Embracing Conflict | Part 1

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to this week's Timeout for Leadership. I want to continue to thank you for investing in yourself and your leadership by being a part of this transformational community. Today we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics. Are you ready? The topic's conflict. Now, I know none of you have a problem with conflict, but I'm sure you know someone who does, and you can send them this video as your gift to their growth. Thomas Crum, he's an author, and he specializes in conflict resolution and stress management. And. And he said this about conflict. He said that the quality of our lives depends not on whether or not we have conflicts, but on how we respond to conflict. Truth. Conflict is inevitable and we all go through it. But resolving the conflict is a choice. So how many of you actually like dealing with conflict? Probably no one raised their hand, but most of us choose to minimize it and make excuses why it's not that big of a deal. Here's what I know. The only bad conflict is unresolved conflict. So take a second and think about the last conflict you were in. It might have even been today. Do you remember what started it? Why it began? Did you resolve it? Or simply move past it and pretend it didn't exist? Or maybe you're one of those people who get into a conflict and you refuse to let it go until it's dealt with. Typically, what that means is you keep things moving until you get your way. Now, I know that's none of you again, but again, feel free to forward this video to a special friend. So how do you respond to conflict? Typically, we respond to conflict in one of three ways. The first thing we will typically do is we fight. We're going to win at all cost. It's about right and wrong, no matter the cost. The second way we respond to conflict is we might flee. We isolate and withdraw. We give up our voice and allow people to walk all over us. We begin to avoid the area and the people who we have conflict with and start withdrawing. And ultimately we end up breaking relationships. You know, we say things like, it's time for to meet him to move on. Or in the church world, we put it this way. God has called me to something else or to a new season. Pastor. Now, I was a pastor for 15 years, and I have to be honest, very few people who used that statement meant it. We minimize it by saying, it's not that big of a deal. But then when we get home, we call our friends and we begin to talk about it. For hours. And the third way some of us deal with conflict is we freeze these people, try to ignore and dismiss the conflict. This is one of the saddest responses to witness because these people are usually very loyal. They'd rather die than say anything negative or challenge something or someone within the organization that they don't agree with. Unresolved conflict always comes at a cost, and it's a high cost. There's a physical cost that the stress of unresolved conflict causes. There is the cost of broken relationship and the loss of trust, and then there's the cost of resentment that builds up and results in our making lists, and when our list is full, we're gone. All of these costs, they ultimately result in division and disunity within our home, our families, and our workplace. What employees and families say to me when I'm working with them through conflict is they just want to find peace. They think that peace is the absence of conflict. But I think that's where the problem begins. This isn't true. As we mentioned, conflict is inevitable and around every corner, we're not going to get away from it. The challenge is that the peace that we are after can only be found when we embrace the conflict and choose to go through it so we can grow through it. Conflict is inevitable. Join us next week for part two of Embracing Conflict as we share how to grow through conflict.