Mr. Bill Marianes: Conflicts. Arguments. Hostility, disagreements, war, disputes, quarrels, strife, discord, antagonism. Difficult conversations or situations that occurred or conversations that should have happened but did not. Conflict—the one constant in time.

During Lent, we generally try to avoid conflict, so why talk about it now? Because perhaps this is the exact time that we should learn how to deal with it positively. Every one of you have experienced tons of conflict in your lives, perhaps more in the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 than ever before, and if you’re honest with yourself, some of you have even been the cause of some conflict.

In the beginning, in the garden, there was no conflict, but once people were introduced into the mix, the conflict began, and it got very personal very quickly. Our story tonight begins the same place our human story begins, namely, in Genesis 1, the creation of the world. After this amazingly short chapter that encompasses seven metaphorical days, we learn that man and woman were created and placed in the garden of Eden as partners to care for God’s amazing creation. You don’t have to go any further than our forefather and -mother, the first couple, Adam and Eve. They had the complete freedom and one prohibition. But when the first conflict occurred, the temptation of the devil, perhaps the cause of many of our conflicts, they did the one thing they shouldn’t have done.

We’re no more than a few pages into the story of creation before we’re confronted with the first conflict and the first difficult conversation in history. We know what happens next: the devil has a challenging conversation where he sows the seed of discontent and dissension, and the next thing you know, our forefather and -mother do the only thing they were instructed not to do. In the third chapter, we see the first time that a human practiced the well-known reaction to all conflict: the fight-or-flight response. Neuroscience seems to support the “avoid it at all costs” view that, when people are threatened, their first instinct is either to run and hide or fight to the death, and that’s what we call the fight-or-flight response.

However, it’s in the third chapter of Genesis that we hear the second difficult conversation and disagreement in all of recorded history, but it takes an amazing twist that has haunted all humans since that fateful day. Once their Creator found them hiding, the pair of disobedient children stepped forward, and they were there to be judged, and they were there to be addressed. And in that moment, in that moment where everything seemed to be coming together for them in a way that they never would have possibly imagined could have happened to them, what they did was the Lord confronted them.

Let’s kind of drop into the story in Genesis 3:11, when God confronts Adam by saying, “Have you eaten the fruit from the tree I commanded you not to eat from?” And certainly this was a very difficult conversation and situation between a father and his child. So what did Adam do? He said, “Lord, it was all my fault. I alone am guilty of disobedience and disrespect, and I’m so sorry and I deserve to be punished, but please spare my wife, Eve.” [Laughter] No, that’s not at all what happened! Adam didn’t even acknowledge his disobedience; he didn’t apologize in humility. Instead, he went on the offensive and tried to outsmart God. He didn’t just blame one person; he blamed two!

Listen to how Adam responded to God in verse 12. The man said, “It’s the fault of the woman! You put her here with me! She gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it!” [Laughter] Notice how he simultaneously blames Eve by saying it was her fault, and in the next word actually has the chutzpah, the Jewish word for “audacity,” to blame God! Having learned that the “flight” isn’t a great response, Adam switched to “fight.” And he went all-in on that flight response by trying to actually blame God by saying it was the woman that you put here with me, as if to say, “What in the world were you thinking, God, to give me that woman? She’s the cause of all of my and your problems, and it’s your fault for putting her here, so don’t blame me!”

And from that day to the current day, a new biblical principle and rule was created that has been practiced by, let’s be honest, all of us, from that time forward. The rule says, “If at first you don’t succeed, quick! fix the blame!” And the poster child for the cowardly lion that was made visible in the person of the first man, Adam.

But lest anyone allege sexism, our story continues with the third earliest conflict and difficult conversation in all of recorded history, when we get to see what our female superhero does. In verse 13 we learn: “Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What have you done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent tricked me! That’s why I ate the fruit!’ ” Yeah, Eve was no fool. She was paying attention. If Adam can blame her and God, she, too, needed a fall guy, and what better an excuse than “the devil made me do it!”

In the first series of difficult conversations and situations in all of recorded history, we hear the consequences that we now learn from their disobedience and the conflict that they created. So please allow me to paraphrase parts of Genesis 3:14 and kind of put it into more modern words. The Lord God told the serpent that he would be the lowest of all animals and would be forced to crawl on his belly for all times with everybody hating him. And the woman was told that during the moment of her greatest joy, the birth of her children, she would experience the most unbelievable pain imaginable. And finally, Adam, perhaps deservingly, got the harshest sentence. He was told that for the rest of his life he would have to work very hard to survive, and he will be confronted with many difficulties and challenges until he dies and becomes dust that is returned to the earth.

Well, that certainly didn’t end well when the fight-or-flight response was used. And that was one of a very difficult set of conversations following the very first conflict we see in history, but, regrettably, it wasn’t the last. War is probably the most visible, horrendous, and expensive manifestation of conflict. To measure the loss in human life is unimaginably tragic. And it’s been with us from almost the beginning of time on this planet.

But interestingly, some conflict is actually good. Have you ever been in a tough conversation or situation where people of good faith were expressing different views? And by doing so, by respectfully challenging each other, they actually came up with more innovative and better solutions? We actually have a phrase for it; we call it “iron sharpening iron.” What you may not have known is that that phrase actually comes from the Bible. In Proverbs 27:17, we’re taught, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

Would you like to know what you can do when you have a disagreement or conflict? And would it help you to understand how to righteously have a difficult conversation, and in so doing fulfill the promise of Proverbs 27:17 and become one person sharpening and improving another? Well, if so, you’ve tuned into the right program, because tonight, in part one, we will help you understand conflict and difficult conversations in a faith-based way, and give you actual tools to help you improve your life and the lives of those in your Eden.

Hello, brothers and sisters, welcome to Stewardship Calling in the first Wednesday series on Ancient Faith Radio. This is Bill Marianes from StewardshipCalling.com, on the shores of beautiful Lake Lanier in Gainesville, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. I’ve a simple premise. You have been called by your Creator to a personal calling, a reason to your life and a reason for your life, something you need to do with all of the gifts over which God has made you a steward. It’s what I call your stewardship calling. And it’s our beloved St. Paul who makes it crystal clear that we all have such a stewardship calling. In his letter to the Ephesians 4:1, he clearly states, “I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”

Until 2017, by day I was blessed to be a partner in a great international law firm of over 1100 lawyers where I was managing partner of our Atlanta office and practiced in the area of mergers and acquisitions in corporate law, but my “why,” my personal calling, is to be a stewardship calling evangelist. I’m here to help people and parishes discover and live their stewardship callings so that they may have a good account before the awesome judgment seat of Christ, as we follow Christ’s great commandment to love one another, his great charge to serve one another, and his great commission to make disciples of all nations. Welcome to that journey.

Now this program and a lot of other helpful tools and information about effective churches and stewardship and personal discipleship and church strategic planning and a lot of other topics can be found at my always-free website, StewardshipCalling.com, and you can always reach me at bill@stewardshipcalling.com. And to our listeners tonight, we want you to call in and interact with us and ask us your questions by calling 1-855-AF-RADIO; that’s 1-855-237-2346.

So why are conflict and difficult conversations or situations so darn… well, difficult? One theory concludes that it’s difficult because, frankly, we’re hesitant to place ourselves in uncomfortable situations. We also often don’t want to show humility or admit that we might have been wrong. Perhaps we don’t know how to say what needs to be said, or we don’t even know what needs to be done. So the question is: How do we call that our proper spirit of righteous conflict-resolution, and yet remain true to the Lord’s words of wisdom in Matthew 5:9, “Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God”?

Let’s begin by being clear about our terms that we’ll use. My guest tonight’s definition of a difficult conversation or situation comes from the famous book, Crucial Conversations. I love that book’s subtitle: “Tools for Talking When the Stakes are High.” And actually that subtitle leads us to a working definition of a difficult conversation, which is: when two or more people have opposing opinions, have strong emotions and passion, and, if not resolved, it will result in serious consequence.

So there’s kind of three parts to that definition. It first talks about “two or more people,” so difficult conversations are not only among two people, like spouses or a parent and a child or a boss and employee or even a priest and his parish council president; it can include groups with differing opinions, including large groups. Second, the definition suggests strong emotion or passions are involved. This doesn’t occur when one side feels something is critical and the other side could care less. No, it’s when both sides feel strongly that they are right, and the other side is wrong. Thirdly, a difficult conversation or situation is where, if we don’t get things right, the consequences could be serious or even critical, and it’s this last element that itself oftentimes causes conflict.

I was once a witness to a very serious disagreement and conversation, where two different restaurant owners were arguing vigorously and visibly in front of a large group of people about a particular way to cook an item to be sold at our annual parish’s ethnic festival. They were locked in mortal combat! That they perceived they needed to win to vindicate the traditions of their village in the old country, or their family recipes. Those of us who were bystanders quickly reached the conclusion that it really didn’t matter. I mean, either way would be fine and taste great, and regardless of which way we choose, the visitors to our ethnic festival would not know the difference. Clearly, the stakes were not huge in real life, but that’s not what these two combatants perceived. They were prepared to do a cook-off to the death—with only one survivor who would be crowned the winner.

The point of tonight is to help you understand what you can do when you face a difficult situation, or need to have a difficult conversation in your church, your ministry, and even in your family or your place of work. Because of the difficulty of these issues, the topic of conflict and difficult conversations or situations never seems to be addressed in our seminaries, our churches, our ministries. I mean, all too often we see the fight-or-flight response that we saw in Adam and Eve, or, even worse, passive-aggressive approaches that tend to bring out even more disharmony, and, left unaddressed, they’re like cancer cells that metastasize and threaten relationships and can even divide a whole community or organization.

In my Stewardship Calling ministry, I’ve been called into parish disputes from time to time, either by a parish priest or a layperson, or even a hierarch, only to see that they had previously used some very ineffective practices to try and resolve the dispute or issue; or, worse yet, they didn’t even try to resolve it. I’ve seen people leave their church or ministry that they loved over poorly handled conversations and conflicts. My brothers and sisters, this is a travesty and a tragedy. I will save all the empirical research and practical solutions for Dr. Mitch Owen to address later in this program. However, after researching tonight’s topics in holy Scripture, I wanted to set the stage by quickly looking at perhaps the most powerful examples of conflict and difficult conversations.

Let’s start with the first person our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, actually saved. Unfortunately, we don’t know his name. I wish we did, because if I ever were lucky enough to meet him in eternity, I’d love to ask him where and how he found the courage and faith in the Lord. While he’s a very unlikely first person to join our Lord and Savior, there’s a lot he could teach us. And you can find a reference to him in Matthew 27:38 and in Mark 15:27, but, thankfully, in the gospel of Luke, he goes into greater detail. So in Luke 23:32-43, we hear a detailed story about our hero.

He was a despicable person. He was an evil person. He was a criminal, but not just any criminal: he was a criminal whose crime was so severe in the eyes of the law that he deserved the most severe penalty: the death penalty. It doesn’t get more difficult than that. But history tells a different story. Instead of the death penalty, he actually got the joy of perpetual life in the kingdom with our Lord.

Now, how in the world did that switch happen so quickly? One minute he’s being killed, and the very next he receives eternal salvation. What in the world did he do or say? He engaged in the most difficult of conversations. Let’s quickly review. I’ll call our hero “Thief 1” since holy Scripture doesn’t give us his name, although interestingly some faiths have given him a name, for example, Thief 1 is given the name “Dismas” in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. And the Roman Catholics celebrate St. Dismas on March 25, together with the Feast of the Annunciation. In the Coptic Orthodox tradition and the narrative of Joseph of Arimathea, he is named “Demas.” And in the Codex Colbertinus, he’s named Zoatham or Zoathan. In the Russian Orthodox tradition, he is named Rakh. But in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, he is merely referred to in prayers as “the thief.”

Nevertheless, Thief 1 was not the only criminal being sentenced to death that day. There was another one. We’ll call him Thief 2. Thief 2 was also forcibly hung on the cross on the other side of Jesus. For Thief 2, the story doesn’t end as well, because his difficult conversation went differently. Again, let me paraphrase Luke 23. In verse 39, we hear Thief 2, the one for whom it doesn’t end well, start his difficult conversation with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by confronting our Lord and making a demand of him. Parenthetically, I can imagine that every clergyman, parish council president, or even our ministry leaders listening can relate to the notion of a demand being made to you.

Thief 2 says, “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself—and us!” In other words, “Hey, if you are who you say you are, how ‘bout doing me a solid and saving my life while you’re saving your own?” See, for Thief 2, it was all about him, and he starts by even doubting that Jesus is the Son of God when he says, “If you are the Messiah.”

Now, Thief 1, who was suffering his sentence in silence, hears this difficult conversation and confrontation, and takes issue with Thief 2. He has his own difficult conversation with Thief 2, and he says to him, “Hey, dude!”—obviously, I’m paraphrasing—“What’s the matter with you? Don’t you have a lick of sense? Don’t you fear God? You’re now taunting him with your unreasonable demand. You’re a crook just like me. We deserve to die for our crimes. That’s why we got the same sentence. We deserve what we’re getting, but this Man in between us doesn’t deserve the death sentence. He didn’t do anything wrong. And more importantly, you doofus, he is the Lord.” I bet all of y’all are glad right now they didn’t leave the gospel-writing to me. But Thief 1’s exact words to Thief 2 were, “But this Man has done nothing wrong.”

Can you hear the strength of his conviction that Christ is blameless? There was no equivocation. He declared our Lord innocent regardless of and perhaps in spite of the unfair trial to which our Lord was subjected. And listen to Thief 1’s courage to confront his fellow convict. But more importantly—and don’t miss this—Luke could only have recorded this exchange because it was said so loudly that eyewitnesses to the tragedy actually also heard it. I mean, isn’t that amazing? Thief 1 was so convinced of Christ’s innocence that he was willing to shout it out, not only to rebuke Thief 2, but also to rebuke all of the others who were crucifying Christ. Ha! Now that is courage of conviction. Would you have been so courageous? I mean, that alone is astounding. What a difficult conversation, and what a way to deliver a difficult message!

But he wasn’t finished. Thief 1 had something more than just a conviction that he had to rebuke those falsely punishing the Lord. He had to prove his belief with his words, since he was actually at the last moments of his life, and really couldn’t do anything to turn his life around. So instead he turns his head to face Jesus and uttered the fateful words we all repeat to this day, countless times every week, and for many of us every day. Who would have thought that the dying words of a convicted felon would be the words that we all know by heart and recite constantly? “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Hear that? “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Proskomen; pay attention! In this most difficult situation and conversation, Thief 1 offers a request so very different from Thief 2’s, showing how much they disagreed. This was an important issue. We might even say it was a life-saving issue. Thief 1 starts by acknowledging our Lord as “Jesus.” Our word, “Jesus,” is the Hebrew word “Joshua,” or in Hebrew, Yahshua. And Yahshua actually comes from Hebrew words Yah and shua. Yah is short for Yahweh or God, and shua is from the word Yeshua, which means to save or save alive or rescue. In other words, an appropriate translation for Jesus’ name is “God rescues.”

Look at Thief 1’s powerful witness. He begins by noting that he believes that Jesus was the God-rescuer, and who actively cared about rescuing lost souls. And what Thief 1 says next is equally significant. His words were merely, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And in so doing, he publicly acknowledged that Christ is the Son of God and shares the kingdom of God. He names him a king. While the Romans were mocking him as the king of the Jews, Thief 1 proudly proclaimed him to be not only the king of the Jews but the Son of God and responsible for God’s kingdom.

Notice his last request is not to be relieved of pain. He doesn’t even ask to be spared and given a second chance. More importantly, he’s even not presumptuous enough to assume that he can be guaranteed salvation by requesting it. He shows complete humility and an acknowledgment of his own sinfulness and his lack of perfection. He merely asks the Lord to remember him. Wow. He’s in the presence of the Lord, the One who literally can grant him anything the Lord wills, and he acknowledged he is a contrite criminal who doesn’t deserve to be saved but merely asked for his memory to be with the Lord and for the Lord to do what he will with his soul.

My brothers and sisters, it doesn’t get any more powerful than that. Jesus went throughout his entire three-plus-year active ministry, and how few times did he find people of such great faith as Thief 1? Rather than standing on Golgotha and loudly proclaiming Jesus as the Son of God and King of the Jews and the Savior they’d all been waiting for, even the saintly apostles ran and hid. In contrast, Thief 1 in his last moments of life publicly proclaimed that he believed Jesus was exactly who he said he was.

And how does Jesus respond in this amazing moment in the Bible? He says something that must have stunned everyone who heard it. It should stun each of us! Heck, it should awaken each of us. Jesus said, “Truly, I tell you today you will be with me in paradise.” Everyone listening must have been stunned to silence and amazement. The man who was acknowledged to be Lord granted eternal life to this convicted felon. Imagine for a moment that you’re there. Pretend you’re one of the guards or non-believing witnesses. You’ve just heard the most amazing confession of guilt and humility by someone with nothing to lose, who says that the Man you are killing is actually the Son of God and has the power to grant eternal life. You know that every one of them, for a moment or maybe even longer, wondered. They must have questioned if they, too, should drop to their knees, admit their own sins and ask for forgiveness to be remembered by the Lord.

So let me pause for a moment and ask you: Have you shown the courage and wisdom of Thief 1? Have you decided that your salvation is critically important and perhaps you’ve not always been dealing with everyone properly? Have you decided to have a difficult conversation with our Lord, and in all humility simultaneously ask for forgiveness and to be remembered in his kingdom? If not, then after this program, don’t do anything else until you fall on your knees and pray the penitent thief’s number one prayer: “Lord, remember me in your kingdom.”

Fr. Nick Triantafilou, the former president of Holy Cross Seminary, once told me to pray that every day for myself and for my entire family. So I’ve taken that advice and now appended that prayer to the end of the Jesus Prayer. So my constant and frequent prayer is what I call the Jesus Prayer Plus: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner, and remember me in your kingdom.”

Please don’t lose sight of some of the key lessons we can only learn from holy Scripture that my guest, Dr. Owen, will address in greater detail. For example, note that Thief 1 didn’t care if he had a continuing relationship with Thief 2. So he admonished him and corrected him, and in this case he did it publicly.

I mean, sometimes if you’re terminating a relationship, a big initial decision that you need to make is if that relationship and maintaining it are important to you. If you’re firing someone, it’s a different kind of conversation than if you need to cultivate a deeper and ongoing relationship. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that you fire someone inhospitably or rudely; that’s not Christian, that’s not right. I’m merely pointing out that your strategies for your conversations should vary depending on the importance of the ongoing relationship. And in the Church world, and indeed in any community, dealing with conflict may involve more people, and while we often place the responsibility on the leader in a particular situation to deal with the conflict or the difficult conversation, everybody in the mix has a role to play. Understanding that and knowing what role you play is something we are also going to discuss tonight.

Additionally, one of the most critical skills is to know when it’s beyond you to resolve the dispute, and you need help from an outsider or higher authority before things escalate to an untenable situation. I mean, let’s be honest, there are times when the parties are just too close or the temperature in the discussion is too hot for them to resolve the conflict themselves. They need a fresh and possibly impartial outside perspective, the proverbial “cooler head.”

In ancient times, there was a guy by the name of Solomon who got a reputation for being such a fair and just arbiter of disputes. And the Gospel of Matthew 18:15-17 actually gives us a scriptural process for going to get help when you need it.

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother, but if he doesn’t listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the Church, and if he refuses to listen even to the Church, let him be to you as a Gentile and tax collector.

And please remember, contextually, back in those days, for the Jews, the Gentiles and tax collectors were people with whom they couldn’t have any association, couldn’t have anything to do with. So when they say, “Let him be to you [as] a Gentile and a tax collector,” it means someone to whom you have nothing to do with. By the way, if there’s any IRS people working, listening tonight, I just want you to know that that was historical; we don’t think that of you right now, so we don’t need to provoke any audits here, okay?

But remember back in those days that it was critical to understand what their relationship was, and it’s also critical to understand the benefit and the importance of addressing and issue and a disagreement before the conflict occurs and escalates. I mean, if you can’t nip the conflict in the bud, you actually risk a more tragic and escalating problem. That’s why today we offer leadership workshops to prepare people for conflict resolution, where you actually learn how to anticipate conflict and deal with it once it arises. I mean, indeed, the pan-Orthodox ministry my guest tonight and I are associated with, Orthodox Ministry Services, will be offering just such workshops for our clergy and our Orthodox church leaders and faithful that will include conflict avoidance and management. Dr. Owen currently offers these to his clients through his company, Mitchen. But, alas, these current resources weren’t so readily available in the days of the apostles. So we see examples over and over again when they themselves did not practice the best forms of conflict resolution and effective conversations.

In the Gospel of Mark 10:36-37, we read a great story that all of you have lived many times. Remember asking your parents which of your siblings or you they loved more? Or remember going to your priest to ask him for a special favor? Or remember going to your boss to be treated maybe better than somebody else? If you’re being honest, there’s a time or two—or maybe more often—that our own selfishness came out and overcame our teamwork. Well, as it turns out, Apostles James and John had their selfish moments, too. They pulled their boss aside and asked for an amazingly big special favor.

Now, at one level that wasn’t unusual, as people were constantly mobbing Jesus, asking him for favors. I mean, too many people treated him as their own personal genie in a lamp or Santa Claus or ATM machine. They didn’t approach in humility and faith and prayer. It was all about them and what they wanted and what they thought they deserved. So it was with James and John when they asked the Lord for one of the biggest favors imaginable.

They first asked him to grant them whatever they wanted. When he then asked them what they wanted, James and John said, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.” In other words, they wanted the most prominent places in the glorious kingdom of the Lord for all eternity. This may sound like déjà vu for some of you who are familiar with the gospel, because in Mark 9:33, as Christ and the Twelve Apostles were arriving in Capernaum, the Lord asked them, “What were you arguing about on the road?” And they followed the “flight” response, right? They all stayed silent and didn’t respond. “And why do you ask?”

Verse 33 gives us the answer. “But they kept quiet, because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.” Man, how many times have we all engaged in one of those “who’s the greatest or better” exercises? In that way, our revered apostles show us their humanity and that they are just like them and we are just like them.

But Christ, being the all-knowing and also the Great Teacher and Facilitator, nevertheless gave them careful instructions by saying in verse 35, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last and the servant of all.” And yet James and John didn’t get that earlier message, because we learn from holy Scripture how the other ten apostles felt in verse 31: “When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John.” [Laughter] Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. The usual response is when one member of a group or team or family asks for a special advantage or favor over the others, that’s what you get. No surprise there.

Nevertheless, our Lord calls them all together and again says:

You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave to all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Hear that? The Son of Man came to serve and not be served. I can think of nothing more dramatic than to see the creator of all actually humble himself, and this is where the phrase “servant leadership” was created, and in so doing our Lord advises us to build trust and loyalty with our humility and service to others, in good and faithful conversation and dialogue, avoiding conflict at all costs. And so therefore I can’t think of a better message and strategy of what our Lord taught, and I can’t think of a better way to set the stage to hear from a contemporary Orthodox Christian who is a true expert in conflict resolution and difficult conversations than my special guest tonight, my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Mitchell Owen.

So let’s take a short break right now, and when we come back we’ll meet my special guest, Mitch Owen, and discuss how to better deal with conflict and navigate difficult conversations. Please remember, we’d love to hear your questions or comments, so get ready to call in tonight at 1-855-AF-RADIO; that’s 1-855-237-2346. So let’s take a short break right now.

Mr. Marianes: Well, welcome back to Stewardship Calling and our first Wednesday program where we’re exploring some helpful ways to better deal with the great challenges of conflict and difficult conversations with my special guest, Dr. Mitch Owen. Again, remember, we’d love to hear your questions or comments, so feel free to call in tonight at 1-855-AF-RADIO; that’s 1-855-237-2346.

So let me introduce my special guest for tonight and dear friend and colleague, Dr. Mitch B. Owen, who’s the founder and chief operating officer of Mitchen, Incorporated, and that’s a very innovative training and organizational development company that’s actually celebrating 25 years of service to its clients. Mitch also served as the deputy director for performance and organizational development with the North Carolina Department of Public Safety and as the director of personal and organizational development at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Dr. Own is also the creator of the Elusive Leadership model for high-performance teams and the Mitchen organizational strategic positioning system.

His expertise and reputation have really enabled him to work with a wide variety of groups, including Orthodox churches, major universities, public agencies, and a lot of businesses. Most recently, Mitch facilitated strategic positioning projects at the University of Maryland, the University of Kentucky, the University of Tennessee, and The Ohio State University. Mitch also participates as a facilitator in several national private and public leadership programs, including the Food Systems Leadership Institute and the Clinical Scholars Leadership program. Dr. Owen also serves as an executive coach for over 25 executives, doctors, even clergy, nurses, and public health professionals annually.

Mitch Owen has provided leadership development and strategic positioning programs within the non-profit sector, including Orthodox churches, for many years, and his work with religious groups reaches across several denominations including his own community of Eastern Orthodox Christians. Indeed, when I first met Mitch in earnest, it was when he was picked as a leader for the Metropolis of Atlanta Strategic Plan Goals that were working on developing a servant leadership program and a parish strategic planning process. And Mitch has since successfully completed strategic plans for numerous parishes in the Metropolis of Atlanta.

Dr. Owen completed his doctorate of education at North Carolina State University in adult education and development while focusing his research on technology adoption and psychology. He is internationally respected as a leader in programs on leadership performance, strategic positioning, facilitation, organizational development, branding, technology, cultural agility, collaboration, and organizational change. Mitch has presented and published extensively on a host of topics related to organizational development and education and is actually professionally certified to administer and interpret a whole host of assessment instruments for professional development, executive coaching, management training, team effectiveness, and organizational development.

For example, Mitch took me and some of our Orthodox Ministry colleagues through a battery of such of those tests that he administers. He provided me coaching insights into my personality, into my leadership style, my weaknesses and my strengths, that quite frankly I wish I had gotten earlier in my life. Indeed, when he finished, which was an enormously helpful and in-depth assessment of me, I told him that had I known these things when I began my legal career 40 years ago, I certainly would have changed a lot of things and no doubt been a much better person and leader. He’s very gifted at these assessments, and anyone who wants to know what and how to improve can receive a lot of value from such an exercise.

Now, Mitch will tell you that he’s Lebanese by ethnic origin, with ties to the Antiochian Orthodox Church, but since he’s lived in North Carolina he’s been a very active member and leader at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. And he also serves as a member of the Metropolis Council of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Atlanta. So it’s a very great honor and privilege for me to welcome my dear friend, my colleague, and coach, Dr. Mitch Owen. Mitch, welcome to Stewardship Calling right here on Ancient Faith Radio.

Dr. Mitchell Owen: It’s great to be with you, Bill. I really appreciate being a part of your program.

Mr. Marianes: You’re going to offer a lot of value, so you’re going to earn it, buddy. [Laughter]

Let’s start at the beginning. You talk a lot about managing conflict in a productive way, and I’m not sure… I always like the opposite side of this. So how would you describe the opposite of this? I mean, the unproductive ways that humans act sometimes during conflicts?

Dr. Owen: Well, I think you touched off on one of the first things I’d say about this, and that is we either go to violence or silence first. I think we’re familiar with violence. I can remember stories of people chasing each other around with the scissors or pushing people left and right when they get angry. But I think what’s more common and really a serious challenge in all organizations I’ve worked with is the silence phase. We think that conflict isn’t there when we go to silence. I think that, and then I would also add that we have a serious challenge with groupthink, where it’s difficult to disagree in public; it’s difficult to disagree against the group. I would probably point to that, that we don’t really give people permission to dissent. We don’t give them the permission to not agree with our point of view. That can be very challenging.

Mr. Marianes: That is—let me just stop you for a second here, because that’s very powerful. I remember first being confronted with Irving Janis’s groupthink hypothesis. But you said a phrase here that I really want you to expound on a little more. When you say that we don’t give people permission to disagree with us, what do you mean by that? And give me an example of how that would have worked.

Dr. Owen: You know, when we present our viewpoints, when we share our thoughts, we push for quick agreement, quick acceptance. If someone disputes, we frown on them. We equate dissent with other negative behaviors or that the person is somehow trying to be against me, when in truth dissent is actually common in a lot of cases. So dissent is a very challenging piece. One of the first things we teach supervisors is that you have to teach your team to question you—

Mr. Marianes: Ohh!

Dr. Owen: —to take the opposite effect, to rule against you when they feel it, to express their concerns. When I’m working with a group on a change initiative, the first thing I want to hear is their concerns. I want them to feel comfortable disagreeing and even correcting me if they think I’ve made a mistake. And that’s a challenging thing to do with our ego. That’s probably the best way I can describe it.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, no, that’s a great description. I guess I was sitting here thinking about it, because we have this notion of these strong, dynamic leaders that inspire people. But how would you advise somebody to go about inviting dissent or inviting disagreement, or giving people permission to disagree?

Dr. Owen: Well, I think it’s being transparent and straightforward, asking for it, asking for people to question your ideas, being more tentative with your eyes, with your thoughts as you present them so that individuals don’t feel like you’re defining the answer, but you’re merely exploring and trying to learn the answer. One of my common phrases that I use with all groups is “There’s multiple right answers.” The concept that “Let’s find the next right answer.” Maybe you have a right answer that’s different from mine. It’s more of a mindset that the leader has to take, that when someone dissents, they’re not challenging your leadership, they’re not challenging your authority, but they’re merely trying to help you improve whatever you’re trying to do. That’s the best way I think of it. When I’m trying to lead a group and someone questions it, I look for the passion that they’re trying to prove the outcome of the endeavor that I’m trying to lead them through.

Mr. Marianes: Right, right. So when you have somebody that… I guess part of, a corollary of that is that when somebody objects or raises an objection, the first thing the leader should not do is shoot the person publicly and whatnot. I would imagine that that would be one of…

Dr. Owen: You know, Bill, I like to thank people for questioning me. I like to thank them. I often will remember to come back after the discussion and thank the person for raising the concern, even if the concern was invalid, because I was able to clarify their concern and help them move forward. You know, we need to celebrate everybody’s ideas, whether we agree with them or not.

Mr. Marianes: I think that’s a great insight you just offered, that you can legitimately—even if they’re wrong, you can legitimately celebrate that you’ve been given the opportunity to correct their misunderstanding, right? I mean, isn’t that a…? And there’s probably somebody else in that room that may have had that misunderstanding.

Dr. Owen: That’s true, and they may also help you correct a misunderstanding you have. The answer may not be your answer or their answer; it may be another right answer. That’s the beauty of teamwork and working together to resolve issues.

Mr. Marianes: So I guess you’ve already given several pearls of wisdom here, but one of them is this notion of accepting that there are multiple right answers and that there’s not just one path forward, right?

Dr. Owen: That would be one.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, okay, so what else? I interrupted you there, because that was just such a powerful message. So, some of the other unproductive ways that we act during conflict?

Dr. Owen: Well, I think that we also come to conflict with the psychological mindset, and that mindset often will lead us to take on perceptions and beliefs about what’s going on that are different from each other. And understanding your mindset and your perceptions and where you can be fooled, where you can distract yourself from the truth through no reason at all, no bad intent, but you can get confused by your own psychological mindset, is critically important.

Mr. Marianes: Definition of a psychological mindset? And maybe an example would be helpful.

Dr. Owen: I think probably the most…

Mr. Marianes: Feel free to pick on me! [Laughter]

Dr. Owen: No.

Mr. Marianes: I’m sure I’ve given you plenty of examples! [Laughter]

Dr. Owen: Well, I think we all have them. The beauty of these is this is not something that’s unique to one person. It’s not. We all carry this weakness. Probably the most complex one, hard to understand one, is that we manipulate what we see to fit our ego and what we believe. There’s a famous experiment done in the ‘40s by Bruner and Postman that was called the Red Spade Experiment. They basically showed you seven cards very quickly, and one of the cards was a red spade, which is not normally in a deck. They’re normally black.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, that’s not a thing. Right.

Dr. Owen: And so what they found was that people, when they saw the red spade, couldn’t remember it. They would show them to you, really quick, and ask you to memorize them and then write them down. And you would always struggle with the red seven, and many people would write down “seven of hearts” or “seven of diamonds,” and feel very vindicated that they had gotten it right until they saw the answer.

The principle there was that we like to face the world in our worldview, and make sure our worldview is correct; we want to validate our worldview when we see data. We want to validate our beliefs. So if I believe something about you, Bill, I’m looking for data that validates that, and I’m throwing away data that doesn’t. And if data comes to me or a situation happens which would validate that I am wrong, I often misinterpret that and take that information wrongly, or I don’t see it at all; just subconsciously I miss it. So we basically create this situation where we can have totally different opposing views. I mean, you can look at the political spectrum where people believe very strongly on the extreme ends, and they don’t even understand the people on the sides, and often there’s people in the middle looking at both ends going: “What’s going on here? I don’t see that.” The term for that is cognitive dissonance. I can never say that word very well.

Mr. Marianes: Cognitive dissonance. I had to practice saying that.

Dr. Owen: Yes, thank you.

Mr. Marianes: When I got my psychology degree, I had to go off and practice it myself. Cognitive dissonance.

Dr. Owen: You know, getting a doctorate, I decided that I needed to make the language easier to understand, so the better way of thinking of this is it is when I believe something, and the world is different [from] what I believe. A prime example is people that follow sports teams. They believe their team is going to win the national title; they believe strongly, and they follow their team and they can give you all the evidence of why their team’s going to win. And yet, many people will tell them, “Your team’s not that good”—they don’t see that data.

We do the same things with friends and with others, and there’s some great research which shows that we actually manipulate things. I don’t know. You’ve probably heard of the ladder of inference that was created by Argyris. Argyris was a psychologist that was studying why people got confused and got in conflict in organizations back in the ‘50s and ‘60s and ‘70s, and he was studying this, and he coined the concept that we infer things up a ladder. In other words, I see you; you and I are having a meeting, and you’re my treasurer, and we come to have our meeting, and you’re late.

So I infer something about that. I base it on what I know about you, and I go: “Well, maybe Bill is too busy to be on time.” And the next week you’re late, and maybe now I’m going to infer that maybe you don’t care about the meeting. And eventually I start inferring things about you without testing them, that may or may not be true. Now maybe your daughter is playing in the national championship, and you’re practicing with her, and you can’t be at the meeting on time, but I’ve never asked you that; I’ve never asked you or question you.

We tend to build this inference about people that can lead us down a path of actually seeing the whole situation incorrectly. And the lesson there is our story is not always the true story. In fact, almost everybody in the room has a story that is not totally true, because of our psychological mindset.

I don’t know if I made that simple enough. It’s one of the hardest things to teach without experiencing it, going through an exercise.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, no. Yeah, that example is a great example. I hope that everybody listening is actually thinking of themselves in that context. Either they were the victim of one of those inferences up the ladder, or maybe they did it themselves. I know I’ve done it myself in certain circumstances. You know when you have that dialogue, it’s like ohh, that’s what’s really going on, right?

Dr. Owen: Yeah.

Mr. Marianes: Okay. So we’ve got that “violence and silence.” I like that better than “[fight or flight].” And we like the psychological mindset. [Are] there any other “biggies” that you’d like to talk about as sort of the unproductive ways that we deal with conflict?

Dr. Owen: I think the one thing that I’ve learned a lot in working with individuals in coaching more than actual teamwork stuff is that we often walk into a situation without preparing. We go into a difficult conversation without thought. Now, I would say to our listeners today, I bet each one of them can think of a difficult conversation they’ve been postponing and not planning to do. That’s different [from] preparing; [that’s] avoidance. Avoidance is a different thing [from] preparing.

Mr. Marianes: Okay, explain that difference.

Dr. Owen: So avoidance is basically “I don’t want to have this conversation; I don’t want to be a part of this situation.” The conflict still exists. You mentioned earlier passive-aggressive behavior. Passive-aggressive behavior is basically the outcome of a silent, violent situation. I don’t come to you and tell you I have a problem with you; I go tell all my friends, because I’ve got to vent to somebody. And before you know it, it gets back to you that I’m saying things about you, and you go talk to your friends, and before we know it we’re having conflict through our friends rather than directly. The conflict may be just a misunderstanding, so you can imagine how this can mushroom into something that’s extremely negative and can affect the parish, can affect your friendships with other people; it can affect just about any aspect of our life in the Church.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, and every one of us can say that we’ve seen examples of that in our church lives and our ministries or things. There’s a wonderfully funny—and I can say this, because I’m Greek—there’s a wonderfully pejorative expression that says, “Telegram, telefax, tell a Greek.” You put something out there, and—bingo!—everybody knows it right afterwards, right?

So when you talk “passive-aggressive,” that’s a phrase that is used a lot. I mean, I hear that all the time. I often wonder if it’s being misused. Do you see it being misused, or is there an easy way to understand it? You gave a good example…

Dr. Owen: The simple… I think the simple way I would describe it is passive-aggressive is in which I take an aggressive stance, not towards you, but through others towards you. Or I do things that undermine you, that may not even be related to the issue. I get angry at you about something, so then I do everything I can to derail you or do things to hurt you. It can get very violent, but in a silent way. It’s not… You don’t… It’s almost like subversive.

What’s happening there is you’re not resolving the conflict; you’re not improving the relationship, and you’re not moving… Whatever intentions or hope you had for a positive outcome are being diminished even more. The reality is silent conflict does not yield you the benefits that you would think. You can’t avoid the conflict; it’s real. So it’s best to address it. It’s best to, as I was saying earlier, prepare for it in a structural way. Think about how you’re going to have this conversation, and enter into that conversation in a successful way.

Mr. Marianes: Well, we’re going to get into some actual tactics on that, but one of the things that kind of jumps to mind is that it’s got to be a challenge of bringing people to a difficult situation or a difficult conversation, and there’s got to be forces at work that’s preventing us from doing that, whether it’s the way our minds work or our psychological upbringing or backgrounds or experiences or something like that. What are some of the challenges that you see with individuals that are just keeping them from being able to address these difficult situations?

Dr. Owen: Well, challenges. When you talk about a difficult situation, I think the first thing I would say is they fear the situation; they fear what the outcome will be. If I was to think about those challenges—I’m going to pull some examples. I might feel that if you and I enter into a conversation that even if you’re good-willed and you’re trustworthy and I care about you, I might feel like you’re taking me to a place I’m not ready to go yet, or to an outcome that would be negative, so the fear of what the outcome of the conversation might be.

So in some cases we fear the conversation because we fear we don’t have power or we don’t have influence, which is not always true. You have influence no matter where you fit in the world because of your ability to have the conversation, and the thoughts and the wisdom that you bring to that conversation. There are reasons people avoid them, usually for safety.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, but I’m thinking about the superior-subordinate relationship, because isn’t that where you see a lot of that fearfulness come about? where somebody says, “Man, I can’t influence this. The boss-man is going in this direction, or the boss-lady’s telling me I have to do this, and I don’t want to do that. I can’t control that.” I mean, is that an example of it? And when you say that they have power, how do they have power?

Dr. Owen: Well, I think you’ve just hit on one of the biggest challenges in a church life. I think it’s one of the most challenging things for any leader, whether you’re a priest, whether you’re a CEO, whether you’re the council president. If you’re in a leadership role, going back to what I said about giving permission, if people don’t think they have permission to question you is one piece. I think the other piece is we’re taught to be respectful, and there are cultural and ethical reasons why we defer in certain settings. Certainly I’ve had several priests in my life help me spiritually become a better person. It’s natural for me not to question them. It’s natural for me to not raise a concern or to try to save my face and their face by not having that conversation.

So being able to be prepared for a good conversation and approach that conversation in the right way is significant. It’s probably… The piece I haven’t said to you is that people aren’t very confident about how to have a difficult conversation.

Mr. Marianes: Amen!

Dr. Owen: We haven’t been trained in it. We don’t get taught how to do this. We’re taught when we’re little: Be quiet. Sit down. At least, our generation was, and I think that those challenges breed in us a cultural belief that I can’t question the priest or I can’t question the council president, because he or she is in a more senior role. Those lend more challenges to us, and then add that I don’t know how to do it—gee, why would I do this? Why don’t I just go hide?

Mr. Marianes: Yeah. So when we start to think, how do our minds work, and how does the psychology influence this whole conversation, or lack thereof?

Dr. Owen: When you ask how the psychology affects me, help me out what you’re trying to get at, because… Go ahead.

Mr. Marianes: No, I was just going to say, there are psychological— And again, because a million years ago I got an undergraduate degree in psychology which makes me qualified to do nothing in that field, but I’ve always embraced that there are psychological practices and tendencies and things of that nature that kind of were hard-wired a certain way and whatnot, and that that influences the way we have difficult conversations or deal with conflict. Am I misguided in that, or is there a better way to articulate that?

Dr. Owen: I think it is. I think it’s unique for each individual. Other than flight-or-fight… We do flight; we do try to protect our ego. We do not want to be in a public situation where we’re embarrassed, but for some personalities it’s very damaging to be publicly humiliated, and other personalities, they don’t care. You’ve probably seen in your parish life members of the parish who would stand up and criticize and say what they wanted, be very straight-forward, be very direct, maybe not delivered in the best way at the best moment, and embarrass other people, but at the same time they’re at least sharing the conflict. It’s an ironic moment that they actually aren’t sticking it down somewhere and hiding it and not bringing it forward.

So I think, from a psychological standpoint, there are reasons why some individuals just do not like conflict. When we do assessments, I can tell you how sensitive people are. I can measure: does it bother you if people don’t like you? If being liked is important to you, you’re less likely to raise a conflict with an individual. But the irony is, or the sad part of that is, if you and I are best friends and I want you to like me and it’s very important to me, and you do something that upsets me, it doesn’t change that conflict. That conflict’s in me; that anger is in me. So now I’m carrying that around instead of sharing it with you.

I’ll turn it around. If you’re managing somebody or you’re giving leadership to somebody, and they’re doing something wrong, but you want them to like you, if you don’t correct the behavior, how can they learn? How can they be better? So you’re actually doing a disservice to them by not having the conversation. Now, how you have the conversation’s important. We need to know… I worked with people who say, “I have no trouble telling people when they mess up.” Yeah, and you probably do it very poorly.

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] Exactly!

Dr. Owen: It’s very important that we do it in a compassionate, loving way, that it is done in a way that the person understands our intentions, and in a way that they will be able to recover from hearing the news or the frustration you have with them, and help you and them move forward.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, I’m visualizing. I hope everyone here that’s listening is visualizing at least one moment in time where they did that the way you described it—very poorly—and they kind of go, “Ehh, that didn’t end up the way I thought it was going to end up. What went wrong here?”

I’m remembering one particular time when I was doing an annual performance review for my executive assistant at the firm, and I was managing partner, so that was always a little tricky from the power position. And I had the office administrator who technically reported to me, and then I had my EA. And she was phenomenal; she was absolutely phenomenal. She was just best in class. But there were areas that she needed to improve, just like there were a lot of areas that I needed to improve. So without any humanity, I kind of launched right into the areas of improvement, and, man, did it spiral out of control badly! I think we all have an example like that, where we were either the recipient of one of those bad exchanges, or we delivered a bad exchange.

You’ve repeatedly said something now that’s intriguing to me. You said that you have to prepare yourself for these difficult conversations. What do you mean by that?

Dr. Owen: Well, I think the biggest mistake I’ve seen in stories that I’ve heard in people who have difficult conversations is they have them without any thought prior to the conversation. They are at a council meeting; someone says something they don’t like at the council meeting. They walk out; as they’re leaving the building, they have a big argument about it, and they have the difficult conversation on the fly without thinking.

I kind of coach people there’s several principles. You made a mention early on in your introduction about the thiefs, and does the relationship matter. And that’s one area that people mess up. They think of the situation like in the thiefs’ case, where they don’t want a relationship, and they have the conversation in a very short moment, unplanned, as they’re walking out of the meeting, or when the thought hit them.

So the first thing I teach them is you have to make time for a conversation. If the relationship matters, it needs to be given time, and other people need to give you their thoughts. You can’t just unload on somebody and expect it to resolve in a few minutes. So the first lesson is to be patient and make time for the conversation.

You also have to be calm. You have to manage your emotions. Let’s do a little exercise; I’ll do a little exercise with you. I want you to imagine—and to the listeners, I’ll ask you to do this as well. Sit there and imagine the last really bad difficult conversation you had where there was conflict; people may even have been yelling at each other. I want you to close your eyes and imagine for a second you’re in that conversation; imagine what’s happening, what you said, what they said. Just go through it slowly in your mind. Imagine that conversation.

Now stop for a second. My apologies I took you back to that conversation, but while you were thinking about that conversation, you were imagining it. I want to ask you: Were you looking through your eyes at the person, or were you looking at yourself out of body, as two people speaking, where you were looking at yourself in the other person through your eyes? Bill, you mind sharing what you were doing?

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, I’ll be deadly honest with you, man. I knew immediately which one I was thinking about, and I was looking at it from my perspective. I was looking at how I felt about it and how I felt about their obstinance and lack of diligence and whatnot. It was a very selfish, unthoughtful, and not effective way to go through it.

Dr. Owen: Well, and what they teach you—and this comes from training for emergency workers like firemen who go into buildings—is that you have to dissociate yourself from your body and mind when you’re in a difficult conversation. So the ideal way to look at it is external—

Mr. Marianes: Right, omniscient way, right?

Dr. Owen: —like you’re in that conversation, like you’re a puppet, and you’re managing the puppet to respond. But the key is to understanding that your emotions can derail you during a conversation. So you need to be calm.

I also tell people they need to understand their story. By “story,” I mean what is it that you think of this situation? What is the story you’re telling yourself about this other person? Let’s say you had a dispute after church over a table, and they ended up with the table, and you thought it was your table, and you went home that weekend very upset. I know, it’s… I’m just giving it as an example, but—

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] No, it happens! It happens, that’s why I’m laughing. I’m not laughing at you; I’m laughing—sorry.

Dr. Owen: And you get home, and you go through the whole week thinking about the table. They took the table from me! What is the story you’re telling yourself? What have you inferred about that person? They took that table because they didn’t know how important my program was. Or they took that table because they don’t care about anybody in the church.

You see, I can start telling myself stories, and those stories make up a perspective on the other person. So understanding your story, and then the question I always ask people is: What is your contribution to the problem you’re having with this individual?

Mr. Marianes: “What is your contribution?” Okay, so tell me… Give me an example.

Dr. Owen: What did you do? So if I was the person that lost the table, I’m sure we had words; I’m sure I was unhappy. What did I do? How did I contribute to the conflict? How did I contribute to the issue?

Mr. Marianes: Oh, I see.

Dr. Owen: Think back to the conflict you were thinking of when we were doing the little exercise, the vision exercise. What was yourcontribution to that conflict? What was your contribution to the poor relationship you have with that person? Being able to tell the other person, “Here’s what I think is going on, but I’m not sure,” and being able to talk about “But, you know, I contributed to it. I should have labeled the table this morning for my… I didn’t get here early enough and label the table, so you didn’t know it was reserved for me, or you didn’t know I had put it out. I contributed.” Because I have yet to work with any group where there’s conflict, but there isn’t a contributor, a contribution from everybody.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, I think that’s a great point.

Dr. Owen: And the contribution may not be the worst act or the most hideous thing, but it’s still a contribution, and being able to take that on… And then, let me say there’s two other principles that you need to prepare for—

Mr. Marianes: Okay, can I ask you…? Can you remember those? because we’ve got a caller.

Dr. Owen: Yeah, I will.

Mr. Marianes: And I want to take the caller, if that’s okay.

Dr. Owen: Okay.

Mr. Marianes: Will you remember your two? All right. Catherine from New York City, are you with us?

Catherine: Yes, I am.

Mr. Marianes: All right, Catherine. Tell us what you want to tell us or ask what you want to ask.

Catherine: Oh, thank you so very much. So this is such a heart-throbbing and practical area around this. So my question is around, depending whom you are in need of having this conversation with. For example, within church you’re talking to a fellow parishioner as opposed to you are talking with your priest. That’s two different settings, right? And then, beyond church, you’re talking with, you know, non-Christians. My understanding and my practice is that this needs to be very different. In these different kinds of settings, it needs to be done very differently when it comes to hypercritical or difficult conversations, right?

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, so what you’re saying is that you have different people in different circumstances with different relationships, and the strategy ought to be different. Is that kind of what you’re asking?

Catherine: Yes. I wonder whether you can elaborate a little bit. I mean, first of all, these very different things are all really… on all of them, I really want to know what you would say about them, yes.

Mr. Marianes: Okay. All right. Well, Mitch, why don’t you take it on?

Dr. Owen: So let me make a couple of clarifications. One would be that the role the person [is] in, if I’m a priest or I have an authority role, does change our relationship if you need to speak to me. So it is more challenging, but it’s actually more challenging for the leader, because the leader actually has to make it safe for you to have the difficult conversation with them. And so it’s actually… I think the difference isn’t your techniques or how you would approach the conversation, but if you were the leader, you might have to work very hard to make it where you’re approachable, where you’re easier… where parishioners feel they could come and speak to you.

So that is one difference, but the techniques used in a difficult conversation really are human techniques that all of us should learn, and the methodology would vary depending on the type of conflict. I teach a toolbox of ten techniques; you pull from that toolbox that right technique, but the situation is more governing over that than I would say the person you’re interacting’s authority or role. But it is true, if you’re in a leadership role, it’s less likely somebody would question you; it’s less likely somebody would feel comfortable dissenting from your viewpoint, which makes it very hard, because often—and I’ve had this conversation with priests, where they want to know the thoughts of the people, but they won’t share it; they won’t… It’s always, “Oh, that’s wonderful, Father; that’s wonderful.” That’s how I clarify. Bill, you may have a thought as well.

Mr. Marianes: Well, actually I have a follow-up question, because, Catherine, in your question, if I heard you correctly, you said in your practice, this happens. Are you a practitioner in this art or were you meaning something else associated with that? What did you mean by in your practice?

Catherine: Oh, I think mainly because I’m using a foreign language, that’s… [Laughter] I meant, when I do it.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, yeah, so you’re saying in your experience that you have these different situations, this is what you’ve been experiencing, right?

Catherine: Right, I mean, if I may share for a few seconds?

Mr. Marianes: Please!

Catherine: When talking with non-believers, I guess, I mean, absolutely I experience a much bigger resistance if I’m the one that’s like picking on them, of course I get lots; that’s understandable. But how to say it? I do not have that much experience picking on fellow believers. I don’t know to say it. I mean, I was rushed and I have done what I did. Then I imagine… I really wanted to have such openness, opportunity to talk with Church leaders, but I don’t… I never, ever, of course I never, ever have the courage either. And never had a leader who would invite. This is feedback, right? I never met a leader who would actively invite feedback.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, that’s a big problem. I mean, to Mitch’s point, you’re never going to learn if you don’t ask, and if you don’t ask because you’re… you’re not going to get the kind of response you’re going to get. So do you have a specific example? Again, obviously, keep names anonymous and things of that nature. Can you give us a very specific example of a conversation that you wanted to have that you weren’t able to have, that maybe we can use that as a jumping-off point?

Catherine: Okay. I think my church leaders—one of the leaders of one of the churches I was part of, a parishioner at—he was passive. I mean, his way of leading, his way of being as a human person, he’s like very, very passive. So, yeah. So then I was, I felt I myself was wronged. He should have done something he did not do, and then if I did not raise that, I would accumulate this anger, which builds then into greater disrespect, make it hard for me to respect him. And I did talk with him. He didn’t know or whatever. It was clarified.

But I just thought—I don’t know. Do you have anything about how to make such opportunities? Suppose people don’t do this? I mean, apparently, people don’t do this, right? So how do, I guess in your words is that, depending on the specific things that need to be talked about. But how to cultivate such talks, in church, perhaps? How do we make these opportunities within church?

Mr. Marianes: Right.

Dr. Owen: Bill, let me make a couple of observations.

Mr. Marianes: Please.

Dr. Owen: One, I would say, that I didn’t mention yet, is that we have cultural beliefs, and there are cultural differences, and many of the old-world countries have much more hierarchical cultures, and power is… And so there is that in play and you have to respect that, but the other thing I would say to you is—you asked how to cultivate this conversation. The first way is to ask permission, to just say… If I was wanting to share something with my priest, to give him feedback, I might not go: “Hey, I need to talk to you about something”; I might say, “Hey, Father, if I had some feedback for you on something that was bothering me, would you make time for me to share it? Would you be willing to sit down with me and share it?” And approach it not as a criticism of the priest, but as a disconnect you have, that you’re unsure. In other words, don’t be so confident in your own story.

I talked earlier about stories. Stories should be tentatively; you should check your stories. I’ve worked with many parishes, and it’s not uncommon to have priests that do things differently—not the Scripture and not the liturgy, but their style of managing, their style of running the parish, taking care of the operations. A new parish priest comes in, they may do things differently; it may bother me. But that’s my story. If it’s bothering me, I might want to sit down with Father and say, “Hey, do I have permission to come and talk to you? I’m struggling with your management style, and it’s probably me, too, and I’d like to talk to you about it.” So approach it from that standpoint; makes it a lot easier.

Another thing is, this is much easier to do if you have a strong relationship with the person, a loving, caring, trusting relationship. So the other piece is if you want to have good relationships and be able to do difficult conversations, you have to build trusting relationships. You can’t ignore someone and not interact with them and not participate in other things with them and then all of a sudden have a conflict with them and come in and they see you as this trusting, loving person. So those are some things to think about that I would suggest without getting into too many details on specific stories.

Mr. Marianes: Is that helpful, Catherine?

Catherine: That’s super helpful, but I think the trusting relationship part is one of the major reasons why it’s so rarely happening, because how much time of the self can you invest in doing that? That takes a lot.

Dr. Owen: Yeah, it doesn’t have to be… Relationships don’t have to be long periods of time interacting. It could be as simple as interacting with your priest on a regular basis after church and thanking him for the service. Just building a relationship so that he knows who you are and you know who he is, so that when it comes time to have something that’s a disconnect for you, he knows you; he knows that you’ve been a faithful parishioner and that he recognizes you. But I do agree. I mean, parishes can be large, and it can be very hard to build those relationships, and it takes time.

Mr. Marianes: And I think we’re going to have to talk about trust. I really want to dig in on trust, because I know that’s a big principle that you talk a lot about and makes perfect sense in this regard. Catherine, I really want to thank you for your time and I want to thank you for listening. I hope you’ll continue to listen because there’s some additional gems that I interrupted Mitch literally and he was going to say—“I’ve got two more things to say”—and then I interrupted to take your call. So if you’ll allow me, I’m going to go back, Mitch, and I want you to pick up those two things. Catherine, thank you so much, and please stay with us here.

Catherine: Thank you so much. I will. Thank you so much. God bless you.

Mr. Marianes: God bless you.

Dr. Owen: And one of them will probably help Catherine further, and that is we have to know our intentions for the engagement. We have to know what is our intention, what is the outcome we are seeking from the difficult conversation.

Mr. Marianes: Wait, isn’t that easy? I mean, I want what I want. Isn’t that the intention? [Laughter]

Dr. Owen: No, it’s much harder than that! So let’s say you and I aren’t agreeing on something, Bill. Let’s say, let’s take the Ole Miss stuff and we’re trying to figure out how a class should be done or how the strategic planning model should look, and we’re disagreeing. The first thing I might say to you in the conversation is I need to know my intentions and the intentions for the conversation is that you and I, Bill, can come to consensus on a model that we both love and are passionate about.” That’s my intentions. I might disagree that you want to do X, and this X thing, I don’t like, but that’s just a small conflict.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, that’s a process, not the end, the ultimate objective.

Dr. Owen: I’m with you, and so being able to articulate your intentions for the conversation: “I want to have a strong relationship with you when this is done.” I need to give you some feedback that you may not like, but I don’t want you to take it wrong; I want you to appreciate that I’m giving it out of love, and I want us to have a strong relationship. Those kind of intentions help set the stage for a more difficult conversation.

I still remember one of my mentors who—I could always know when I was in trouble, because he would look at me, and he would go, “I really don’t have to have this conversation, and you know why.”

Mr. Marianes: Oh-ho, yeah. [Laughter]

Dr. Owen: “It’s because I… It’s going to be uncomfortable for you and me, but my intentions for this conversation…” And then he would talk about how he would want to build me into a better person, a better faculty member. His intentions were to make me better, and that made all the difference. I could sit there and listen to him for hours tell me why I screwed up or did something wrong.

And then the last piece is probably the hardest to do in preparing, and that is to be objective, to try to seek to understand the story of other people, to see their perspective. I often will ask someone, “Can you describe your position? Can you describe why they think the way they think?”

Mr. Marianes: So you’re asking someone who’s in a difficult conversation to describe what the other person is saying and thinking?

Dr. Owen: Yeah, what their position is or why they disagree with you. An example might be, I had a situation where there were two employees, and one was going through another person’s desk or had been accused of that. And the other one had been accused of listening on her phone calls. And they were going back and forth. It was a very sad situation.

I basically sat down with [each] of them privately, before the conversation, and said, “What is…?” I also asked them what their contribution was, which is my favorite question: What’s your contribution to the conflict with this lady over here? But I asked them: “What do you think their position is? Why do you think they’re doing what they’re doing? What is going on in their mindset?” The goal there is to get you to think multi-perspective, to have an ability to see things from many different angles. There’s plenty of evidence that shows that the best CEOs, the best leaders, can look at a situation and argue both sides of it. They can debate and find the sweet spot, whether it’s what product we should have or program we should have.

One of the things I do as an external facilitator coming in is I force them to have those conversations. I help them see that there are arguments toward many different ways of doing things. So just trying to be objective about what the other person might think before you get into the conversation prepares you better for their perspective and makes you more of an inquirer or a curiosity-based person rather than a “I’m going to prove you wrong, I’m going to prove I’m right,” because that’s the last thing you want to do starting a conversation that’s difficult, is try to prove the other person wrong. Basically, we don’t win when we make the other person lose face. We don’t have a relationship afterward.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, that’s right, and there’s no trust there. So part of what I’m hearing you say very clearly in a lot of different ways—and I think this may be one of the things that those of us listening here need to take to heart—is that: Are we preparing fully to have the kind of conversation that would be productive in its outcome? So the things that you talked about, whether we’re looking at “What is my contribution to the problem? Am I objectively understanding what their side of the story is? Do I even now what my intention is in having this conversation?” and all of those things are methodical things that one could do as part of their, if you will, homework, prior to having that conversation, but that are likely not going to happen if it’s a volcanic eruption right when the issue comes up. Right? Isn’t that one of the by-products there?

Dr. Owen: That’s one of the greatest challenges in learning to manage yourself out of the conversation if it’s not the right time is also a skill that you need to have. Saying to someone, “Okay, I’m very emotional right now. I’m very upset. Can we talk about this tomorrow?” Things like that will help you be way more successful, because when you’re emotional and you’re upset, you’re not your best self. Nobody is.

Mr. Marianes: That makes great sense, and it’s obvious when I hear you say it, but in the moment we’re so motivated for action because we’re right and they’re wrong! So what do you do if you’re in that position, but the person with whom you’re having the conversation isn’t there: they’re in the anger position; they’re in the aggressive position. They’re telling you everything you did wrong and they haven’t considered what their contribution is or any objectively… What do you do then?

Dr. Owen: So the first thing you do is you validate the emotion they’re having. You validate, you reflect back… You’ll hear this all the time when you have a customer issue with a company, and you call them and you’re upset and you’re yelling and them and you’re screaming: Fix my internet or whatever it is. They will come back and go, “Oh, I’m so sorry. This is very upsetting. I would be just as frustrated as you. You have every right to be angry.” So you validate their emotions. You don’t validate their position; you validate the fact that they’re upset, that this is unfortunate, that they’re angry.

Mr. Marianes: All right, so wait. Stop there. This is really key. This is very, very key, because when I’ve listened to people do this, they misconstrue and assume that if they validate anything, they’re validating the person’s position. What you’re saying is: differentiate the position from the way they feel, and it’s okay to validate the way they feel, and in so doing, you’re not conceding the position.

Dr. Owen: Right, and I mean the worst thing you can do is tell someone you don’t have a right to feel the way you feel. I mean, think about that. “You don’t have a right to be angry.”

Mr. Marianes: That’s pretty insulting.

Dr. Owen: Now you’re not even arguing about the issue. You’re arguing about whether they have a right to choice, to their own choice to feel angry.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, that doesn’t work.

Dr. Owen: And even if it’s based on falsehoods, they are angry. So you could say, “I see you’re very upset. I’m sorry that you’re upset. I wish there was something I could do to make this better. I think we can resolve this, but can we talk about this? Can we schedule a time to sit down? because I think we need more time to talk about it.” And you can manage the conversation to a sit-down or you could say, “Would you give me a few moments? I need to go take care of something. I’ll come right back and we’ll talk then.” If you don’t think it can wait, then you give them like a five-minute time-out without making it a time-out. You basically say, “I’m sorry. I made a promise to somebody. I need to go check with somebody, and I’ll be back,” or “I need a glass of water. Do you need a glass of water? Let’s get some water and sit down.” You do something to slow it down.

You will find that after validating somebody’s emotions, they will usually—not always, but usually—they will calm some, because now they’ve been vindicated that it’s okay to be upset; it’s okay to feel what I’m feeling.

Mr. Marianes: That’s real powerful.

Dr. Owen: Yeah, and it’s real powerful. It’s a technique that you have to learn. Granted, if you’re emotional and they’re emotional, then there’s nobody to help you out. So the other piece I would say is understanding self, understanding your own triggers. One of the things we do in our coaching program and one of the things we do when we work with people in leadership workshops and we’re taking them through assessments is we’re helping them understand their own triggers: what upsets me the most. I had a mentor that could never be corrected in public, but you could correct him in his office privately and tell him anything and he would love you, because he wanted to be the best he could be, but he was very sensitive to being criticized in public. That’s his trigger, and once he understood that trigger, when somebody did that, he didn’t lash out, he didn’t act out. He may change whether he worked with that person again because he doesn’t want that to happen again, but at the same time, he managed that.

Now, I would have coached him: “You need to go have a conversation with him.” And I had numerous people that I had sat down and said, “This is a no-no with him. Don’t do this. You’re going to team-teach with him, don’t do this.” And so it’s about understanding self, understanding your emotion; understanding the other person; and managing your emotion while you help the other person feel comfortable with their own emotions, but also manage them as well.

Mr. Marianes: And it seems like a lot of this is: you’ve got to approach this within a methodical manner and not in an instinctive, emotional manner yourself.

Dr. Owen: You do, and I’ll be the first to say I don’t always do it well. This is a difficult task; this is something that has to be practiced. Go back to our first conversation early on when we talked about: most of us go to silence first. We don’t practice it ever; we avoid it. So if you always avoid difficult conversations, you’re not building your skillset. So one of the coaching piece I usually tell people is: Take the easy difficult conversations and start practicing them. Start doing the ones that are easy. If you haven’t talked to your brother in six months, that’s a hard one. What’s an easy one? Have you had a conversation with your wife about something she doesn’t do the way you like it, or you do that she’s upset about?

Mr. Marianes: I don’t know, that sounds to me like a tough one, too! [Laughter] But anyway…

Dr. Owen: They’re all tough in a way, but if it’s something small that’s not a… Go back to the original definition of: is it high-stakes? If it’s a low stake—what are we going to have for dinner Friday? You said you wanted to have this—let me practice the techniques I’ve learned in this workshop to approach it. “Honey, my intention for this conversations is that you have dinner Friday night, and I have dinner Friday night, and we’re both happy. And don’t you think that’s a good intention, that we both want to be happy?” And already the antenna’s going up: He’s not happy. He’s not happy with what I’ve prepared for dinner. So I’ve prepared her for my intentions.

You know, then you can have that conversation. But the point I’m making is we have to learn to practice these; we have to learn to have these right techniques, although I will say that my son has at least once in my life looked at me and said, “Dad, don’t be doing that technique that you do.” So I have gotten that.

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] So you’re successful in that regard. Being a lawyer, I learned under the Socratic method. Socrates said you can’t teach an adult new things; you can only create the environment in which they discover the truth for themselves, so that’s why he always asked questions. And a good lawyer, a good user of the Socratic method, will continue to ask questions until you come to the conclusion. Maybe it’s the conclusion they wanted or maybe they learned something different, but it’s a conclusion. And so my kids would do that to me, too, when I started with the Socratic method: “Dad. Just tell us what you want to tell us, and don’t make me get there.” I’d say, “No, no, no, we’re going to go through the Socratic method.”

Listen, I’m sorry, but I’ve abused you here because I’ve been having so much fun and I’m learning so much from you that I haven’t taken a break here. I know we’ve got Part 2 coming, and we’re going to talk about that in just a second, so even though we haven’t taken a break, can I abuse you and just ask you one more question before we end this session here?

Dr. Owen: Yes.

Mr. Marianes: Because what I’m understanding now—and honestly this has been very helpful to me, and I hope other people listening will—is the intentionality by which we have to approach these difficult conversations and these conflicts is a very different process than perhaps what we’ve been doing now. I guess maybe to kind of close up this first part session—and, those listening, that tells you there’s going to be a Part 2 coming—what’s some advice that you would give to people who are listening [who] might have a difficult situation that they’re facing on how they can better prepare for that difficult conversation? Because this whole notion of preparing for it is something that I don’t think we’ve been trained about or have thought about a lot.

Dr. Owen: One of the techniques I use in my workshops is I have individuals actually act like script-writers and write the conversation out, like they’re going to actually have. You’ve prepared yourself, you know your intentions, you know what you want to get out of the conversation, you know what your contribution to the problem [is]—you’ve done all the prep work in your mind. Sit down and now write out what you would say, what you think the other person would say, what you would say. And after they do that, I then ask them to go back in another column next to every phrase and write down what would you be thinking when you said that or they said this? What would you be feeling? What would be in your head—not spoken; the unspoken emotion?

Mr. Marianes: What’s in your head or what’s in their head?

Dr. Owen: Both, and so for example let’s say I was doing it with you, and you and I were going to discuss strategic planning and how I like to do it more with interviews and you like to do surveys. Well, I might start out by writing that I go to Bill and I say, “Bill, I think this is going to be not a difficult conversation, but one that we don’t agree on, and I think we need to have it.” And that would be my first statement. And then you would say back, “Well, we need to have it, then, Mitch, because it’s iron sharpening iron.” I know you; you’re going to come back with that phrase. [Laughter]

Then I would say, “Well, it concerns your desire to always want to do surveys, and I really have a lot of problems with surveys. My intentions are that we might learn to do both methods, and I might appreciate yours and you might appreciate mine. I think we can come to a model that we both can support, but I’m concerned about misuse of surveys, and you might be concerned about misuse of interviews.” So now I’ve kind of set the stage. So what would you say to that? In my mind, what I think you would. And I keep doing that.

Then after I’ve written out what I think the initial conversation would have been, I go back and I write down what was I thinking when I said I have a difficult conversation: “I hope he’s not going to yell at me.” You know, I write down my thoughts. And when I write your responses, I’m like: Well, Bill probably thinks he knows how to do this better than me. Well, that’s not true. I don’t know that, but that’s what I’m thinking in my head.

Mr. Marianes: Ahh! Okay.

Dr. Owen: So I’m writing down my thoughts that might occur from your statements. And what I’m doing is I’m preparing myself for the emotional impact of the conversation, and I’m preparing my response so that it’s thoughtful and respectful and still focused on the issue we’re trying to resolve. So that would be one piece I would kind of stress.

The other way I would prepare is to focus first on the conflict or the needs that to be addressed and less on what I think you should do or what I should do, in other words, the reaction to the issue. Get consensus on what we’re disputing or what we’re disagreeing on first, before I start talking about what I think you ought to do to make me happy or what you ought to do to fix the situation or make it work better, because we tend to focus too much on that and we don’t really ever come to consensus on: is it an issue? Because you might say to me, “You do it your way. I’ll do it my way. It’s fine. We don’t need to have one model; we can have two models. Does that make sense?” And then we have a different conversation than if I’m saying we need to have one model, and I keep beating that drum and you’re like: We don’t have to have one model; why is he doing that? What’s the issue?

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] It’s real funny, because what you just said was exactly the way—and you didn’t know I was going to say that—was exactly the way we resolved that chef controversy before the Greek festival, when they had two different recipes and they were insisting that they were right. So we just said, “Look, you’re not both going to be in the kitchen at the same time. So when you’re in the kitchen, you will do it your way, and when he’s in the kitchen, he’ll do it his way. And the customers will get the benefit of both.” Of course, being competitive, they wanted to go: “We want to know which one the people like most!” But, you know, at the end of the day, they kind of laughed it off and said, okay, that’s fine.

Sometimes there is one answer that we’re trying to drive to, and sometimes it goes back to the point that you made earlier, and I want to make sure that we emphasize that point: that as we think about difficult conversations and as we think about conflicts, if we will approach it with what you said, that there may be multiple right answer and there doesn’t just have to be one—sometimes there is; if there’s a theological issue, perhaps there is one right answer, but even there we know that Ecumenical Councils have been changing things all along—but I think if we approach it from this notion that there may be multiple right answers and if our intention is to get to something we can live with, then that’s a very different result.

There’s a lot of work that has to go into these conversations and these conflicts, isn’t there?

Dr. Owen: There is, and when you use the term “multiple right answers,” I want people to understand: approaching a problem as if there are multiple right answers enriches the choices of which you can pick from when you finally have to choose the right answer. So not all right answers are equal, but one of the lessons we’ve learned with working with groups and getting them to be very strategic and very successful is to brainstorm all the possible right answers to challenges we face.

We know that we have a challenge with keeping our youth in the parish. You can have a parishioner that’ll say, “We’ve got to have a gym. We’ve got to have a gym. They’ve got to play sports. That’s what’ll keep them in here.” You have another parishioner say, “Oh, no, they’ve all got to go to camp. Everybody’s got to go to camp. Camp’s where they become gelled, and once they become gelled they’ll stay in the faith.” I don’t know the right answer. I think there are hundreds of right answers to keeping the youth in the parish. We’ve never explored how many of those right answers are, because we get into a dispute over “Should we build a gym or should we buy a bus to go to camp?” or whatever. That’s a bad example, but the point is—

Mr. Marianes: No, actually, it’s not bad!

Dr. Owen: But the people taking positions, they haven’t addressed the need. The need is: Why are the youth not participating as fully as they could? And the answer is sometimes in the youth and in the parents, but we haven’t had those conversations; we haven’t had those difficult conversations about why do you prefer to play league soccer than come to your GOYA meeting or your youth club meeting or whatever? And those are the challenges that [you] face if you can’t have those difficult conversations.

The other thing that I’ve learned over the years is that you can’t rule by committee, but you can’t be creative individually.

Mr. Marianes: Wait, wait—say that again. That was great. I’m going to write that down. Say it again.

Dr. Owen: You can’t rule by committee, but you can’t create individually. Creation, creativity comes from interaction and dispute and dialogue and brainstorming with many people. And once you’ve come to consensus on a route to go, someone has to lead it. When we do these strategic plans and we have these action teams, somebody’s put in charge of those teams. Somebody drives the bus; somebody makes it happen. A committee can’t make all the little decisions about what activities we’re going to do to achieve this new program on, I don’t know, outreach from our parish. We have to have somebody who’s going to take leadership and lead a team that’s going to do that, and we can’t micromanage all their decisions, but at the same time we can ask the community to tell us what are all the possible ways that we could do better outreach.

I’ve seen remarkable, creative ideas come from our communities. I’m humbled sometimes with the creativity of parishioners coming up with ideas. Why isn’t there a youth involved in every ministry? Why isn’t there a youth involved in a leadership role in every leadership position we have in our parish? There are ideas that come if you just keep asking: What’s another right answer? What’s another right answer?

Of course, we’re getting beyond difficult conversations now; we’re getting to strategic visioning and driving change and things like that, but those do come with difficult conversation at times.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, they’re often embedded in difficult conversations in that regard, and it is transformational when you have the opportunity to do that. I was thinking about a parish that I did a leadership retreat for, and I insisted that there be youth representatives there. There was an enormous amount of push-back from the adults in the room. “Ah, we don’t need that…” And we got done with that program, and I think most of them realized the value of that, but I will tell you that the leaders, particularly the clergymen, said, “I will never have another meeting of these without having the youth present there, because of the insights, the experience, the training,” and stuff like that.

I think that that notion of thinking through multiple right answers… I mean, look, I’ve even been involved, as have you, with our hierarch. He’ll say, where I can tell he’s trying to go in a different direction, “Okay, well, that’s one thing we can do. Is there another thing we can do?” And that’s how he introduces the multiple right answers. Obviously he, like all of us, [is] hoping that you’ll eventually get to the one that he likes, but at the end of the day, you’re right: the conversation is enriched when we have multiple right answers, we have multiple opportunities, or maybe we can take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and come up with an even better answer.

Dr. Owen: I agree totally. I think God made us different for reasons, and we bring different perspectives and different viewpoints, and that enriches the opportunities and the solutions that we can come up with, especially when we’re having disputes. The challenge is when we don’t have the real dispute: we hide it, we don’t deal with it, we don’t express it.

I also should say it contextually has to be done at the right time. I always cringe when I see a dispute emerge at a general assembly meeting, which is not the right place for it. That’s not where we argue about how we do things. We should be doing those prior to those assembly meetings. That comes and is actually both sides of it, because if a parish council is truly transparent and works well and communicates and interacts… I think of a parish I worked with that actually had an initiative where the parish council members had to interview five new people at every coffee hour that they didn’t know.

Mr. Marianes: Oh, wow! I love that.

Dr. Owen: They just basically had to go around, and basically we gave them two questions that they had to ask every parishioner, and they had to find people they didn’t know. It was to create an enriching conversation, but it was also to get the parishioners to know who was on council. And you sit back and you say, “Well, gee, these are creative ideas.” Well, this came from somebody who really wanted to resolve a conflict, which is people didn’t know the parish council and people were complaining about it. So there are opportunities in conflict. I think it’s wonderful.

I love to use stories that we’ve all seen in the press and we never know the true story, but it is clear that Steve Jobs created conflict when he went back and took over Apple, and that conflict was productive. Now, he was not good at handling conflict, and you read his biographies and you read about him; he was not good at conflict, but he had some great people around him who were good at conflict, and they managed that conflict. They were able to really change that company overnight into a powerhouse. It’s a great story where conflict actually created the products mix that most of us carry at least one device that’s been… Well, technically every phone in the world has been changed because of the original iPhone.

So you can sit back and think: What does that mean for a parish community if they’re having a conflict and they haven’t dealt with it? If they have passions for something and they haven’t expressed it? If they can learn to do it in a constructive way, it can be very meaningful and very powerful and bring that passion to our faith in a way that we haven’t seen yet.

Mr. Marianes: Well, and just to kind of close this first segment out over here, this first part one out, to use this great insight you have here at the end. I kind of go back to that scriptural reference. It was the conflict of two apostles saying, “We want to be number one and number two,” and angering the other ten, that the Lord said: Look, this is a teachable moment, and we’re going to become stronger as a team by not ignoring the fact that happened and not having the ten murmur about the two, but we’re going to actually do this and we’re going to talk about what does leadership look like; how do you earn the right to be a leader. And you’ve got to look back in history and believe that that was one of the seminal moments that change the arc of the trajectory of the lives of the apostles, and, of course, change the trajectory of the Church.

There are many other examples. When I was going through the research on this thing, there’s some really amazing examples of long after, when Paul came on board, and he and Barnabas and others were having disputes. I mean, there’s some really interesting examples, but listen. I’ve abused you by not letting you take a second break, but so that everybody knows, this is part one. We announced it was going to be part one because there’s a part two coming, and that part two is going to be May 5. It’s again the first Wednesday of May, and we barely got through half the questions that I had for Mitch. And the second segment, the May 5 segment, there’s not going to be a long introduction by me in there, because we’ve gotten that behind us; we’re going to jump right into the remaining questions, the remaining dialogue.

Mitch, let me thank you for tonight and for all the great insights that you gave that I really want to ruminate about, and I hope that everybody will take the opportunity to look at some of the offerings that Mitch has. His company is Mitchen, M-i-t-c-h-e-n, and it’s really hard: it’s mitchen.net so you can find it out there, and maybe we’ll get into the question about the dolphin, because he’s got this amazing dolphin on there that you’re going to want to know about, but I really hope that everybody got some value out of this thing, and I hope that you’ll tune into part two on May 5, 2021, where Mitch is going to come back and start by—he’ll summarize what we covered in this first part, and then he’s going to really drill down into some of the other elements, the other five or six questions that I have for him, including talking about his ten techniques that I think are really valuable.

I also want to have a big shout-out of thanks to the man behind all of Ancient Faith Radio, John Maddex, who jumped right in here and pitched in, is producing this show back at the Ancient Faith Radio studio in Chesterton. I appreciate John’s stepping up and stepping in to make this happen. He and the whole Maddex family—Bobby and everybody in the family, and that includes the extended family that John and Tonya have started on Ancient Faith Radio, doing amazing, amazing work, and I hope that you will take a look at some of the great offerings they have.

If you find these first Wednesday and fifth Sunday shows helpful or informative, tell your friends about them and tune in. Remember, every first Wednesday of the month at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, and any month that has a fifth Sunday, we’re going to be live. Again, these are all recorded, and they’ll be up as a podcast. You can find them by going to the Ancient Faith Radio site, and you’ll find the Stewardship Calling pages, and just drop down to the date of the program—so today’s date is April 7, 2021—or you can go to my website, StewardshipCalling.com, and I, too, have an internet radio tab. Again, same thing; you just scroll down to the date. You can see a beautiful picture of Mitch and his bio in there, and a link to his website and some of the other materials. He’s got some amazing materials on his website and the great work that he does. All of that is available to you for free forever at my website, StewardshipCalling.com, that has a lot of other resources on there about stewardship and strategic planning and effective churches.

By the way, if you ever have any questions or you have any questions you want me to pitch to Mitch next month, then shoot me an email at bill@stewardshipcalling.com. And I hope that as we wrap up today’s program and you got some jewels of wisdom, both from the theology of our Orthodox Christian Church and the great insights that Mitch has offered, that you will remember that two of the most important days of your life are, first, the day you were born, and, second, the day you figure out why. And if you’re not already living your stewardship calling, please begin by prayerfully discerning your why in your stewardship calling, and then start the most extraordinary part of your life.

Thanks for listening. God bless you. And as always, I pray that you always S-O-T-P-A-E-T-J, which means Stay On The Path (capital-T, capital-P), And Enjoy The Journey. God bless and good night.