Conflict, do you have a love or hate relationship with it? For most people, it depends on the families they grew up in and how conflict was viewed. If you’re from the Midwest (or Bold North as I prefer), you likely grew up in a culture where passive-aggressive responses reign and conflict is swept under the rug. The reality though is that conflict is essential for growth, personally and professionally. Let me demystify conflict for you and dare I say, even encourage you to promote it?

From chaotic schedules to needing to swoop in to “save the day” to rogue goals and strategies by others, one culprit is behind them all: values. Whether a soloprenuer or leading a non-profit or Fortune 500, when the values in use are not clear, neither is anything else.

Our dreams for our organizations, products, and services go long into the future. Whether or not we get there depends in large part on what we do with feedback. Being around for the long haul means we must, as my dad would say, continually meet or exceed our customers’ expectations. The last thing we want to do is over-promise and under-deliver. Nothing is more aggravating to customers than feeling like they were not told the whole truth (be it about costs, timelines, quality, etc.).

Without leadership development, visionaries can bulldoze the very people they have a heart for, as seen by the early lives of Joseph and Moses. Joseph is an excellent example of the visionary leader Baldoni writes about in his book Great Communications Secrets of Great Leaders. In their research, Taylor et al. found that with their ability to create and communicate their visions, visionary leaders can energize their organizations by "providing meaning and purpose to the work."

Churches in American Metropolitan areas see entirely too much turnover, not only of their staff but also of their congregation. For staff, one of the main reasons people leave is because they do not feel invested in and equipped to fulfill their role on staff. The top two reasons congregants leave churches are because they do not feel connected to others in the church or they do not feel like there is a place for them to serve at the church.

The difference between our churches reaching new believers and seeing a decline in membership might just be our mindsets as leaders. You are a pastor, yes, but you are also a leader if you plan to use your influence to help people in your church community work together towards a common goal (like the Great Commission, or the Great Commandments, or…fill in the blank with the vision God put on your heart). When it comes to reaching new people with the Good News of Jesus, our efforts might be falling short if we think we can reach people the same way we did 10 years ago. Our mindset, what we believe to be true about today or the future, is critical to our leadership efforts as pastors.

Our daily decisions are driven by what we know about the past and believe to be true about the future. As Richard Slaughter put it, the interplay between someone’s understanding of the past and their "anticipation of the possible futures" are what drive their decisions today. What if what we believe to be true about today and tomorrow aren’t accurate though?