As well as serving a Lutheran school community as its pastor, Chris Mann helps workplaces deal with conflict. Recently, he shared his thoughts with Lutheran Media’s Messages of hope about how to ‘disagree well’ with others. This is an excerpt adapted from that podcast interview.
Conflict is a values clash. When a conflict happens, it’s always around something valuable to us and therefore has some emotions attached to it.
However, if we’re in a conflict and we don’t see the other person’s perspective, even if we win, we lose. So, we might win an argument, but we lose our relationship with them, and we lose something within ourselves. We lose compassion, we lose wisdom and we lose humility.
So, instead of thinking, ‘How am I going to beat that person? How am I going to win in this situation?’, from a faith perspective it is: ‘How would Jesus have me deal with that situation?’ Sometimes that is turning the other cheek. Sometimes that is going the extra mile, but sometimes it’s having appropriate boundaries.
And, before talking about a difficult topic, I check my motives. Am I just trying to fix a problem, or am I trying to love a person? If I truly care about this person, I’ll find a way to speak the truth, even if it’s going to be difficult for both of us.
Ultimately, being able to admit that we’re wrong can be the most important skill we have when it comes to conflict.
Another thing that makes a big difference is pausing and taking a breath so that we can think clearly and not take all our conflicts personally.
Of course, being a Christian is an amazing help. We know that part of the Old Testament is about people being in conflict with God; people not wanting to do things the way that God wants them to do it. But, in Jesus, God chooses to enter our shoes in our conflict, and experiences as a human what it is to be in conflict with others.
So, Jesus knows what it is to enter a disagreement as a human being and knows how to respond well. But we see especially in Jesus going to the cross, that sometimes in a conflict we actually have to just suffer and suffer well.
Sometimes suffering well results in the life that we were trying to fight for in the first place. And God’s wanting to provide life for everyone on the other side of a conflict. We don’t always get to experience that, unfortunately – our world is broken.
But that is God’s best for us: life on the other side of a conflict.
You can listen to the full interview at www.messagesofhope.org.au/disagreeing-well
School pastor at Endeavour College Mawson Lakes in South Australia, Chris Mann is also a leadership coach specialising in communication under the banner of Lifelong Leaders. Photo by Amy Dahlenburg
