Leadership in a Time of Conflict

Dan Holloway, Pinnacle Associate

I have been thinking recently about what it means to be a healthy and effective leader in a community of faith, and especially in one that is dealing with some level of recognized and identifiable conflict. My work with Pinnacle, and before that my work with my denomination, has led me into those kinds of church communities on a regular basis. What I have found to be consistent in nearly all these working relationships have been questions about the meaning and practice of leadership.

Sometimes these leadership questions are asked by pastors who are bewildered by their inability to satisfy the demands and expectations of members of their churches. Sometimes the questions are asked by the members themselves as they try to determine what is reasonable to expect of their leaders, how to support their leaders, or in the worst cases, how to get rid of those they find unacceptable. Underlying all these questions is the assumption that leadership is a major factor in congregational health.

It should of course be noted that leadership does and should include both staff and lay leaders. It should likewise be noted that conflict is seldom the responsibility of any one person alone and that many factors generally contributed to current church conflict. Such factors include culture wars, denominational debates, long-standing personality conflicts, and unresolved grief that predates current leadership. We can now add to that the challenge of being the church in a corona-virus world, a world for which none of us were trained. To focus on leadership alone in such contexts is to succumb to scapegoating at its worst and in fact will prove detrimental to the goal of healing. Organizational health is the responsibility of all those within the system.

And we appropriately recognize that leadership is in many ways more challenging now than ever before. As Ronald Heifetz helpfully wrote a few years back, we now live in a time of leadership without easy answers.  Many church leaders are already finding this out as they try to help their communities consider timelines and processes for returning to ministry in closer physical proximity. There will be many tensions around such decisions and the choices required to implement such decisions may in fact lead to additional conflict. Surely this is a time for graciousness and patience as faith communities work through such questions together.

Yet leadership still matters in these times. Leadership in a time of conflict either contributes to the process of growth and healing or complicates matters so that they become more difficult to resolve. The healthy leader appropriately spends time reflecting on his/her place in the system and seeks to understand what is required for effective leadership.

My experience is that very few of us can effectively do this on our own. We all need trusted colleagues and friends with whom to engage such questions. Some people find this through support groups that provide both honest and loving feedback. Others find it useful to engage a coach for personal and professional development. There are likewise written leadership inventories like People Map that can provide feedback in a safe and engaging way.

Whatever ways one chooses, what matters is finding a way to gain clarity about one’s leadership style and leadership gifts. What matters is becoming clear about our values and our guiding principles. What matters is understanding where we shine and understanding where we need support to be most effective. We all have both deep gifts and blind spots and recognizing both of those is one of the first steps to effective leadership. Wise leaders not only affirm this, they welcome such self-clarification. Such self-understanding is the starting point for effective leadership in times of conflict and may be the most important gift any leader can provide to those he or she seeks to lead.