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,