A Different Kind of Conversation

Greg has written a bit about our leadership team retreat this past weekend.

Before we left for the retreat on Sunday afternoon I spoke to our church about changing the conversation from problems to possibilities. This is much harder to do than it sounds. It is much easier to get together with a group of people and try to solve problems. The biggest problem with our problem-solving conversations is that they rarely solve any problems, usually because of the nature of such conversations themselves.

These conversations typically go something like this.

1. The group identifies the problem.
2. The group identifies the person to blame for the problem. Most of the time, the person to blame isn’t a part of the group. (That’s because the group finds it much easier to be honest about the person’s shortcomings if he’s not in the room.)
3. The group tries to solve the problem by brainstorming ways the person to blame can change. In some cases, the group decides the best way to solve the problem is to get rid of the person to blame and see if someone else can do better.
4. The group leaves the meeting hoping that the person to blame will change so that that things will finally start getting better.
5. They never do.

I’ve been a part of a number of these conversations. I’ve also been the subject of a few!

When church elders get together they find it all too easy to sit around and blame the ministry staff. When the staff gets together they’ll usually end up blaming the elders. When elders and staff get together they blame the church. At the same time, in a house across town, a group of church members get together and start blaming the leadership.

As long as we’re trying to change things by focusing on someone else’s activity, we are doomed to frustration and failure.

That’s why we tried to change the nature of the conversation this weekend. We used Peter Block’s material on Civic Engagement (pdf) as a starting point. I’ve blogged about Block’s stuff here, here, and here. Mark Riddle has also blogged about Block recently

Here are the questions we discussed as a team.

1. What is the price that others have paid for you to be here?
2. What is the crossroads at which you find yourself in life, work,or church?
3. What do we want to create together?
4. What have I done to contribute to the very thing I complain about or want to change?
5. What doubts and reservations about Garnett do you have?
6. What do you want to say “no” to, or refuse, that you keep postponing?
7. What have you said “yes” to, that you do not really mean?
8. What promises are you willing to make to this team?
9. What gift have you received from another in this room? Tell the person in specific terms.

These questions made for a fascinating conversation and a much different kind of leadership retreat.

Block contends that the primary task of leadership is to be engaging our followers in more conversations like this. I agree. What would your group, company, family, or church be like if these questions, or questions like them, were allowed to shape the conversation?