Video Transcript: Healthy Communications

Welcome back with this video. Today, what we're doing is we're going to be  wrapping up our discussion of working with staff and leaders as we continue  with our course developing great commission skills. The focus in particular today healthy communication. Communication is a vitally important element in all kinds of different ways. In particular we're talking about healthy communication today  in the context of working with staff and leaders that inter staff, inter leader,  communication that we need to have to be effective as a team. So let's move  into this discussion. We take a look at healthy communication. Much of the  conflict in church comes from poor communication, from miscommunication,  from the lack of communication. Now there's a couple of directives, I guess you  might call them in regard to this. Number one, make no assumptions. We've  talked about assumptions several times before, but make no assumptions and  go directly to the source. Don't assume that you know what people are thinking.  Don't assume that you are absolutely clear on what they meant by what was  said or sent by way of memo or email or whatever. Don't make assumptions,  and if there is any kind of misunderstanding or lack of clarity, Don't speculate,  don't gossip, don't try to figure it out, just go to the source and talk it through.  Nothing could do you better than that. So let's start by talking about making no  assumptions. You know, clarity leaves no room for assumptions. Now we've  used the word clarity quite a bit. We talked about ministry clarity. We talked  about role clarity. This is different. Now we're now talking about communications  clarity, making sure that we're clear in our communication, and that we're clear  on our reception of communication. You know, in the world of journalism, you  run into a term called fact checking, like, you know, a newspaper article or an  online article is not supposed to be published until all the facts that are included  in that article have been fact checked to make sure that they are in fact, true and accurate. Well, fact checking is the way to go, not assumptions. Check your  facts. Okay, now maybe the flip side of making no assumptions would be to  always get clarity. Always get clarity. What exactly do you mean by that? What  I'm hearing you say is such and such always confirm what's being  communicated. If there's any question whatsoever, have that question resolved.  Make no assumptions. Go directly to the source. Always get clarity. A lack of  communication leads to miscommunication, which is poor communication. This  is not what you want to see in the inter workings of staff and leaders. Well, let's  think about going to the source. This is just something somewhat comical, but I  do believe there is the essence of truth here. Somewhere along the line, I heard  from someone that every time there is a communication between people, there  are at least, there are at least six elements to that communication, there is  number one, what you meant to say. Number two, what you thought you said.  Number three, what you actually said? Number four, what your listener actually  heard. Number five, what your listener thought he heard, and number six, what  your listener wanted to hear. Now, yeah, this is this is amusing, but I do believe 

there's an element of truth here. Communication is complicated. Language is  slippery. We think that we were clear. We said what we meant, but make no  assumptions. Go directly to the source. Always get clarity. You know, going to  the source is so important, because if you don't, if you don't go to the source to  get to the root of what was actually going on. This this trouble, this conflict, is  going to spread like some kind of contagious disease. So it's always better to  get to the root and find out for sure. You know, when conflict and communication arises, the wise person will go to the original source to get the to the root of the  real and true communication. That's just the way it is. That's the way this works.  Now, in recent years, there has been the rise of the use of candor. How is, you  know, people often will say something like, Well, to be honest with you, which is  somewhat amusing, because I guess, I guess there must be times when they're  not being honest with you. But you know, when people use that expression,  what they're meaning is, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you the real in depth,  crystal clear, black and white story, to be honest with you, so and so. But There's a book out by a gentleman by the name of Ed Catmull. And Ed Catmull is one of the, maybe the president or the CEO of Pixar. So this is a very creative  individual. Is very far up the ladder of achievement in that entertainment world.  But he has a book out that is simply called Creativity, Inc, and he encourages  the use of candor and thinking about what's the difference between saying Well  to be honest with you, or to say well to be candid. There's a little nuance of  difference there, to be honest with you, suggests that you're going to tell what is  absolutely true, but maybe you're mistaken. So the use of the phrase to be  candid is to say, I'm going to tell you what I truly think about this. What my  perspective on this is, I'm going to leave the door open for possibly being  mistaken, but to be candid with you, to be transparent, to be vulnerable with you in all candor. Here's what I think. You know, it's, it's a nuance, but I think it's it. I  think it's interesting. I think it's worthwhile considering, well, here's, here's one of the things that he says in his book creativity. He says this, there is no doubt that  our decision making is better if we are able to draw on the collective knowledge  and unvarnished opinions of the group, but as valuable as the information is that comes from honesty, and as loudly as we proclaim its importance, our own fears and instincts for self preservation often cause us to hold back so we're not  necessarily honest, we're not necessarily candid. Now, what this points to when  it comes to working with staff and leaders. It points to the value of trust, of being  able to trust the people that you are working with well enough that you can  actually share candidly what you really think, what's really going on in your mind, in your heart, about whatever the matter is that's on the table now, especially in  the church, we should be truthful with each other. We should be able to be  transparent. We should be able to be vulnerable without fear, we should be able  to trust each other, but I have to tell you, it's not always the case. I served for a  number of years in a ministry that was not a safe place for truly. Sharing 

unvarnished opinions, I had to guard what I said, and others had to guard what  they said. There was a lot of suspicion, a lot of mistrust, because there was a  fair amount of abuse that went on within the leadership of that scenario. And to  be perfectly candid with you, I was very pleased when God opened the door for  me to leave that situation and move on. Communication in this context was very  unhealthy, because we could not share candidly who we were, what we were  thinking. Well, there's another book, it's called Radical candor. It's written by a  woman by the name of Kim Scott. So she adds this perspective about candor.  She says the key to getting everyone used to being direct when challenging  each other and challenging you is emphasizing that it's necessary to  communicate clearly enough so that there is no room for interpretation, but also  humbly, I choose candor over honesty because there is not much humility in  believing that you know the truth implicit with candor is that you're simply  offering your view of what's going on and that you expect other people to offer  theirs. If it turns out that you're the one who got it wrong, you want to know at  least, I hope you want to know. Now, here's the thing, when she makes this  statement about there's no room for interpretation. What occurred to me as I  was reading that was the idea that there's no room for misinterpretation. We've  got to really know what's being said. We've got to know what the intent of the  speaker is, the communicator is. So this idea of being able to come together as  staff and leaders of the church, and be open with each other and be truthful and  be candid, to say what's really on our minds, what we really think about this or  that, without fear of reprisal, that we can, in fact, share the unvarnished truth,  the unvarnished perspective that we Have that is healthy communication, and  we want to engender that in the life of the church, among staff, among leaders  now giant worldwide, once again, has an interesting approach to  communication. They talk about three elements of communication, provisional  plan and promise. A provisional communication is when it's a communication  that is contingent, there's an if, if if certain conditions can occur, then I might do  such and such provisionally. You know, if it doesn't rain tomorrow, I'm going to  go to the beach. Well, that's a provisional communication. You know, if it does  rain tomorrow, I'm not going to the beach. You know, this is not a strong level of  commitment. Plan is a little bit stronger. There's a little bit more weight. The  statement that I'm planning to do such and such is a bit heavier that I might do  so and so if now the promise communication is the strongest of all. It's a  statement of promise or commitment that I will, in fact, do such and such. Okay,  where does the problem lie? When do we run into trouble with communication?  Well, we run into trouble when we are communicating with someone and we  think we are communicating, say, provisionally, when that other person is  thinking that we are communicating a promise or a commitment, then when we  don't follow through, which is our right, because it was just a provisional  statement, the other person is offended because you promised. See, 

miscommunication, misinterpretation. So this is. Why we have to seek clarity.  This is why we have to make absolutely sure that we know what's being said by  whom. Now, while we're on the subject of communication, I'm going to drop in  one more time to the Heath brothers and their book Made to Stick while some  ideas survive and others die. Just a reminder, once again, I think this is the third  time I've gone over this, but I do think it's significant. And when you are  communicating with people, and you want to communicate with people in a way  that your idea, your communication, lands with them and sticks with them. You  know, just have this success model in place. The S says it's simple, the U says  it's unexpected, the C says it's concrete. The next C says it's credible. The E  says it's emotional. It's tied to some empathetic touch point. And finally, it's a  story. So one way of thinking of this as one unit would be to say this give people  a simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional story, and it will stick with  them now working effectively with staff and leaders, must include a solid  platform of healthy communication. We have to avoid assumption. We have to  avoid conflict and misunderstanding where there is one we need to go to the  source and gain clarity. And when we're communicating, we have to be  absolutely sure that we're communicating with clarity. Having this breakdown of  provisional communication versus planned communication versus promised  communication, I think it's a good tool to have in mind. It might even help to  articulate, you know, if our staff becomes familiar with this language of being  able to say to someone, well, I might do such and such if, by the way, that's a  provisional statement. You know, make crystal clear what we're communicating  and you know, healthy communication helps to contribute to a healthy staff  relationship. Working with staff and leaders in an effective, efficient way as we  move the Great Commission forward is greatly enhanced with healthy  communication. Now that wraps up our discussion on healthy communication,  and this is the this is the final video in our treatment of working with staff and  leaders. So once again, I'm going to run down the six skill topics that we  encountered along the way. As we discussed this particular skill, we started with  talking about spiritual authority and how important it is for us to develop spiritual  authority in our work with each other. Now those other types of authorities are  significant. You know, positional authority, expert authority, relational authority,  that we want to cultivate. But bottom line is that the strongest type of authority is  spiritual authority. And those of us who are serving the Lord together as part of a leadership staff, a leadership team, we all need to be operating from a position  of spiritual authority. We talk about spiritual development, the importance of  taking care of our own spiritual development as well as contributing to the  spiritual development of others, other staff, other leaders, and, of course, the  congregation at large, and ultimately the community, the people that we bring  into the orbit of our church through our great commission ministry, we talked  about the value of strong relationships, and how working with staff and leaders 

really blossoms when those staff and leaders have developed strong  relationships with each other, sharing in unity with Christ, not operating in  isolation on our own. We talked about ministry clarity of being absolutely certain  that regardless of the ministry area of responsibility that is our focus, that within  that. Focus. We are uplifting the Great Commission. We are working toward that goal of becoming an effective Great Commission Church as a team, we talked  about role clarity, making sure that we are clearly defined on the roles that we  are to play. It's very helpful, of course, to know what your own role is, but it's  also helpful to understand what the role of other staff and leaders is, so that we  know what to expect from each other. We know who's responsible for what. And  finally, we talked about healthy communication, the importance of trying to avoid  conflict and misunderstanding, the importance of clarity, the importance of  candor, and all those things that we spoke about in these last few minutes. So  with that, we are concluding our study of working with staff and leaders, we're  wrapping up with skill number five, and we are going to be moving next into skill  number six. And when we get to skill number six, we're going to be looking at  leaving a gospel footprint. The first thing that we're going to look at, the first skill  topic we're going to examine is called life with God, and that expression  emerges from a particular context a book by a man named Skye Jethani that is  titled life with God. May God bless you in all of your efforts to serve Him, may  God bless you in your efforts as a student to study and work your way through  whatever kind of educational program you're building toward, may God bless  you as you serve him in the way that he deserves in the name of Jesus. Amen,