Church boards and work teams are notorious for their unspoken discussions! Those unspoken discussions are the issues that are present, that people know they are present, but that either individual board members or the board itself do not dare to discuss as a board. These are elephants in the room - often critical issues for the church that require being named and dealt with, but the board's culture mitigates against it.
Many individuals do not like conflict; their definition of conflict is anything that might cause individual or group discomfort. So, there is subtle pressure put on board or team members to be friendly and not rock the boat by naming issues that are out there and need discussion. (The same dynamics can be had on almost any team.) You know that you have breached a topic that makes people uncomfortable when you put an issue on the table, and there is either silence or someone jumps in to quickly deflect the problem from the discussion.
I recently read an article about Patrick Lencioni suggesting that major financial institutions have been in trouble lately because of the prevailing culture on company governance boards to not deal with issues that would make others uncomfortable. So, the culture of nice sabotages a culture of truth and effectiveness.
Pastors, leaders, board members, or team members who choose not to speak in the face of real unspoken issues do a disservice to their organization. The irony is that everyone generally knows there are unspoken issues - they just don't want the discomfort of naming them. The hope is that they will just go away!
How we speak to the issues is essential. If I approach an unspoken issue and put it on the table, it will be best received if there is not a personal vendetta and my words are not meant to hurt. I don't have a hidden personal agenda; I want the best for the organization; I communicate in a way that invites rather than disinvites dialogue; I say it in love; and I acknowledge that the issue may make others uncomfortable.
The funny thing about "elephants" is that once they are named, they are no longer elephants. I once worked with a group around a whiteboard and asked them to name every elephant they felt existed in their organization. We filled the whiteboard (a bad thing), but once up there, we could talk about all of them (a good thing). Once named, an elephant is simply another issue that we are allowed to talk about. Unnamed, it is one of the unspoken discussions we know we need to have but need more courage to discuss.
Every board, team, and organization is better off with a high level of candor and trust, which mitigates the candor turning into anger or cynicism.
If you are brave, I would suggest that you ask your team or your board in a relaxed atmosphere to brainstorm on any unspoken board discussions you need to have, on any elephants that need to be named, whiteboard them, and then develop a plan to talk through them one by one.
Unspoken discussions are not discussions, just frustrations, and they often hide real issues that unresolved will hurt the organization.
No comments:
Post a Comment