5 Dysfunctions of a Church: Conflict

Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a readable and useful guide to building effective teams in any organizational setting. I am sharing a series of observations from the book. My aim is to provide some food for thought for congregational leaders, as well as reflect on the challenges confronting the United Methodist Church as a whole.

Dysfunction Two: Fear of Conflict

This dysfunction grows right out of the first dysfunction, absence of trust. When we cannot trust others in the group, then conflict becomes scary and dangerous. But groups require healthy conflict to grow and mature over time. Any group that cannot engage in constructive and healthy conflict is doomed to stagnation or implosion when unhealthy conflict takes over.

Groups with a fear of conflict

• Have boring meetings
• Create environments where back-channel politics and personal attacks thrive
• Ignore controversial topics that are critical to team success
• Fail to tap all the opinions and perspectives of team members
• Waste time and energy with posturing and interpersonal risk management

Having productive conflict can be especially difficult in church settings because the issues involved are often quite personal and we have unwritten norms that say good church people should not disagree or argue with each other. We fall into the trap of confusing silence and stagnation with peace and harmony. Or we adopt modes of authority that abuse rank and call any disagreement rebellion against God.

Here is Lencioni’s advice to leaders in dealing with this dysfunction:

[I]t is key that leaders demonstrate restraint when their people engage in conflict, and allow resolution to occur naturally, as messy as it can sometimes be. This can be a challenge because many leaders feel that they are somehow failing in their jobs by losing control of their teams during conflict.

Finally, as trite as it may sound, a leader’s ability to personally model appropriate conflict behavior is essential. By avoiding conflict when it is necessary and productive — something many executives do — a team leader will encourage this dysfunction to thrive.

It is important to remember in this that an essential foundation for what Lencioni writes above is the trust discussed in the first dysfunction. Without trust, productive conflict is often impossible.

It teams, congregations, and denominations have not built vulnerability-based trust with each other, then it requires nothing less than a miracle for sustained, productive conflict to take place.