Mr. Bill Marianes: “Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech—you will ever regret,” concluded journalist and poet and Civil War veteran Ambrose Bierce, who’s actually the American author of The Devil’s Dictionary. And there was a guy by the name of Professor Octavius Bishop who once said, “Be open to every uncomfortable, awkward, difficult conversation you will engage. Disturb the ground to grow, then adjust the margin of grace.” And finally, Scottish comedian and writer Frankie Boyle concluded:

We don’t live in a shared reality; we each live in a reality of our own, and causing upset is often the price of trying to reach each other. It’s always easier to disturb other people than to go through the awkward and time-consuming process of understanding them. We’ve given “taking offense” a social status it doesn’t deserve. It’s not much more than a way of avoiding difficult conversations.

And there it is, all around us: conflict and arguments and hostility and disagreements and strife and antagonism, and all these difficult conversations or situations that have occurred and the conversations that should have happened but didn’t. Conflict is actually truly one of the most constant things at all time, and every one of has experienced tons of conflicts in our life, and perhaps more so in the recent pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 than ever before. But if we’re honest with ourselves, I think we’ll all obviously have to agree that sometimes we’ve actually been the cause of that conflict or that difficult situation.

So what would you like to know and what can you 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? If so, you’ve tuned into the right program because tonight, in this part two, we’ll help you understand conflict and difficult conversations in a faith-based way, and give you actual tools to improve your life and the life of those in your garden of Eden.

Hello, brothers and sisters, and welcome to Stewardship Calling, 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 have a simple premise: that you have been called by your Creator to a personal calling, a reason to your life and a reason for your life, something you have 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 is the inspirational words of St. Paul who made it crystal clear that we all have such a stewardship calling, in his letter to the Ephesians 4:1, where 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, 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 all hopefully try to follow Christ’s great commandment to love one another, and his great commission to make disciples of all nations, and his great charge to serve one another. Welcome to the journey.

Now this program and a lot of other helpful tools and information about effective churches and stewardship and discipleship and church strategic planning and other topics can be found at my always-free website, StewardshipCalling.com, and you can always reach me at bill@stewardshipcalling.com. And tonight for all of our listeners, we want you to call in and interact with us and ask us your questions or talk to us about the difficult conversations you need to have 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 we’re hesitant to place ourselves in these uncomfortable situations. Some of us 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. Over time, humans have developed the fight-flight-or-freeze alternatives to conflict management. Sometimes we fight vigorously for our position; other times we flee or run away rather than deal with the issue or the person at hand; and also often we just freeze in place and do nothing. Yet these psychological responses are frequent, but not always the right things to do.

Tonight my good friend and distinguished colleague, Dr. Mitch Owen, and I will continue our exploration of far more effective strategies to deal with difficult situations and having difficult conversations. Now, this is part two of a dialogue we actually started on April 7, 2021, and if you haven’t heard that essential beginning, after tonight’s program you can go back and catch up. You can find it by going to either my website, StewardshipCalling.com, over to the “internet radio” tab and just scroll down to today’s date, which is May 5, 2021, or part one, which was April 7, 2021. Or you can find it another way by going to Ancient Faith Radio live, the Ancient Faith Radio site, find the Stewardship Calling pages, and again just scroll down to April 7, 2021, for part one, and May 5, 2021, for part two.

So when we do engage with each other, frankly, often we don’t engage in a difficult or controversial discussion with the best strategies. Persuasion frequently takes what’s one of three forms as was outlined by a lot of people but most recently by the Purdue University Learning Lab. They identified three classical ways of persuasion and argumentation that’s called the Toulman method, the Classical method, and the Rogerian method.

So, quickly, the Toulman method was proposed by author Stephen Toulman in Uses of Argument, all the way back in 1958, and it emphasizes building a thorough support structure for each argument or each point you want to make. So in the Toulman method there’s kind of six steps. Step one, you make your main argument, the point you want to make. Step two, you provide evidence to support your claim. Step three, you bridge the discussion and explain why or how your data supports your claim. In step four, you provide additional logic or reasoning that could be necessary to support your point. In step five, you try to anticipate or respond to a counter-claim or an argument from the other side that would negate the main points in your argument, so that you have the appearance of being unbiased. And then finally you incorporate your own evidence that disagrees with the counter-claim, that fully supports your theory.

Now, the second form of persuasion or argumentation is called the Rogerian method and is named for but not developed by the influential American psychotherapist, Karl Rogers. It’s a popular method that is oftentimes used in dealing with controversial issues, where there’s often an effort to seek a common ground between the parties. It oftentimes places an emphasis on reiterating the other person’s point of view and perspectives to their satisfaction. Again, there’s like six steps. Step one, you introduce the issue that you’re trying to discuss so that you try to remain objective. Number two, you try to explain the other side’s position in an unbiased way. Step three, you acknowledge that the points that they make can be very valid under certain circumstances, and yet you still present your point of view, your persuasive argument. Step four, you explain your stance; and, step five, you explore scenarios in which the position that you’re advocating has merit while acknowledging that there’s multiple ways oftentimes to view complex issues. And finally in step six, concluding by explaining to the person with whom you’re trying to have a dialogue why they would benefit from accepting your position, and hopefully closing on a positive note without completely dismissing the other side’s perspective.

Now, the final method that’s referred to as the Classical method was originally devised by one of my ancestors, the great Greek philosopher Aristotle. Yeah, if only he was an ancestor… But classical arguments and persuasion tend to focus on issues of definition and more careful, precise application of evidence. So the underlying assumption of classical persuasion is that when everybody understands everything that’s out there, there’s only going to be one course of action that’s clear, and that’s what I want you to follow. So, again, the steps include introducing and explaining the significance of the issue, providing vital contextual and historical information, making clear the point you want to make, then thoroughly explaining the reasons and evidence why the point you’re making is the right point, then addressing any anticipated counter-arguments, and finally summarizing your main point.

Now, if you were to step back and to look at these three methods, you would find that there are amazing similarities, and yet there are some more subtle and some less subtle differences. But if you read any Facebook or other social media discussion, or watch any TV opinion or news program, or listen to any politician speak, you will see very few effective persuasion approaches and are much more likely to see many ineffective tricks and techniques trying to be applied. Oftentimes folks try to use linguistics and analytical tricks that are played out and disguised as discussions.

For example, you may have heard of the concept of a logical fallacy. These are logical gaps in reasoning that actually invalidate people’s persuasive arguments. Some of you have been guilty of trying to use one or more of these logical fallacies, and in the course of doing so part of the reason perhaps why your communication hasn’t been effective or you haven’t been able to reach that person is because you were actually applying a logical fallacy as opposed to a more persuasive way to make your point. And there’s a lot of great wisdom and research that’s been out there, and I’m just going to briefly summarize just a few of them.

Now, as you’re listening to this—and you can always go back and listen to this again—I want you to think about a recent or common discussion or disagreement or difference of position or person who’s been advocating something, and I want you to think of examples that you’ve actually seen in your daily life applying these various fallacies that lead to very ineffective discussions and resolution of disagreements.

The first one’s known as the straw-man fallacy, and it’s when the person on the other side grossly oversimplifies or misrepresents your argument; that’s called setting up a straw-man. And then, because they’ve misrepresented it, they can easily attack it and refute it. And you go: Yeah, but that wasn’t the point I was making in the first place.

And number two, just because a significant percentage of a population believes that a proposition is true doesn’t always make it true. Popularity alone is not enough to validate an argument, but popularity of an opinion is often used as a stand-alone justification. We call this the bandwagon fallacy, where you point to a lot of people saying the same thing, saying: Well, therefore it must be true.

The third logical fallacy is known as the appeal to authority fallacy, and this one, oh, man, have we been using this one lately! It’s when you cite some so-called expert as if that person is the only person that can be right about the subject, and then whatever you say that’s contrary to this particular person has to be wrong.

A variant of that is the ad hominem fallacy, which actually translates to “against the man.” The way that works is, instead of forming a sound, good reasoning approach or argument, you basically replace logical argumentation with a personal attack against the individual that’s really unrelated to the matter; you make it personal against them.

Another variant is known as the false dilemma fallacy. It misleads by presenting complex issues in terms of two and only two inherently opposed sides, and instead of acknowledging that maybe many issues, if not most issues, can be thought of as a spectrum of possibilities. So you’re creating a dilemma between A and B, when actually there’s a range in between.

The hasty generalization fallacy is one that’s used all the time, where a general statement is made without sufficient evidence to support it, and everybody looks at that and says, “Wait a minute. How do I draw a conclusion when you haven’t provided any evidence of that, or maybe haven’t even defined it?”

And number— Just because two things appear to be correlated doesn’t necessarily indicate that one of those things irrefutably causes the other thing to exist. This is known as the correlation or causation fallacy. A variant of that is the anecdotal evidence fallacy, and this replaces logical discussion and evidence with examples from someone’s personal experience. So people, when they’re discussing and are relying heavily on their own anecdotal experience, often will overlook the fact that one example standing alone is not necessarily definitive proof of a greater premise. Now, it’s very true to them because it’s been their experience, but that doesn’t make it the universal truth.

The red herring fallacy is an argument with some sentiment that seems to be relevant but is really not on topic, and the tactic is common when someone doesn’t like the current topic and wants to detour into something else, something that’s easier and safer to address.

The sunk-cost fallacy is one that oftentimes keeps us locked in our way of doing things. We have invested so much of ourselves and our time and our effort and our energy and sometimes our resources in a particular project that we’re reluctant to abandon it even when it actually may be fruitless or futile or ineffective.

Now, one of my favorites is known as the Texas sharp-shooter fallacy. It gets its colorful name from a Texas anecdote about a Texan who fires his gun at a barn wall and then proceeds to paint a target around the closest cluster of bullet-holes. And then he points to the bullet-ridden target as “evidence” of his “expert marksmanship.” We’ve all seen examples of that in real life.

The middle-ground fallacy is very attractive at times. It assumes that a compromise between two extreme, conflicting points of views is always true and better. The problem is that arguments like that often ignore the possibility is that maybe one of the extremes is completely true, or maybe completely false, and maybe the middle ground isn’t the right answer.

The slippery slope fallacy is one that’s been used all along, where people keep moving through a seemingly benign premise or starting point, and then giving several multiple examples moving it further and further out to an extreme and improbable result which doesn’t make any sense. And they go: “Well, if we start with this thing, it’s a slippery slope that’s going to lead us to this ridiculous outcome.” So they say, “We’re not even getting started.”

The circular argument is one where the person’s argument is just repeating what they’ve already assumed beforehand without arriving at any new conclusion.

There’s another one that’s being frequently used nowadays that’s the tu quoque fallacy. It’s basically an attempt to discredit somebody else by answering criticism with criticism rather than a counter-argument. It’s sometimes referred to as the appeal to hypocrisy, because it distracts from the substance of argument by pointing out the hypocrisy in the other person or their opinion.

The appeal to pity fallacy is what it sounds like. It’s an appeal to the compassion and the emotion and the sensitivity of others, when factors that are not relevant to the argument are really being discussed. It tries to elevate pity over logic or conclusions to reach an emotionally manipulative result.

Then there’s the fallacy fallacy, which is: just because someone’s argument relies on a fallacy doesn’t mean that their claim isn’t inherently true or untrue. They always say, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” so even if they’re giving you a fallacy, they still may actually be saying something true in that regard.

Then finally, my favorite, the one that I apply most frequently, is the “Bill Marianes is wrong” fallacy, and I think the name of this fallacy is clear enough in its name. It’s a fallacy that assumes that anything I ever said could ever be wrong. [Laughter] Yeah… It’s actually the reverse of that. So now you know.

You kind of have this notion of all of these ways of persuasion and conclusion and discussion that really have fallacies behind their logical approach, and yet they’re so often played in our daily lives. If you were paying attention and were applying any of these to examples that you’ve seen, whether on the news or media, you would immediately recognize them now in the context of one of those fallacies. And what that points out to you is that, except in the random case of the fallacy fallacy, where even though it’s wrong it may be right, that oftentimes we’re talking past each other.

All of these logical fallacies and attempts to manipulate conversation are really impediments to effective communications, but hopefully by understanding them a little bit you won’t get as distracted and miss having an effective conversation where you get back to the substance of what really matters. Yet at the same time it’s critical to understand the benefit and importance of productively addressing issues that are coming up in disagreements before—before—serious conflict occurs or it escalates out of control. Sometimes if you can nip the conflict or issue in the bud at the beginning, you can actually avoid more tragic and escalating problems. This is the reason we offer leadership workshops to prepare people for conflict resolution where you learn how to anticipate conflict and deal with it once it arises.

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 Orthodox Church leaders and faithful that include conflict avoidance and management. And Dr. Mitch Owen currently offers some of those same services to the clients through his company, Mitchen, and I can’t think of any better way to get this assistance to our faithful that we need so desperately in our churches and, frankly, in our daily lives than to call upon this contemporary Orthodox Christian who is truly an expert in conflict resolution and difficult conversations, my special guest tonight and dear friend and colleague, Dr. Mitch Owen.

We’re going to take a short break right now, and when we come back I’m going to introduce—or re-introduce, for those of you who listened to part one—Mitch Owen and discuss how we can better deal with conflict and negative situations and conversations. Again, we invite you to call in with your questions or your comments or your stories at 1-855-AF-RADIO; that’s 1-855-237-2346. Okay, let’s take a short break right now.

Mr. Marianes: So welcome back to Stewardship Calling and our first Wednesday program. We’re exploring helpful ways to better deal with the challenges of conflict and difficult conversations with my special guest, Dr. Mitch Owen. Remember again, we’d love to hear from you at 1-855-AF-RADIO; that’s 1-855-237-2346.

Now, for those of you who missed part one of the program, allow me to re-introduce my special guest for tonight, a dear friend and colleague, Dr. Mitch Owen. He’s the founder and chief operating officer of Mitchen, Incorporated, which is a innovative training and organizational development company that is actually celebrating over 25 years of service to its clients. Mitch was also the deputy director for performance and organization 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. Dr. Own is the creator of the Elusive Leadership model for high-performance teams and the Mitchen organization strategic positioning system.

Frankly, his expertise and the reputation that he has earned have enabled him to work with a wide variety of groups, including Orthodox churches, some of the most significant major universities, public agencies, and businesses. Mitch most recently facilitated strategic positioning projects at the University of Maryland, University of Kentucky, University of Tennessee, The Ohio State University, and numerous Orthodox churches. He also participates as a facilitator in several national private and public leadership programs, including the Food Systems Leadership Institute and Clinical Scholars Leadership program; and serves as an executive coach for over 25 executives, doctors, clergy, nurses, and public health professionals.

Mitch has provided leadership development and strategic positioning programs within the non-profit sector, including, as I mentioned, Orthodox churches, for many years, and his work with religious groups reaches across several denominations including his own community of Eastern Orthodox Christians. I first met Mitch in earnest when he was selected as a leader for the Metropolis of Atlanta Strategic Plan Goals teams that were setting up the servant leadership program and the parish strategic planning process which he successfully completed for the metropolis.

Mitch completed his doctorate of education at North Carolina State University in adult education and development, and was focusing on 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. And he’s presented and published extensively on a host of topics related to organizational development and education and is professionally certified to administer and interpret a host of assessment instruments for professional development, executive coaching, and management training.

As a point of personal example, Mitch took me and some of the other folks in our Orthodox Ministry Services through a battery of tests and provided us coaching insights into our personality, our style, our leadership and strengths, and honestly I wish I had gotten earlier in my life; it could have helped me a lot. This is exactly the kind of value that can happen when you really have someone of his talent who is so gifted at assessments and things of that nature and wanting to figure out how you can improve yourself and the way you communicate.

Now, Mitch is Lebanese by ethnic origin, with ties to the Antiochian Church, but since he’s lived in North Carolina he’s been a very, very, very active member and a leader at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Raleigh. Mitch also currently serves as a member of the Metropolis Council of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Atlanta. So, without further ado, it’s really a very great honor and privilege to again welcome my dear friend, colleague, and coach, Dr. Mitch Owen. Welcome to Stewardship Calling again, Mitch.

Dr. Mitchell Owen: Hey, Bill. It’s always great to be with you.

Mr. Marianes: Thanks, man. Listen, I want to quickly get everybody up to speed. I’m hoping that people have listened to part one—and if you haven’t, I want you to go back and pick up part one—but for those that didn’t listen to part one, we actually talked about some of the unproductive ways that people manage conflict and some of the challenges that individuals bring to difficult situations and some things that people can do to prepare for difficult conversations and how to actually anticipate different perspectives. Can you give us… can you start by giving us a summary of the great, great insights you provided us in part one?

Dr. Owen: Yeah, so I think that I’ll hit on four things we talked a lot about. It won’t cover everything, but I think the first part we talked about was the avoidance of conflict and how people go to silence, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the conflict is gone; it’s still there, and it often manifests in passive-aggressive behavior and talking about each other and things like, that’s actually more damaging than some violent conflict. When people speak ugly to each other, at least it’s something we all see and can deal with, but silent conflict can be a problem.

You hit on a lot of things in your intro that really talk about how we really work very much subconsciously to avoid the acknowledgment or data that is showing us that our perspective or our viewpoint is maybe not correct. We like things to fit within our worldview, within our belief system, with what we think is the way things should be, and so when data or information comes to us that doesn’t fit that, we almost sometimes don’t even see it, or we change it or manipulate it.

I think a third thing we spent some time talking about that I think is important is the habit of inferring things beyond what are the facts, assuming things about other people, especially their intents and what’s behind their behavior, which we really don’t know unless we inquire.

And then we did speak a little bit about preparing and the importance of patience, that we have to give time to a difficult conversation; it’s not something that happens quickly; that we have to be calm, that we have to learn to manage our emotions—that it’s okay to be emotional and feel feelings, but we have to manage how we interact so that those emotions don’t drive us to make mistakes and say things that are not appropriate or are not helpful to the difficult conversation. I often say we have to prepare by knowing what our contribution is to the issue. What is our contribution that is making this difficult? What is our contribution that has created this conflict?

Then of course we have to think about our intentions, which you mentioned a little bit in your intro, knowing our intentions for this. And I always stress that difficult conversations are really those kinds of conversations where you want to resolve it with still a relationship with the other person. If you’re not interested in a relationship, it’s really not a difficult conversation. It may be unpleasant, but it’s not difficult. You’re not interested in still interacting. And I think that sets off… You mentioned a little bit about the internet and social network. I think one of the really biggest challenges is that most of the people that are debating online are not really interested in a relationship with people that they disagree with. They’re looking for people that identify with their own, and that’s not really a difficult conversation; it’s more of a persuasion like you were saying.

So those are some of the things we talked about. We were just getting ready to talk about what were the perspectives I think people bring into a conflict, if I remember correctly. It was such a great conversation.

Mr. Marianes: Well, you were spot on. I don’t anybody who didn’t hear part one to take this incredibly articulate summary and conclude you got the richness of everything that Mitch offered in part one, because there was a greater depth underneath each one of those four points that he just mentioned and examples and stuff. So I’m hoping that this may cause some of you, to just pique your curiosity to go back and do it, because I will tell you that in listening—in participating in part one, obviously, and then listening to it again—I was taking notes to myself about so many elements that I had never really thought about in all the years of having conversations, even down to asking that probative question, Mitch: What is your contribution to the difficulty? And what are your intentions? But to frame it up, you just did a great job.

It sounds like when we start to look at people coming to conflict that they come with a variety of different perspectives. I think it would be really helpful if we could dig a little bit deeper and understand what are some of those perspectives that people bring to a conflict and what do they mean.

Dr. Owen: You know, in my workshops one of the things I start with is trying to help people understand really five basic moral perspectives that someone brings to a conflict. So I’ll just go through them with you, and then after I’m done we can talk about one or more of them.

The first one is a utility or an outcome-based approach. It’s: What will harm the least people and maximize the most happiness? An example might be the church hall is overbooked, and one room is extremely nice and beautiful and perfect for weddings and such, and the other room is kind of drab, but it will work as a room; it’s just not pretty. And you go back and you find the original booking was for the group that wants adult Bible study, and they have the nice room, and they’re arguing they should have the nice room. And the second booking came in later was for a wedding. Well, it’s easy to see that from a fairness standpoint you might go with the original booking, but if you look at it from a utility standpoint, what would be the decision that would create the least harm and maximize the most happiness? It would be to put the wedding in the nice room and put the adult Bible study [in the other]. So that’s an approach where you’re looking at: How do I work this out? Not fairness or by the rules, but how do I do this so that everybody is as happy as they could be and nobody is greatly harmed. So that’s the utility approach.

The second perspective that somebody might bring—and we’re seeing this very dominant in our society right now—is a moral’s: What are my rights? What rights do I bring to this argument that are personal, that are my personal rights? In the church, I’ll give you a couple examples that are on both ends of the spectrum. Someone coming in and saying, “Well, my grandfather helped build this parish. He helped build this; he paid for it. And you have to let me in to Pascha and Easter service. You have to. Even if I’m late, you have to let me in, because my grandfather built this building.”

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, “This is my church.”

Dr. Owen: They’re arguing that they have a moral right to something that they may or maybe shouldn’t have.

Another approach on the other end would be a parishioner that says, “You know, I have asthma, and I know that I’m late, but I cannot sit where the incense will hit me. Could you ask somebody to move in the back row so I can sit in the back so I can be away from the incense and I can leave?” So then you have to start weighing: Is that a personal right? Is that an ADA right that we should…? They were late, but if I’m going to emphasize moral rights, if I’m going to emphasize that perspective, I would advocate for that person to be able to have that seat in the back. So there’s this rights-advocate perspective.

The third one we teach is fairness. This is the one you spent your whole career working with, which was justice: everybody gets treated the same, no matter what. Everybody gets the same. There’s no favoritism, there’s no discrimination: everybody gets the same deal. If we do it for you, we do it for everybody else. And you could see a parishioner saying, “Well, look, you know, I need this,” and a council coming back and saying, “I know you want this, but if we do it for you, we have to do it for everybody. Could we do it for everybody in the parish? Is that possible? Is that something we could do financially or resource-wise?” So the fairness is really what we think of when we think of our justice system.

Then a fourth, which is really common is: What’s best for the common good? What course of action benefits the whole community? What will benefit…? We may ask someone to step down from a leadership role because they’re not performing very well. So a person bringing a common-good argument might advocate: “Joe can’t run the GOYA any more. He’s not very good at it, and it’s impacting the community and it’s hurting the entire community.” This is a person who’s not… Sure, Joe may be a great person and a great Christian and a great Orthodox member of the family, and you want to not do something that would hurt Joe, but the common-good perspective would say the organization, the community comes first.

Then the final one is probably grounded more in our faith than any of them, and that is the course of action that develops moral virtue, that leads to us taking… A person coming in with virtue perspective would come in and say, “I’m going to take this position because I need to help this person gain greater faith, or better virtues.” The simplest example of this is what a parent does with a child when they discipline them, knowing that the discipline is not something that they enjoy doing, and they know the child doesn’t enjoy the discipline, but the discipline is helping the child learn the lesson that will help make them a better Christian or a better person. So: “We’re not going to the fair because of your doing X, Y, or Z.” And you can see that playing out in a parish just as easily. We have that actual rule base in some of our spiritual rules, about taking Communion and what you should do before you take Communion, and things like that.

So those are the five: what’s the best happiness, utility outcome; what’s the rights of people involved; what will lead to everybody being treated equally, the same; what’s good for the common good of all; and then what helps grow our virtues and makes us better people.

Mr. Marianes: All right. So can I ask a question first? And then I want to dig in a little bit into nuance here. So help me understand the distinction between the utility perspective and the common-good perspective, because I’m seeing some overlaps there, so I’m probably not seeing it clearly enough.

Dr. Owen: Yeah, so if you think of utility, think of it in terms of two parties with different wants or different needs, and how do I meet the needs of those two parties. When you look at the common good, you’re really not looking at individual needs; you’re looking at global needs.

Mr. Marianes: Ah, the collective.

Dr. Owen: So you’re looking… A good example would be if you look at some of the Asian cultures. They have a very collectivist society. They believe that kamikazes in World War II gave their lives for the common good, and they took great harm, so it didn’t minimize the harm to one of the individuals in the group. One of them suffered great harm, and yet the common good was better.

Mr. Marianes: The predicate of this is to say that people come to conflicts with these perspectives. Is another way to look at that is that without knowing that there are five and that they picked one of them, that they enter into what they want out of the conflict based on one of these principles? Is that another way to…?

Dr. Owen: Sure. I would say it several ways. One I think is that some of us are wired value-based. We have values that drive us to align with one or more of these more intensely. You spent your life in law, so you spent your life practicing fairness and building fairness into everything you did. Someone who was a civil rights leader has spent their whole life fighting for rights, so there is a… There are people that come with those values built into them because of their core values about life, and then there are people that take a perspective because it will benefit them in a negotiation. They are typically more trained in conflict and negotiation, because, to be honest with you, in most cases where I’ve dealt with people, they don’t even know that they’re coming with that perspective.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, that’s what I was just thinking.

Dr. Owen: I teach these five perspectives as a way for you, if you’re mediating or if you’re one of the parties working with another, to anticipate what they are going to want and need so that you can prepare and acknowledge that issue, because you have to acknowledge if someone… I can still remember working the door at Easter, and we had to say, “The room’s full,” and we had fire marshals, and we had somebody who really needed to be in there because they were at that stage of life that this would be their last Easter. You had to make a decision there. Do I worry about fairness or do I change the rules and look at human rights? And will this make us more [virtuous]? And is this good for the common good for the whole community to see us make this exception? So if you’re thinking about these, you can actually start thinking about how you position what you’re saying to be more clear with the other person.

Mr. Marianes: So this is really helpful in one sense, but it’s confusing me in another sense, because it seems to me… The example you use is a beautiful example, of one where, clearly by one standard you come up with one answer; when you apply a different perspective you come up with a very different answer. So is it true that, while we may approach a difficult situation or conflict with one of these perspectives, that we’re capable of appreciating the need for a different perspective? Or are we just so wed in our ways that we sometimes…

Dr. Owen: No, I think you’re right, Bill, and to some degree I think the more intelligent we are about how to have difficult conversations and the more we learn about these kinds of challenges, we learn to appreciate the other perspective, and we also learn to blend them. And I should say this: not all conflict is going to fall where there’s a conflict between these, but you can look at really big issues we’ve been fighting in society for many, many years, and there are issues. And the ironic piece that I’ll just point out without going into politics is you can find people on the far right and the far left who are making rights arguments, whether it’s guns or abortion. You can equally see people on both sides making arguments against those rights.

So those are not really difficult conversations; that’s more politics and advocacy and whatever. But if you’re trying to resolve an issue about a room or an issue in the community or a parish situation, as a leader thinking about those five perspectives before you get into the conversation can help you be way more thoughtful and respectful, because if you come in with… If someone came in with “this is my right, my moral right,” and you don’t even give it attention, now you’ve got a whole issue that’s not even related to the conversation you’re having. You’re having a respect issue, a trust issue, an issue that’s much more deeply very hard to come back from.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, so what’s brilliant about this is that this reinforces one of the points you made very clearly, at least to me, in the first part, and that is the importance of approaching all of these difficult conversations with thoughtfulness and preparation and not immediately jumping in when you’ve got the emotional state moving in one direction. If you rationally apply just the template of these five, if you rationally try to apply them and put yourself in understanding where that person falls in it, then you can be better prepared for responding and understanding where they’re coming from. Is that another way to…?

Dr. Owen: That’s perfect, and you’ll also know where you’re coming from, because you’ll quickly identify your own perspective that you’re dominating, and it may help you broaden your perspective to think about different options as you go through the difficulty.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, no, I think that’s very helpful to have this, the rubric of these five.

Okay, let’s kind of focus a little bit more narrowly now. Now we’re actually talking about people having a difficult conversation. You’ve got a lot of experience with this thing, and I’m not saying you’re the old man of the sea and have seen everything, but in everything you’ve seen, what are some of the most common mistakes you’ve seen people make when they try to start to have a difficult conversation?

Dr. Owen: Well, the first one that just about anybody that works in this field would tell you is that if you’re not having an authentic conversation, it’s not going to go well.

Mr. Marianes: What do you mean?

Dr. Owen: Some people basically put on or talk indirectly, or they don’t really want to have a conversation that’s authentic and easy to understand and shows where they’re coming from. And we can talk about that in a little bit, but let me name four others that are less common that I’ve been finding really help people.

We talked about not preparing. There’s a lot of people that do not set themselves up right for the conversation. They enter into the conversation without thought, without thinking about their intentions, and we talked about those things; so that’s a common mistake that we really need to practice.

The next one, I’d say, though, is there and people talk about it, but they don’t really realize it in truth, and that is, when you’re in a difficult conversation, it is an opportunity to strengthen trust and the relationship you have with that person. I’ll often tell people: You can probably remember the customer service rep who went the extra mile to solve a problem for you. And I always tell the story of my son who had, at a very young age, at five, he cut the shoelaces on his shoe and showed them to his mom and said, “I just wanted to see what that would be like. Can you put them back?”

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] That’s a good experimenter! Man, this kid’s going to go into science or something. Man, he’s experimenting! I love it.

Dr. Owen: He’s going to do really well, I think. But so my wife took them back to REI, and the guy who was there took the shoe and said, “Okay,” and she said, “I just need shoelaces. Do you have shoelaces that fit this? He only cut one of them. I just need one pair, but I’ll buy both pair.” And the gentleman left and went back into the back room, and he came back out and handed her a brand-new pair of shoes.

Mr. Marianes: A new pair of shoes!?

Dr. Owen: And she was stunned. Yes, just replaced them. And they were one month old. And to this day my wife shops at REI, and to be honest with you the gentleman who was the salesperson changed jobs, went to work for Apple, and to this day he serves us when we go to Apple. That relationship was strengthened and we have great trust in him because we know he cares about us. So the opportunity to strengthen trust in a relationship.

The next one I’d say is making it safe, which is a different thing, and we can talk about that. Making it safe for the other person to participate, which I think is a really serious issue in our community, and we can talk about that in a minute.

And then I think the last one—I’ll just leave everybody hanging—and that is: sometimes you’re having the wrong conversation. You’re just not having the right conversation, and there are different kinds of conversations that you can have.

Mr. Marianes: Okay, so we’re going to have to get into that one, because that’s… You’re right, that is very intriguing, because everybody thinks they know the conversation they’re getting into and why they’re getting into it, and sometimes what you’re telling us is you’re doing the wrong thing. I got it.

Okay, so we talked about, in the first part… Let me ask you a question, because everyone has a different definition; I want to make sure I understand your definition. When you say “authentic conversation,” use some more words and tell me what you mean by that.

Dr. Owen: Where both parties are speaking in a way to where the other person understands what they’re saying and what positions they’re taking, how they feel about it. These are basic dialogue training… This is actually one of the things that you get in a lot of difficult conversations workshops; it’s where they spend most of their time, teaching people how to reflect back what the other person said. So we’re talking about: How do I make sure I’m being authentic and I’m communicating in a way that that person understands me, and I’m understanding them and helping them communicate properly.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, because what was confusing me by the word there is… So, you know, we could say, that’s really communicating effectively, but I was wondering if there was a level about being honest about it also.

Dr. Owen: I think that’s true as well. When somebody comes into a conversation and begins being deceitful, well, it’s going to impact trust; it’s going to impact the conversation. It’s not an authentic conversation. Taking a position that’s not truthful, not honest, introducing information that’s false—all those kinds of things impact the authentic-ness of the conversation.

Mr. Marianes: Right. I think what you’re saying is, if we were to go back and debrief, if you will, some of the least effective difficult conversations we have, we might find a pattern that is some conversation of these, one or more of these four or five items that we’re kind of getting wrong in terms of doing that. But one of the threads that seemed to run across them is this notion of trust. It seems like you use trust or synonyms for trust a lot, but trust is one of those things that people use in a lot of different contexts. When we’re talking about trust in this context, what are you talking about? What do you mean by trust in the context of difficult conversations?

Dr. Owen: That’s really a great question and thoughtful of you to ask that, because I think a lot of people define trust very narrowly, and they don’t define what is really trustworthiness, or how can I act in a way where other people will trust me. So when we’re talking about trust, the first thing—like if you have a group and you’re talking about it, you ask them to define it, you typically will hear character and ethical characteristics come out. You’ll hear people say, “Well, he’s honest. He’s got good character. He does what he says.” These are all… You can be a great Orthodox Christian and be of very high character and still not be trustworthy. The reason is, there are other factors that weigh into whether people trust you.

I often tell a story on my workshops—I’ll just tell it here today—where I’m traveling; I’m out in the wilderness. Let’s say I’m out in New Mexico, and I’m all by myself in a rental car, and I have the day, and I get up at 5:00 a.m. and I want to see the whole state. And I get out in the desert and I’m way out, and I don’t know anywhere where I’m going, and I’m having this stomach pain that’s just killing me, and it gets worse and worse, and by 9:00 a.m., I’m really hurting. So I’m starting to look for civilization, some help, because it’s getting to where it’s harder to drive. And I come across a crossroads that has a sign that has a cross on it and an arrow, so I’m thinking, “Okay, maybe this is a medical thing. I’ll follow it.”

And I drive and I come into this little crossroad little town with a gas station and a few things, and there’s a double-wide trailer building with a big cross on the front of it, so I say, “I’ll go here.” And I pull in and I go and I open the door. The lady on the other side of the door is a lovely nurse in a white outfit, and she comes up to me and she says, “You don’t look so good.” She starts poking around and in a minute she goes, “You have acute appendicitis, and we can’t get you to a hospital quick enough. There’s no helicopters that can get out here and get out to the big city in time. But you’re lucky: there are two retirees that are out here that are both doctors.”

And she goes about naming one of the doctors as being of great character and ethics, and she goes about naming the second doctor with no character and actually bad ethics. Then she asks me whom should I pick. Now just think for a minute: Whom should I pick there? Would you pick the one with character, or would you pick the one that really was a slum-lord or a thief? Well, what if the one that had great character was a veterinarian, and the one that was not of good character was a gastroenterologist? You see, so what you come down to is: Competence is just as important as character, and we see this happen in our communities, where someone takes on a role but they don’t have the skillset to do it well. Instead of us having difficult conversations about “how can we help you learn how to do this better? how can we help you to do this better?” we just don’t say anything and we talk about them, and we don’t solve it—and we don’t trust them. And we don’t participate in helping them, because we don’t trust them to be successful.

So character is important; competence is important. Cuddy really wrote a whole book on just trust around confidence.

The next area is a theorist named Lencioni did a lot of work on, and that was: you have to be vulnerable; you have to be able to show mistakes, show weakness. I always tell people that supervise people, “If you don’t ever admit mistakes, why would your employees ever come to you and say, ‘I made a mistake’?” because you’re what they’re aspiring to be. So we have to have character, we have to have competence, we have to have vulnerability.

And then probably the most significant thing impacting our parishes today is we have to have cultural ability, because cultural differences create lack of relatability. I know that’s a big word, but—

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, say that again.

Dr. Owen: Your ability to relate to other people helps you build trust. That’s why if you’re with somebody who grew up in the same island in Greece, you automatically start trusting them more for some reason. That’s why if you’re with an Orthodox Christian, you start trusting them, because you’re both Orthodox Christians: our ability to relate to each other.

So when we have this pan-Orthodox world that we’re embracing, and we have all these people, we have to learn to embrace the cultures of all our community and all people. And that means if someone’s a sports fan, then I need to learn a little bit about sports; if someone’s into the arts, I need to understand arts. And the best example of this is in youth programs, where we see youth programs skewed toward one type of activity that really identifies with one cultural norm, like “We’re going to have the best basketball team.” So now there’s a bunch of kids that don’t play sports that aren’t as engaged. Or we have a group that: “Oh, we’re going to do a lot of arts and museum stuff.” Well, now the kids that want to play sports… And so this is one of the challenges with trustworthiness: that I be able to relate to you and you be able to relate to me, as well as be competent, [of good] character, and have vulnerability.

Mr. Marianes: Wow. That is the most fulsome answer that I’ve heard. Again, it shows the level of dimensions below what we… we like to euphemistically talk… Everybody says, “Oh, trust is absolutely important!” but when you ask them to define trust, it’s usually not as rigorous as this. I love the idea of looking at their character, looking at their competence, looking at their vulnerability. And then the phrase on cultural agility is something I think we need to think more about and apply. I remember a comedian once talking about how—he was in France; he was an American—he was in France, and all of a sudden he heard somebody else speaking English that was obviously an American. “You’re an American! Oh yeah! Where are you from? I’m from New York!” And he said, “We were like best friends. As far as I knew, this guy was an axe-murderer, but we had that one thing in common, and all I knew was this was great!”

There’s a flip-side that I wanted to ask you about in terms of those cultural agility, because I have seen—and I know you have, too—Orthodox communities that may have a predominant focus, a predominant jurisdictional connection, but have been truly open of their hearts and their souls and their hands and their arms and welcomed people of all kinds of different variety, not only of religious traditions or ethnic traditions, but just everything. And this multi-cultural melting-pot in the context of a church—is that a part of building that kind of relationship of trust within a parish community, to have that level of welcomeness and agility and acceptance?

Dr. Owen: I think it plays a huge roles, and it happens at both the community level and the individual level. So if you can think of individuals in the community who are interested in the culture of, say, the Russian Orthodox member who joined our parish because there wasn’t one here, or the Serbian who was looking for a place and ended up in this Antiochian church, in every case, it takes somebody saying, “Hey, I want to understand you, or know you better. I want to be able to relate to what your life is like. Yeah, ouzo’s great, but I want to drink that slivovitz or whatever that is.”

The point is that we can… we have to find ways of getting to know each other beyond rallying around the traditions of our church, because the traditions of our church, each parish has some dominant historical tradition, and it doesn’t even mean… You can go to one Greek church and another Greek church, and they each have their own traditional, historical traditions. It’s about relating, and if you’re thinking about going into a difficult conversation and you can relate to somebody about the game this weekend or, hey, they just had this new exhibit at the art museum, that person is going to be more comfortable with you. If you can be vulnerable, they’re going to realize: he doesn’t have an ego problem; it’s not about him being right. He’s admitted he’s wrong before. And if you can demonstrate competence in the issue that you’re arguing about or discussing or having to fix… Of course, I think that you shouldn’t be an Orthodox Christian if you can’t aspire for character and ethics; I think that’s a foundation of being a member, is that we seek to have character and ethics.

Mr. Marianes: But I think you again have provided a beautiful microscope examination of elements that constitute trust. I would ask people listening to reflect on a conversation that they’ve been a part of or a dispute that they’ve been involved in that didn’t go very well, and actually ask yourself the question: Which of these four or five elements of trust was missing, either maybe on my part or maybe on the other person’s part? Where was there an issue of character; where was there an issue of competence; where was I not expressing vulnerability; where were we not talking about the relationship and the agility and the willingness to engage? And I think that is a really helpful kind of a template to kind of check through as you’re going through this exercise, and it also is something that makes us all better.

So let’s assume that we’ve gone through these processes and we’ve actually started to think about the common mistakes people make, we’ve actually used your rubric to assess what is our trustworthiness in this regard, and let’s assume that we have a strong relationship in the actions: What are some of the things that I should be thinking about doing during the difficult conversation that will relate to this whole notion of creating a trusting environment? Right when I’m in the middle of the swamp, what are some of the things that I could be thinking about and doing in that moment and in that conversation?

Dr. Owen: I will give you my two biggies that I try to teach people to always do. Everybody can remember these two. The first one is: Demonstrate shared responsibility for the difficulty you’re in. Ask yourself what is your contribution to the situation. It could be as simple as realizing that you didn’t realize this was a big issue, or that you’ve offended somebody, or that this mattered. Figuring out what your contribution was.

It also would be good if you’re also thinking about: what is my contribution to making assumptions that are not accurate? You know, the need to test your assumptions in this point. And that brings me to the second point, and that is sharing your perception of what’s going on, your story—as not factual, but what you perceive. In other words, you don’t say, “Here’s what happened”; you go in and go, “You know, when this happens, it seems like this is happening. It makes me feel this way.” You do this to help you self-prepare and to understand your inferences beforehand, but when you get into the conversation, you never tell your story like it’s the facts; you tell your story like: “You know, I’ve been to three council meetings, and every time I bring up this issue you seem upset. It seems to me like you’re disagreeing with me, but you’re not expressing it.”

You see how I did that? “It seems to me—but I want to be clear. You may have points that I don’t understand.” So it’s very important that you don’t go into a difficult conversation with an arrogance about my story. Shared responsibility: here’s my contribution, here’s what I probably should have done better, and that’s why we’re having this difficult conversation. Even when someone’s done something terrible, the other party maybe didn’t react properly, maybe didn’t respond quickly enough. You can always think about what your contribution is.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, but that’s hard, particularly if your perception is that it’s their fault and they screwed this whole thing up and it’s all on them, and all of a sudden you’ve got to say, “What do I own? What’s my part of this problem?” That’s hard.

Dr. Owen: You know, I’ve had coachees that I’ve had to have that conversation with three or four times before I would let them go have the difficult conversation.

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] You role-played it and they failed, huh?

Dr. Owen: “So what’s your contribution?” And they would go: “Well, he did this, and he did this, and he did this.” “You’ve told me a lot about what he did, but what…?” And I think being able to identify your contribution to any situation is one of the strongest and most powerful ways to be a great leader. I’ll use a perfect example that happened this week. The maestro of Omaha came out and said he shouldn’t have sold Apple, and his partner told him he shouldn’t have sold Apple and he did; he said, “It was a mistake and I should’ve listened to him.” And this is one of the smartest men in the world about stocks, and he was willing, in front of his whole community and stockholders, say, “Hey, I missed this one, and I should’ve listened to him.” That ability—just think of the trust people have of him now, when he says, “No, I’ve got this. I know what I’m doing here,” because he learns from his mistakes. So it is hard. Anyway…

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, you have not shared the responsibility and accepted your contribution when your response is, “I failed to understand what a total idiot this person was!” [Laughter] That’s not owning your part.

Dr. Owen: [Laughter] No, that’s true.

Mr. Marianes: So we need to take a break to give you a chance to breathe, but before you do, you teased something, and I’ve got to get that out, man, because it’s just gnawing on me here. So you mentioned the word “safety,” and I’m not… When I think of safety in the context of a difficult conversation, I naturally gravitate to physical safety and things of that nature; that’s the way we’re trained to think. But what’s the difference between safety and trust in this context?

Dr. Owen: Safety is very different from trust. I may trust you, but I may choose not to participate and be engaged by you in a difficult conversation because of some outcome I’m scared of or that I’m fearful of or that I might feel might impact me in a negative way. So safety is about helping people feel comfortable going into the difficult conversation. You’ve got to remember, people infer things; they think things that may or may not be true. They may assume that you’re having this conversation for a much more horrible reason, even though they trust you. And they also may be culturally trained to not disagree or not have conflict. It’s especially true with someone they view is more significant.

An example would be a priest. Priests have to work very hard to get feedback, because most people are not going to criticize a priest to his face, privately—privately, please. But the same is true of a parish council. Now, I know everybody’s thinking, “No, no, no. I sit in our general assembly meeting and they go right at him.” No, those are people that aren’t interested in a difficult conversation.

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] They don’t care about the relationship; you’ve already made that point, right at the beginning.

Dr. Owen: So we have cultures and we have a groupthink kind of belief where it’s not safe for me to disagree with the group. Think of a parish council where 80% of the parish council thinks you should do something, and you in your heart have grave concern over it. How easy is it for you to raise a concern there? Is it safe? You might trust everybody in the room, but is it safe for me to say it? If the culture has been: We don’t welcome those kinds of dissent; we don’t welcome disagreement…

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, so that’s a… There’s a nuance there that is… I’m honestly not capturing. My denseness is… I want to say, if I trust everybody in the room, then why would I… where would I not feel safe? Why would I not feel safe in that context? I get the concept. We’re seeing it manifest itself a lot in today’s culture. You know me and you know that I’ll take some strong positions on some issues I feel strongly about. We’ve had that go-round, and I, and I’m sure like you, have gotten tons of private emails, texts, and calls from people saying, “I’m really glad you’re taking that position; I’m glad you’re advocating for this, because I believe it, too.”

And when I ask them, “Well… Gee, why aren’t you in the conversation?” the answer I get back is “I don’t feel safe. There would be a consequence to me for doing that,” whether they lose their job or they lose relationships or stuff, etc. And that, to me, always translates to: They don’t trust something. They don’t trust the hierarchy or they don’t trust their employer or they don’t trust their friends. I’m still struggling with this, partner, so give me a few more seconds to catch up.

Dr. Owen: So you’re using “trust” in a much broader way. You’re using “trust” to define trust of the situation, trust of the system, trust of the Church, the parish, how we work. I’m using “trust” in terms of a relationship: Is this person trustworthy? Is this person trustworthy?

So let me give you another example. You’re at a parish council meeting, and you want to express a negative view; you disagree about something, but everybody in the parish council is for it, and they really want to do it and they’re very gung-ho about it. You really have concerns. A lot of people would not feel safe saying something, not because they don’t trust everybody in the room, but they don’t want to be labeled as the person who disagreed, the person who didn’t agree with everybody, who wasn’t excited. Oh, and they didn’t want people to talk about them tomorrow: “Well, he didn’t really want to do this.” Because the concern might be: I just have a concern I want to deal with. And it takes a strong person with good skills in difficult conversations to articulate it in a way that they would not diminish other people’s trust in them. So in some ways it’s kind of the back way, Bill. It’s: “I don’t want to express this. I don’t feel safe saying this because you may not trust me after I say this, even though I trust you.”

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, the repercussions; it’ll ricochet back to me kind of thing and impact our relationship. So there is a nuance below—or I don’t want to say below—there’s a nuance between trust and safety, and both of them have to be maintained and maximized in order to have an effective difficult conversation.

Dr. Owen: Yes, and I think trust is the more foundational piece. So if you don’t have trust, then it’s a much harder difficult conversation. If we don’t have safety, the person may not participate and you may not have a successful conversation, but you may still maintain the relationship.

Mr. Marianes: So trust is the foundation, but safety is the building on the foundation that really needs to be there to have the most effectiveness, right?

Dr. Owen: I would agree. You know, think of it this way. You have to make it to where the other person wants to participate in the difficult conversation. And difficult conversations by nature are unpleasant.

Mr. Marianes: Oh yeah, amen.

Dr. Owen: So I’m asking you to participate in an unpleasant thing. You trust me. You trust me, please come, yet at the same time they’re still going to be hesitant. The safety is about pushing through that safety piece and helping them feel like: “Okay, this is a conversation I want to be a part of. This is a discussion I want to discuss.”

Mr. Marianes: All right. That’s brilliant. So on that note we’re going to take a short break right now, let you take a deep breath here and grab another drink of coffee. When we come back, Mitch and I are going to discuss some more of the difficult challenges and some specific strategies of it, and particularly I want to come back to something that you teased early on, so I’m giving you a head’s up on this: this whole notion of the “wrong conversation”; I want to get into that.

So we’ll take a short break right now and be right back. If anybody has any questions or want to talk to the real expert over here, please feel free to call in at 1-855-AF-RADIO; that’s 1-855-237-2346. So let’s take a short break right now.

Mr. Marianes: Welcome back to the final stretch of Stewardship Calling, the last part of part two of having difficult conversations and dealing with conflict, with my special guest Mitch Owen. Mitch, during the breaks something real quickly occurred to me, so maybe you can help me do this quickly so we can get back onto that other thing I really want to get to that you mentioned.

Are there any things that you have found that actually make it easier and better to help people feel safer in having difficult conversations or are there techniques or strategies or things that we can be thinking about doing?

Dr. Owen: Yeah, so let me get you just three quickies. The first one is give people permission to disagree. Actually encourage disagreement. Don’t equate disagreement with disrespect. In other words, disrespect is totally different [from] disagreement, so don’t attach that to it. So give people permission to disagree.

The second thing is share your intentions for the conversation you’re about to have, what [is] the ultimate outcome you want. “I want to discuss this with you. I want us to both be successful in what we’re trying to do here. I want us to have a strong relationship at the end.” Talk about what you would like the final state to be, not the specific solution to the problem, but your relationship, the outcome, the best for the community, what you’re trying to achieve, that you have shared understanding.

And that’s the third one: seek out a shared purpose that everybody cares about. So if you’re disagreeing on the festival, then you might start by discussing: What’s the overall goal of the festival? Aren’t we all trying to raise some money and share our traditions and especially our faith? Aren’t we trying to raise some money for the poor? We might be disagreeing about that booth, but let’s keep in mind this is what we’re all here for. Let’s have a good discussion so we can be successful doing that.

Those three things—allow disagreement, share your intentions, and find and share that great shared purpose that everybody wants and cares about.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, what you just said is pure gold, and I hope anybody listening to this will recognize that those are three extraordinary things that you can do that lead to a vastly different result. If you can let people know: “This is what I hope to accomplish,” not: “I want you to agree with my position,” but “This is the objective we’re trying to accomplish, and let’s make sure we share that objective, and let’s feel free to disagree. Obviously we want to do it agreeably—you can disagree agreeably—but let’s have this conversation.” And I think that context is really helpful, so I would ask anybody who’s involved in leading conversations of any kind, not just difficult conversations, to really reflect on that. I really appreciate the clarity that you offer on that, and particularly sharing the permission for disagreement as well as the ultimate vision and purpose. So that’s beautiful.

Okay, now, early on—not early on—you teased something, and I hate that when that happens, because my obsessive mind keeps going back to that. You mentioned something about having “the wrong conversation,” and I always thought that if we were having a difficult conversation, we knew exactly what conversation we’re having, but obviously I am wrong. So. Teach!

Dr. Owen: So the most often mistakes people make is they argue over positions. They actually take a position before the conversation, and they seek to prove that their perspective is right, their position. “We should move the date of the festival.” “The GOYAns need to meet once a week.“These may be great positions, but they don’t tell anybody what the need is that’s trying to be addressed: what’s the problem, the issue, the thing that you’re advocating to fixing. It’s all about taking a strategy. We can argue strategies forever. I can find 20 different ways to make GOYA work better. They may be solving all kinds of different needs, so it’s far better to express what’s the issue first; what’s the need we want to address; what is the problem that we need to fix, that will meet our needs.

This area is like foundational to what they do in negotiating and working to get countries to agree on peace plans and things like that. In fact, the Middle East agreement between Egypt and Israel is a perfect example, where they had argued for years and fought wars for years. Egypt finally expressed what their need [was] and Israel finally expressed what their need [was], and there was a win-win. Egypt doesn’t put offensive equipment in the desert, and Israel gave back the desert.

But from a parish standpoint, it’s really about not trying to take a position, but discussing first consensus on what do we want to fix; what is the need. Or if you’re in a debate with somebody: here’s what I need to address; not what you should do for me, but here’s what I need.

Mr. Marianes: So I get it now, and I really appreciate that explanation. Part of this really kind of comes back to the thing that I obsess a lot about, and that’s the whole why. Why do we exist? Why are we doing? Why does this ministry exist? Why? And you actually use that as a great analogy in the context of the festival and stuff like that. Before we start arguing about the what, let’s make sure we have a common consensus about the why, because if we’re on different pages of why, then it’s easy to understand why we’ll be on different pages of what to do, because we’re shooting at different targets or we’re going down different directions.

Dr. Owen: Well, and let me say this, Bill. There could be multiple whys. Someone may be really involved in the festival because they really care about donating and doing something for charity. Another person may be very involved because they really care about sharing their culture and their family history. There’s no reason why those whys can’t operate together, but if I’m in a debate with you and you’re about charity and I’m about culture, you not telling me what you care about, I might come up with solutions that just destroy your ability to do charity; you may come up with solutions that destroy my ability to do my culture piece. So by expressing those needs to each other and acknowledging each other’s needs or whys, then we can find easier situations; we can find solutions. It drives us to a better conversation, the right conversation, about how do I meet your needs and how do you meet my needs.

Mr. Marianes: Right. And now that we have an understanding of that, it probably makes it a lot easier to avoid proposing ideas which, while it would meet my need, it doesn’t meet your need, right? Or vice-versa.

Dr. Owen: Correct.

Mr. Marianes: And it helps me exclude some things that I might have otherwise come up with.

Dr. Owen: And that would upset me or make it more difficult for me to participate. I even do a scenario in a workshop that demonstrates this exact behavior. I put them in a lab where they literally make this mistake because they don’t know what I’ve asked them to do. Anyway, that’s a day for one of our workshops when we have people in it.

Mr. Marianes: Okay! Yeah, we’re going to do that. We’re going to do that. All right, now, look. Sometimes we understand our needs and we understand everybody’s needs, and we’re not hung up on positions and the respective arguments that we’re trying to make, but we still haven’t addressed the fundamental issue. So after we get past understanding the needs, what [is] the next level of issues that arise that prevent us or that require us to change the conversation we have?

Dr. Owen: Yes, so I often say that there’s two parts to having the right conversation. One is the right conversation about our needs. The second part is making sure you’re discussing the right needs or the right issues. Issues can be very complex and needs can be very complex. Let me use a scenario to explain this, because this one’s a little bit harder to grasp if you don’t have a real situation.

Let’s say I’m president of the parish council, and I have a parish council member that’s brand new. They come on board and we talk about the role and the responsibilities of council members and opening the church and closing the church—all the rules, right? And the first couple of times that person does okay, but the third time they’re responsible for opening the church and closing at the end of the day. Somehow the key gets missing. And being a good parish council member, you’re going to have a conversation with that person about how important a key is. Somebody may have had a baptism the next day, and we need to find that key, and you need to be careful; the key always goes here—and I go through all the details of how we handle the key.

A couple weeks go by, and that same person is now responsible for closing up the church after a wedding, and it’s late at night and everybody leaves. And the next day the priest comes into the church and all the lights are on. Things are not put where they should be, and it’s just really… We’ve spent money on the electricity, and the air conditioning didn’t go down. And so, well, it wasn’t a big deal, but I’m going to have another conversation with this new council member about: when you close down after an event, you make sure you turn off the lights, make sure you arm the security system; that wasn’t secure, that wasn’t on. Real concerned that you don’t know how to shut down, so I go over that, and I teach them all about that.

And two or three weeks go by, and the same person has to close the church again, and that day they did pretty good: the lights are off, but the security system wasn’t on again. Now, the rational thought would be I have a conversation about the security system.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, I’ve got to give him another checklist to go through.

Dr. Owen: But the issue isn’t the security system. The issue is responsibility. The issue is attention to detail. It’s: you lost the key, you left the lights on, you didn’t turn off the security system another time. You’ve had three incidents where you had a checklist and you didn’t take attention to it; you didn’t pay attention to it: you didn’t do what you needed to do. You have an attention issue you need to focus on.

I’m no longer talking about one incident; I’m talking about a pattern of behavior. So there is a level of content—what’s the content of the issue; what am I discussing; what’s the issue—but if there’s a pattern of behavior, then at some point I need to stop talking about specific incidents and talk about a pattern, or the person will never change, because they are looking at these as separate incidents and “I fixed it.” “I fixed it. I no longer mess up the security system.”

And then there’s a third level or a third type of conversation, which is sometimes the most difficult of any conversation you could have, and it’s about relationships. It’s where we’ve had a lot of content issues and we’ve talked about them; we’ve talked about patterns of behavior: now we’re going to talk about how you don’t respect me and I don’t respect you.

Mr. Marianes: Ooh! Ooh, that’s a tough one!

Dr. Owen: Or you’re insubordinate, or you don’t show respect for me and we don’t have trust, and we need to have a good relationship if we’re going to serve on council together. And this isn’t just for council members; this is for anybody. This could be the same issue between a priest and a parishioner; it could be an issue between a husband and a wife. It could be an issue between two business partners or two people that run a booth at the festival or the two people who lead GOYA. It could be any case where they disagree and they talk about the issues and they talk about the issues, and then eventually they need to talk about a pattern. We keep having a problem here. We keep getting into the same conversation over and again. And then eventually it is: I don’t think you respect me and I don’t think that we’re respecting each other. And that’s a hard conversation. And the truth is often the worst situations are those relationship issues.

Mr. Marianes: Mm-hmm, yeah. But before we get into that one, because you’re right, that is the tricky landmine, to me another incredible insight you offered is—and I really want to ask anybody, everybody in church—and I agree with you: this applies equally to everybody in your business life and your family life—but in your church life, think about all those times when you’ve had conversations or disagreements with somebody, and it doesn’t seem to get resolved, and then ask yourself: What’s the pattern here? And then stop focusing on the particular tactic or thing or issue or discussion; that there’s actually a pattern if you step back and look at it.

We’re so into getting angry because they didn’t turn the alarm off or they interrupted at this point in the meeting or that they don’t… We haven’t really spent the time to really discern the pattern, and then after that, after you have the pattern conversation, I guess if it’s still not right, then you can actually have the relationship. Can you skip the pattern conversation and go to the relationship, or does one lead to the other?

Dr. Owen: They lead to each other, but if you have a bad relationship issue, you’re not going to have good content or pattern behavior.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering. Yeah.

Dr. Owen: So if you don’t have the relationship—and that’s why we talked about trust and safety before—but let me give you a real-life… I’ll be vulnerable and tell you a real-life situation. I was helping run the… I set up the kitchen for the Greek festival every year, and the guy who mentored me on that had done it for years. We’re very different personalities. He shows up on Thursday, has no plans, and figures out how to make it work. Well, he can fix anything. He’s like MacGyver of Greek festival; I’m not making this up. I’m not going to name him; he knows who he is if he’s listening. He’s the MacGyver.

For years I would complain to him. We’d have these difficult conversations. “Well, I was here. I didn’t know what to do. I sat here for an hour. If I knew what we were going to do, I could do it.” “Well, we’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out.” And it occurred to me I was having the wrong conversation with him. So the next time we were getting ready for the festival, I went and had lunch with him, and I said, “Listen. You need to understand I work differently than you.” And we talked about a pattern of behavior where he shows up and just figures it out, and I can’t do that. I can’t fix stuff. I don’t know how to do the little stuff he does. I can set it up, but I need to have a plan. And we negotiated in our difficult conversation that he would let me create a plan with one caveat: he can change the plan if it needs to be changed.

Mr. Marianes: Beautiful!

Dr. Owen: So I said let me develop a plan, but when you get there and do your MacGyver thing, if we need to change it, we’ll change it. And then I did this caveat. I said, “Because the next conversation you and I are going to have, if we don’t fix this, is going to be about our relationship, because it’s getting to be where I’m frustrated.” So I used… I just warned him about the relationship conversation because we were having a pattern conversation, discussion.

So the point of this is—and he’s a great guy; he’s one of my best friends—from my standpoint, the last thing I wanted to do was have a relationship conversation with him, so I’m trying to stave off of that.

Mr. Marianes: Plus you had already had the trust, and you I think probably felt safe in that conversation otherwise you wouldn’t have had the lunch that you had. So now you could get down to the detail and say, “Okay, look. This is what I kind of need. I kind of need this thing.” And I guess to me, Mitch, this is so brilliant because it is a universally applicable thing—in your marriage, with your kids, in your work environment, with your neighbors. I mean, I’m trying to think of any scenario in which what you just said isn’t equally valid. It seems to me to be one of those universal truths. Awesome.

Dr. Owen: I would agree.

Mr. Marianes: All right. I know we’re running out of time here, but I want to get into a couple quick things. When you actually have the conversation—we all think we know how to listen—and people like me, I’m not sure I actually do—but do you have any lessons on how people can have a better difficult conversation?

Dr. Owen: Yeah, let me say two things about listening. I think listening is multi-dimensional, and most people don’t think of it that way. What I mean is there’s kind of two levels of listening. One is hearing what they say to you to ensure you understood it, and we do that—we teach that mainly—as rephrasing what they said. “I heard you say this. Am I right?” That’s really important.

The second part of listening is being able to reflect their feelings, being able to acknowledge and reflect back to them how they personally feel. If you’re having a really bad customer service issue and you call a good company that does customer service really well, the first thing they do on the conversation is not rephrase what you said to them. They go right to reflecting. They go, “Oh, Dr. Owen, you have every right to be upset about that. I can see where this is very frustrating. I can see where you’re very disappointed in the product.” So what I tell people is think of listening as both rephrasing: Can I rephrase back to that person and get what they said to me?—and that means I’m listening. If I can’t do that, I’m definitely not listening. And can I reflect the emotion they carry?

And that’s important for another reason, because if you’re not recognizing their emotion, you won’t recognize when the moment is this conversation needs to take a break and come back to it after we get some water or something because someone’s letting their emotions get out of control.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, because you’re so frustrated or whatever the case may be.

So I understand now the level of nuance there that you’re communicating in there, and that is a very powerful example, and we’ve all seen it. Your customer service example is the perfect example of that, where all of a sudden you feel like the customer service rep is on your side, not the company that employs them side. And it makes a huge difference!

Dr. Owen: We like to think that.

Mr. Marianes: [Laughter] I know, I know! They were well-trained, okay? I get it, I get it. You probably presented them or some darn thing like that. But when we have these conversations, how do we do that? How do we actually have the actual conversation? Are there any techniques or steps or lessons that we can learn from this? Everything you’ve said sequentially makes sense. I love the way you build this all up and stuff like that, but is there any kind of… Now I’m looking for the formula, Owen. I want you to give me the formula for this conversation.

Dr. Owen: Well, unfortunately that’s probably another conversation we need to have.

Mr. Marianes: Oh, on another program. Got it.

Dr. Owen: What I would say to you is that the more you master the tools and techniques, you’ll know what tool and technique to pull out at what point. So let me give you a really simple example. While we’ve talked about not taking positions and expressing needs, that’s not usually what other people do. So if you’re in a conversation with someone who takes a position, you have to deal with it; you have to figure out how do I get to their need. And the typical response is: Why do you feel that way? Or why should we do that? But that’s actually not the best approach, because the minute you take a position and I go: I don’t agree with you; why do you think that? I’ve just made you defensive.

Usually people take a position, and then they give you some higher reason why they should. “If we expand the adult education program, those of us doing it will be overwhelmed, and it will just be even harder to find volunteers.” So now they’ve said they don’t want to expand. They’ve taken a position: We don’t want to expand the education program. And I could say, “Well, why do you think we won’t be able to get volunteers?” I have not at that point done anything but make that person defensive.

So the way I teach it is that you first have to learn the tool of acknowledging the concern before inquiring. So an example would be, if you would come to me and say, “Oh, we can’t do this adult education expansion. It’s going to kill us. We’re overwhelmed already, and we won’t be able to get any volunteers.” I would say to you something like this: “Well, you know, you’re absolutely right. If expanding it was going to result in y’all being more overwhelmed, if expanding it was going to make it harder for us to get volunteers, I agree totally. We shouldn’t do it. I don’t see that as a problem. I see ways around that. But you have some knowledge of it. How about sharing with me why you think it’s going to be harder to get volunteers if we expand the program, and why you think it’s going to be overwhelming, if we get some new blood in to help you?”

And the point I just did there—you see the difference?

Mr. Marianes: Oh, yeah. Huge.

Dr. Owen: I invited them to share without questioning their role, their view.

Mr. Marianes: And without the presumption that you think they’re wrong.

Dr. Owen: And I acknowledged their concern.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, you didn’t say, “I think you’re wrong; now prove me wrong, prove yourself right.” What you said is, “No, based on your assumptions, it makes perfect sense.” And there’s a subtlety to bring that into “But I think maybe we can do some other things.”

Our metropolitan once—we were having a difficult conversation; I think this was before you were on the council, and I—I’ll take the blame on this one; there were others with me, but it was my fault—I was taking the advocacy position: “We have to do this. We have to do this. We have to do this.” And finally he looked at me and says, “Okay. That’s a good Plan A. Is there a Plan B?” And all of a sudden he knocked me off the ledge. It’s like: Now there’s a challenge. Let’s see if I can think of a Plan B. Lo and behold, I could think of a Plan B. Then we thought of a Plan C, and then at the end of the day we came up with something, but it was kind of an interesting way to kind of knock it off the ledge.

Okay, I’ve got one other one that’s burning at me, because this is something that I am horrible at, and I think increasingly we are all suffering a little bit with this. I am listening to what somebody else is saying, but then, instead of listening, I’m thinking about my response, because I just heard them say something with which I disagree. Now what do I do?

Dr. Owen: Say that one more time to me. So you’re listening…

Mr. Marianes: I’m listening to somebody and they’re talking about something, but they just said something—they’re not done talking, but they just said something I totally disagree with. How am I going to handle that, because I want to jump in and say, “Hey, wait wait wait. Not so fast! You’re wrong on that.” That’s kind of the fight response. How do we, when we really disagree with them—I mean, sincerely, not just because we’re hung up on a position, but we sincerely disagree with a position they’re taking, and they just said it. What do we do? How do we bridge that?

Dr. Owen: So if they haven’t already expressed why they’re expressing it, the ultimate outcome of that, then I would push for that. In other words, an example might be someone says something like, “Our festival should be twice as big.” And I’m looking at how many volunteers we have, and I would disagree on why we can’t double the size of our festival next year; there’s just no way. We don’t have the people to do it. I might say, “Well, why is it important to you that we expand it that big? What’s the goal of this?” So what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to get them to tell me what the need is they’re addressing or what they’re trying to address. Then once they’ve done that, I would acknowledge that goal. What I’m trying to get is something they know I would agree with and they would agree with, that’s a broader, bigger picture. I don’t know if I’m expressing this well.

And then once they can articulate that, I would go back and then I would say, “I agree with you, if expanding the festival would achieve this goal, I’d agree totally. I don’t think it will. I disagree. Help me understand more details why you feel that way.” So I would start inquiring why they’re taking the position, and then I would offer my perspective as tentative. I wouldn’t go in and say, “You’re totally wrong”; I’d say, “Well, here’s some things that I’m thinking about,” and approach that. But it’s really hard for us to do this without a real situation, if you know what I mean, and talking it out.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, I do. I just think that it’s so hard when you hear somebody say something with which you vigorously disagree, to go through that mental step that you just logically laid out about let them say it, ask them why it’s important to them, try and reach a common understanding of it, then you can express your concerns, etc. That’s just hard, isn’t it?

Dr. Owen: Acknowledge and then inquire. Acknowledge the ultimate goal, the shared goal. Always acknowledge the thing that you both care deeply about before you inquire.

The other thing is, it’s okay to disagree. It’s okay. And the mindset of “We don’t agree on this. How are we going to work this out? Let’s talk about how we can stay the path to the shared goal.”

And then you said something in your last comment, earlier comment, about what His Eminence did, and I would tell you that when I’m trying to get change, and when I’m working with a group with strategic positioning or whatever, I spend a lot of time making them generate multiple right answers. And so, ideally, I usually force them to come up with multiple right answers before we start debating or we start taking positions.

Mr. Marianes: And I want everybody to hear that, because I know— I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Dr. Owen: And the reason— Go ahead, no.

Mr. Marianes: I was just trying to echo that point, because I know this is something that you’ve done and you do, and I want everybody in the church world to hear that, and I want everybody in the church world to please reflect on doing that, and ask the question that you’re going to explain right now, because I think that is really powerful.

Dr. Owen: Let me say it another way, too, from a psychology standpoint. Your brain has two parts of the brain—well, it has lots of parts, but there’s a creative part in the back of your head that’s where you get all these right answers from, and there’s a frontal lobe in the front that decides are they good or bad. The minute your brain engages the frontal lobe, it shuts down creativity.

Mr. Marianes: Yep, the neocortex takes over.

Dr. Owen: I’ll give you a very simple example. You have five or six people that want to get something to each after church; they all want to go together. One person names a restaurant, and somebody goes, “Oh, I ate there. It’s too greasy; I can’t eat there.” The frontal lobe just kicked in for them. Everybody else’s frontal lobe kicks in and starts going, “Well, where can we go that would not have greasy food?” And their creativity goes down, and it takes them 30 minutes to figure out where to eat, even though they’re surrounded by hundreds of possible right answers.

So I always tell people the best way to practice this is just that simple example. Next time you’re going to go eat with a group of people, just say, “Let’s list ten or twelve possible restaurants. Don’t worry about whether they’re good or not. Just list. What are all the possible restaurants? Let’s just keep listing them.” Once you get five or six of them down, believe it or not, you probably have enough, but go ahead and list ten. Then once you have those ten restaurants, go: “Okay, which one of these do y’all want to go to?” And you know what? It’s like you’re gone; you’re there. You don’t have to wait.

And the same thing is true with solving problems, both as a group and personally. If you will try to develop multiple right answers to every problem you’re facing, and then begin evaluating them later, you do much better work. You get much better answers, and you’re way more successful—in most cases; there’s always the exception, but in most cases. So I kind of build that into difficult conversations. I build that into group dynamics and group planning and work that we do, like you and I do when we’re trying to help a parish or an organization figure out where they want to be in ten years.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, and that whole notion is the antithesis of the groupthink hypothesis and those confirmation biases that kick in. When we’re envisioning multiple right answers, not only are we creative—which the point you made is brilliant—but also it then allows us to even then apply them in different ways and come up with other alternatives than just the few that we did, and we’re not excluding them just because they didn’t fit a preconceived notion.

Okay, look. I’ve kept you too much; we’ve gone too long. I just want to ask: Is there anything else you want to add that I haven’t asked you, or anything else that you’re just burning to get across because I keep interrupting you with questions?

Dr. Owen: No, no, you’re doing great. I’ve really enjoyed this. I think that the one lasting thought I want to remember is that this is a practiced skill. This isn’t something that you can just read in a book and just get good at it. So the most important thing is to practice it and to practice it as often as you can, even when it’s not a difficult conversation, practicing the techniques. If you’re planning a family vacation: What’s your intention for the family vacation? Even though it’s not going to be difficult, just learn to use those skillsets.

Practice is really important, and reflection after difficult conversations is equally important. That’s a very common trains tool to use in the corporate setting, where if you’ve had a difficult conversation, you go back and digest what went on, what did I infer, what did I assume, how well did I handle things. I think those two things are just important, and give yourself time to learn how to do it.

The last point on that is: I often, when I enter into a difficult conversation—I probably mentioned this, Bill, in the first segment that we did, the part one—is don’t feel bad about saying to the person, “You know, listen. This is going to be a difficult conversation. I’m not very good at these, but I want this to be a productive conversation. I think we have some disagreement or some difficulty that you and I need to work, but I care about you, I care about our relationship, I care about this project (or whatever it is that you’re going to discuss). I just want you to help me, and I’ll help you get through this difficult conversation.” You’d be surprised how just being that transparent, authentic person will make it go easier.

Mr. Marianes: Yeah, the vulnerability of that, but I think the point—and, Mitch, I want to thank you for this point among all the tactical and great advice and the categories that you gave that works—I think the key word there was “relationship.” And that all of this is subject to a predicate that you have a relationship and you want to strengthen that relationship and keep it going, and so if you look at it as not a “I’m going to win this point or you’re going to win this point and then you owe me one” or whatever the case may be, but we have an ongoing relationship that’s grounded on a common purpose, a common objective, a common why or multiple whys, and as long as we say we’re going to keep that relationship no matter what and we’re going to keep focusing on our common whys, then all of these other tactics work a lot better.

I can’t thank you enough. I really appreciate it. I know we’ve gone over, and I appreciate… Folks, y’all don’t understand. This is something that this guy charges an arm and a lot of money for, that he’s just willing to give to all of you guys for free, but if you ever want to look at this or you have a business or something like that, and you want to hire somebody to really help you, I want you to go to Mitchen—M-i-t-c-h-e-n—dot-net, mitchen.net, and that’s Mitch Owen’s website. And I want you to take a look at some of the great things he has to offer. Again, as we did, I want to encourage you to go back to the April 7, part one, and listen to that, and then this whole thing will have context of even greater impact.

Before we go, I want to really tell you how truly honored and excited I am about the next two programs. Please hear me on this one.

The first, the next one coming up, is a video interview program that’s going to be featuring one of the bravest, most committed and faithful men I know. He’s a protopresbyter of the Ecumenical Throne, and his name is Fr. George Livanos, and he’s the man of unlimited courage who’s lived his stewardship calling from the very beginning. For decades he was shepherding the faithful at All Saints Greek Orthodox Church in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, and has really brought so many people closer to Christ in their faith. But now he’s on his own personal journey bringing himself even closer to Christ as he battles cancer. While he’s in hospice care and prepares to depart this world for the life eternal, he and I are going to have a video interview—and frankly you’re just not going to believe the faith and inspiration that he’s going to be able to share. Frankly, I think he’s going to be able to provide all of us a clarion wake-up call about both life and death and resurrection. You’re not going to want to miss that.

And then the one following that, my guest is going to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court—no, not of the United States—of the State of Georgia. His name is Justice Harold Melton, and Justice Melton is not only a jurist of the highest intellect and dedication, he is a cancer survivor and a powerful, powerful, powerful and inspirational witness of his Christian faith. Justice Melton is going to share some of his great judicial wisdom, but really help us understand how to be better Christians in a fallen world and remain true to our core values.

You’re definitely not going to want to miss these two programs from these deep, deep men of faith who actually come from very different backgrounds and different faith traditions and have overcome or are overcoming huge personal health challenges, and they both rose to the absolute top of their respective professions and never lost sight of their commitment to the Lord.

Big thanks and shout-out to Matushka Trudy Richter, who’s back in Chesterton producing this show on Ancient Faith Radio, and to Bobby and John Maddex and the great team at Ancient Faith Radio that make this all possible. Folks, if any of these Stewardship Calling first Wednesday and fifth Sunday programs are helpful or informative, please tell your friends about them. You can find them archived on the Stewardship Calling website or on the Ancient Faith Radio website, and you feel free to bang around StewardshipCalling.com and take down any of the free resources that cover a whole gamut of effective churches and stewardship and planning and servant development and leadership, etc.

And, by the way, if you have any questions, always you can feel free to reach out to me at bill@stewardshipcalling.com; that’s bill@stewardshipcalling.com, and let me know if there’s anything we can do for your parish. I always close by asking you to 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, I pray that you will begin to prayerfully discern your why in your stewardship calling, and then start living the most extraordinary part of your life.

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