We had one of those conversations. You know the kind.
It starts over something small. Something that, if you wrote it down, later wouldn’t even sound worth mentioning. Tone was off. Timing was bad. Somebody said something a little sharper than they meant to. And before long, you’re not talking about that thing anymore. You’re talking about everything.
I could feel it happening in real time. Part of me wanted to win. Part of me wanted to shut it down. And part of me, if I’m being honest, just wanted to walk away and not deal with it at all.
That’s the crossroads every leader faces eventually. Push harder, pull back, or check out.
We didn’t check out. We stayed in it. Not perfectly, not always gracefully, but we stayed. And somewhere in the middle of all that back-and-forth, the real thing finally surfaced. Not the surface frustration, but the deeper thing underneath it.
Sometimes it sounds like: I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing or I’ve never seen it that way before, can you tell me more? And that’s when everything shifts. Because at that point, you’re not fighting against each other. You’re fighting for something.
That’s taken me a long time to learn.
Not every hard conversation in leadership is the same. Some of them are just noise. Frustration looking for somewhere to land. The kind where an hour later you can’t remember what started it. Those conversations don’t build anything. They just leave a small dent and a little distance between people who have to keep working together.
But then there are the other ones. The ones you’d rather avoid because you know they’re going to cost something. The ones where someone has to say what’s actually underneath. Where you risk being misunderstood for a minute so you can be understood in the long run.
Those are the fights worth having.
I’ve heard a noise under the hood of my truck before and just turned the radio up. Kept driving and hoped it would go away. That works right up until it doesn’t. The same thing happens in churches and leadership contexts. You can avoid the hard conversation for a season. Keep things light, keep things moving, don’t push too hard. But over time, things drift. Little gaps become bigger ones. And eventually you’re not fighting. But you’re not really building anything either.
No conflict, but no depth.
Leadership that actually grows doesn’t avoid conflict. It just learns which fights matter. It lets some things go. It doesn’t chase every irritation or need to win every point. But when something real is on the line – vision, trust, direction, the health of the people you’re leading – real leadership steps into it.
Not to prove something. To protect something.
That’s what I’m still learning, even now. Some battles just aren’t worth the energy, and I’ve spent plenty of time and energy on the wrong ones. But the right ones, the ones where something deeper is at stake, those are the moments that shape a team, a culture, a church.
When you come out the other side, when you’ve said the hard thing and heard the real thing and worked your way back toward a team centered focus, something has changed. More understanding. More trust. More unity than there was before.
Not because the conflict happened, but because you didn’t waste it.
