Wow! I regulary read Shane Duffey's blog, "What Leadership Demands", for completely practical and often convicting leadership tips. I must say, as I read his blog on confrontation today, I was extremely convicted, challenged, and left searching for the answer to this question..."Do I confront the people I lead often enough?" I highly recommend that you check out the entire post, but check out this blurb
"Those who don’t care don’t confront.
See if this rings true to you… If there is an issue that you know needs to be confronted and it isn’t, how often does the one not confronting end up talking ABOUT the person or situation that needs to be challenged instead of TO the person or persons that need to be confronted? My experience is that it happens about 100% of the time. If I’m not mistaken, talking ABOUT someone instead of TO someone is called gossip… or more clearly, sin. (God considers gossip a pretty big deal here but provides us a method to deal with it here.)
I have some confronting to do, and some amends to make for the gossip that happened instead of confrontation! YOU?
hmmm. . . you are making me think. . . Everything you wrote and the passage that you mention from Shane's blog I totally agree with. . .
ReplyDeleteHowever, in his blog he says:
If the person leading you isn’t confronting you about something, then you’re not being led well.
If you are not confronting the people you lead on a regular basis, then you are not really leading.
Open dialog and encouragement is an ongoing requirement. Confrontation? really? The word is pretty strong to say that it is an on-going requirement for good leadership. (not that it won't be required sometimes, but really, with everyone on a regular basis?) What am I missing here?
I think this could be a long topic of discussion. . .
Mike,
ReplyDeleteVery true! I agree this could be a long discussion, but I guess I would say from Duffey's blog post that "if you aren't confronting when confronting should be done...then you aren't leading". Confrontation might not be the right word to use for all cases, but often it is exactly what needs to happen. It's just funny to me that when a "confrontation" needs to happen, often times, it just gets talked about (gossip), meanwhile the issue goes on and before you know it a "wrestling match" has to occur because the confrontation didn't occur in the first place because we were, frankly, too chicken to handle it.! This could make for an interesting team convo! Let's chat!