I want to be understood.
It's not a conversation where I say, let's revisit that.
I want to be sure that I was clear that you understood where I was coming from.
I want to be sure you understood my intention.
I want to be sure you understand blah, blah, blah.
That's not the purpose of coming back around.
That's, I want to understand you.

(26:20):
I want to try to get a feel for what that was like for you so that we can handle it better
in the future, so that I can handle it better in the future.
And if you come to the come back around with that kind of humility, hopefully this other
person is going to meet you in the middle with humility and want to understand you and

(26:42):
how it made you feel.
But even if they don't, you have done the right thing to try to repair the situation.
I hope this has been helpful to you.
And in later episodes, I'll get into each one of these conflict management tools in a
deeper way.
Hey, let's do this again next week.

(27:03):
It is my prayer that this podcast inspired you, blessed you, or made you think.
So please share it with a friend, subscribe, and please leave a review.
Hey, I want to connect with you.
Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Send me a DM or email me at [e-mail].

(27:24):
If you are a Christian woman who leads and you are interested in one of my Leadership Boot
camps for Women in Ministry, this is a four week workshop, or becoming part of a Kairos
Cohort, your long group coaching, send me a DM or an email for more information.
We'll talk soon.
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(27:44):
(upbeat music)
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We hope you enjoyed this video, thank you very much.
Thank you very much, thank you so much.