by Tim Swanson
When I was a kid, I attended a baptist church in Tucson. And, as most people are aware, regular church attendance did not make me a well mannered kid. In fact I was pretty rambunctious. I also had a best friend, who is still my best friend. His name is Dan. And Dan and I got into a fair amount of trouble as kids. We never went easy on any of the children's leaders at our church. The result was that we had somewhat of a reputation for being difficult to handle. My most memorable interaction with a church leader happened when I was in middle school.
One Sunday morning we were sitting in Sunday school half listening to the teacher telling us about... Something. I was disassembling a pen to harvest the tiny spring from inside. I nearly had it in my hands when my finger slipped and the spring went flying across the room. I immediately dove to the floor and started crawling around looking for the precious spring. I tugged at Dan's pant leg and asked him for help. Our search didn't last long before we heard our Sunday school teacher raise his voice, "Fine! If you don't want to learn, I don't want to teach you". Our heads popped up from the rows of church chairs like two meerkats in just enough time to see our teacher stand up and storm out of the room.
After a moment of silence from the other students in the room, Dan and I agreed that this would certainly land squarely on our heads. So we decided to run after our teacher and try to apologize and perhaps lessen the consequences. We darted out of the classroom and down the sidewalk that led toward the administrative offices. As we approached the teacher I called out his name and said, "we just wanted to say that we're really sor..." I was quickly interuppted by the teacher who turned on his heal, stuck his index finger right in our faces and thundered, "I don't care if you little %&#$s go to Hell. I'm not putting up with it any more". He turned around and stomped away. Dan and I stood there stunned. After a moment Dan broke the silence, "Are we going to Hell?"
A few days later I got a call from that teacher who asked if he could come over and have a talk with me. I was reluctant, but I agreed. As we talked, he told me about the mounting pressures of his job and that he was under an unusual amount of stress. He apologized for how he responded to Dan and I, and asked if there was anything he could do to make it up.
Now I'm more or less grown up and I have have my own team of church leaders. Everyday I get to work with a bunch of very talented and hard working volunteers in the Music Ministry at Moon Valley Bible Church. However my team is made up of people who operate at a wide variety of stress levels. All of my volunteers work full time, and then sacrifice time with their families to serve in the Music Ministry. Some of them manage a relative amount of balance. But most of them are typical Americans who live life a million miles a minute and are up to their eyeballs in overwhelming responsibility. So some of them are bound to snap. What's important to me is to be mindful of that and not respond in kind.
So here are a few things that help me keep a cool head when my team members loose their cool.
1. Think - I try to think of a time when I treated someone else the way I am being treated. This usually envokes an empathetic feeling, which helps me respond the way I'd like people to respond to me.
2. Pray - I'll spout out just a sentance or two asking God to help me respond as the man He wants me to be. Because let's face it He has all the power, and I have none of it apart from Him.
3. Call - I call someone I can trust and be brutally honest with. I have one guy whose name is Scott, he helps me see my side of things.
4. Bite - As my good friend Scott told me, "bite your tongue. If you taste blood you know you're doing it right". If silence is better than anything else I can think to say, then I work to say nothing.
5. Search - If one of my team members is coming at me with a shotgun blast of frusterated criticisms, I look for the pellet of truth. If I can come out of a heated exchange having learned something, then I'm ahead of the game. As leaders, we are agents of change. The best part of our job is when we get to see someone grow. But if we ever want to see this happen, we have to build trust with our team members. Responding well is one important ingredient in building that trust. What sorts of things do you do to keep a level head?
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