I had just given major attitude to a new pastor who had come on staff. He wanted me to do something that I didn’t agree with. I didn’t think it matched the vision of the church, and it wasn’t the best use of my time. So I told him. Maybe I was rude; maybe I wasn’t. I didn’t intend to be.
But from then on our relationship devolved. A few times he yelled at me from the hallway outside my office as I returned verbal jabs. (I was particularly proud of my ability to seem calm and make him seem like the immature one.)
Eventually it came to an apex of tension and my pastor (also my dad) sat me down in a room with the guy. There I was, a 25 year-old facing off with a 50 year-old who had far more experience than me.
It started calm as I listened to him, then it turned to yelling again. But I determined I would just listen. What came next pierced my heart and made me want to change.
“You can’t treat people like that. Whether they’re your superior or not”—he was my superior—”you can’t get by with that. If you were in the business world, you would have been fired long ago. The problem is, you’re so talented that you’ll probably never have to work for someone else in your life. So you’ll probably never learn this lesson.”
The italic bits. That made all the difference. Because in those two sentences, it became about his love for me instead of his hurt ego. He was worried for me because he say a character flaw that could potentially hurt me in life. He also acknowledged talent in me—even in the midst of the rage.
How many times are leaders willing to love the people who are making their jobs tougher? I don’t see it very often. But this guy didn’t care if I learned it working for him or not. He just wanted me to learn it for my sake.
I want to be that type of leader. I want to love people even when they infuriate me. His threats, his volume, his authority…that didn’t get through to me. Love did.
Love is the loudest and clearest language out there.