Critical Conversation Non-Starters

Critical Conversations are necessary within organizations, corporations, churches, among leaders, and even with friends. They are the conversations where something is at stake: assessments, critique, evaluations, correction, analysis, and reconciliation.

 As crucial as these critical conversations are and as often as they must happen, few of us are equipped to know how to enter into that space well. Below you will find a short list of "non-starters." If you attempt to launch into a conversation with any of the following, you sabotage the possibilities even before you've made any headway. Likewise, these "non-starters" push your dialogue partner into positions of defensiveness, threat, insult, or a need to prove themselves over an against the threat you pose.

 
1.) Assigning Motives: When having a critical conversation, we must be careful in assigning motives to someone's actions. This operates under the assumption that "I know why you did what you did." Though we might be tempted to surmise or deduce the motive, we must focus on the action itself, giving the person the opportunity to name their own "why." Studies have shown we have a tendency to assign a far more derogatory motive to someone else's actions than we might ourselves in the given situation.

2.) Unfounded or Unconfirmed Accusations: Critical conversations will inevitably include moments of accountability whereby you might have to go to someone else and challenge them on an impropriety or indiscretion. However, we are all prone to rumors, bad days, insecurities, or misinterpretations. Rash conversations that start with, "YOU DID...(fill in the blank)" without access to the whole story, critical evaluation of the subsequent details, or acknowledgement of limited perspectives can immediately sabotage trust in the face of innocence.

 
3.) Dismissing and Discrediting Allegiance: Critical conversations can leave us vulnerable to dualisms, especially, "us" and "them." It's easier to have a critical conversation with someone I've deemed as enemy than one who might (amid the disagreement) still remain friend. Instead of recognizing the space of conversation as a space of understanding, growth, and ideological exchange, we come loaded with an arsenal of evidence that threatens the other person's "belonging." If you don't think like "us," you must then be a "them. "You aren't one of us. You aren't committed to the mission. You aren't a true (fill in the identity marker - American, Republican, Christian, etc.)

 
4.) Assigning Pejorative Labels: Dualisms lead to the marking of identities. Labeling people as members of a "different camp," one easily dismissed because of their failure to meet the demands of ever-narrowing and arbitrary litmus tests of inclusion lead to immediate breakdowns. We weaponize labels for the sake of dismissal. Attacks against identity and belonging immediately sabotage the possibilities for meaningful engagement.

 
So where might we go from here?

1.) When critiquing, focus on the outcomes and not one's character. If character conversations are necessary, start with an interest in personal growth rather than invalidation of personhood and defense of your personhood in the wake of a threat you assign them.

 
2.) Critique the Arguments and Claims, not the person behind the arguments and claims. This provides emotional distance when evaluating the legitimacy of an argument. We all make statements, write posts, and make claims that aren't complete or fully indicative of who we are. See the argument and claim as the product of the person and not the person themselves.

 
3.) Ask open ended questions that enable a person to speak to their concerns, desires, agendas, and motives. Listen carefully and follow-up with additional questions. This is not an interrogation but a demonstration of interest.

 
4.) Own your own perspective before assigning someone else motive. It's better to say, "this is how I heard what you said and this is how I felt about what happen" than to say "this is why you said it and why you did it."

5.) Attempt to identify underlying issues that might be contributing to problematic behavior. Oftentimes, we see only the action, not the heartache, struggle, exhaustion or woundedness that gave rise to the action.

Character: The Bedrock of Leadership Legitimacy

When identifying an effective leader, the question arises, “what legitimizes someone as a leader?” I understand that this question depends on scope and field of leadership. However, for the sake of this brief article, allow me to speak broadly of leadership within a variety of fields, whereby leadership is at least remotely defined as someone with the express responsibility of directing those connected to an organization, institution, or cause toward a purpose larger than themselves.

What legitimizes someone with that responsibility? How do we know if that person has what it takes to be a leader? Unfortunately, here’s where I feel that in an image conscious world, we get a bit derailed in our assessments.

When assessing a leader’s legitimacy, we are often prone to point to three externally available criteria:

1. Competency: How good are they at what they do? Being good at something should make someone worth following...right?
2. Capacity: What position, role, title, success, or esteem have they held in the past? What is their future ceiling? Are they a star awaiting the right opportunity? 
3. Charisma: How much relational “woo” do they possess? Is there a gravitational force around their personality? Do they have the capacity to excite, motivate and move people? 

Each of those elements is an important factor in assessing one’s possibilities of leadership, though none alone legitimizes a leader. When any of these elements alone, outside a more robust criteria, are used as justification for choosing, promoting, or following a leader, we build our organization’s, institution’s, or cause’s future on a very flimsy platform.

• Leadership based on competency alone creates celebrities not servants.
• Leadership based on capacity alone leads to egocentric positional authority not collaborative empowerment. 
• Leadership built on charisma alone is fluff, shaped by a cult of personality, instead of substantive vision around which all of us cohere. 

Though easily accessible as external criteria, leadership legitimacy isn’t one’s sole possession of any one element or the sum total of all three. Leadership legitimacy demands a more robust criteria. That criteria is “character.” Character is the bedrock on which one’s leadership legitimacy is built. Though it’s impossible to lead a group without some measure of each of the above elements, any leadership without character comes crumbling to the ground. 

So how do we define character? Well, because I’m a preacher at heart...I’ll forge on with the alliteration. This episode is sponsored by the letter “C.” I would suggest that character has everything to do with a life lived in consistent alignment (and in humble realignment) to a governing set of principles that renders one credible, courageous, compassionate, convicted, conscious, and confessional.

Briefly, character is expressed in a life that is:

1. Credible – A leader of character lives a life that is genuine, authentic, vulnerable and consistent. Credibility refuses to put on a façade, but demonstrates a predictability based on one’s self-possession.
   
   
2. Courageous – Leaders without character are often opportunistic or complicit. Characterless leaders will seize opportunity by placating to the demands and expectations of others and complicit in corruption for personal gain. Leaders of character will make courageous decisions, especially when costly, because it is right.
   
   
3. Compassionate – Leaders of character, having reckoned with themselves, are open to the struggles, trials, and pain of others. They refuse to treat others as cogs in their machine and instead value them as vital contributors to the pursuit of purpose. When people suffer, the leader feels with them. 
   
   
4. Convicted – Leaders of character are committed to a higher sense of ideals. They don’t live an ad hoc life where they determine what is right (advantageous) in an any given moment depending on which way the wind blows. Their conviction about the right, good, true and noble runs deep and they’ve distilled that in an organization so deeply that in their absence those they lead can make decisions in their stead. 
   
   
5. Conscious – Leaders of character are self-aware. They are conscious of the impact they have, the words they speak, their emotional well-being, and they steward this influence for the sake of others not self-promotion. 
   
   
6. Confessional – Leaders of character screw up. However, instead of spineless cowards that attempt to cover up, double down, or justify their misdeeds, they confess their culpability, seek forgiveness, adopt a growth mentality, and seek to do better in the future. 

Only leaders of character are legitimate leaders. Many have the title, but the title alone doesn’t legitimize a leader. Without character, posers ascend flimsy platforms in pursuit of self-promotion, wrecking the work of those they lead.