Just did a case study presentation in field
education this Thursday. Learnt a lot of relationship building and conflict
resolution techniques from the case studies we share in class, for example:
l Approach and chat life. We often just see the tip of the iceberg.
The feelings and beliefs influence what’s seen on the surface.
l Changing/adjusting self: Some feedbacks/criticisms from others are
credible, sometimes not. We need wisdom to discern.
l Learn to read process: this means to evaluate whether the person we
are talking to can be challenged. When people feel threatened they put up a
wall.
l What if we are already caught up in the negativity? Pray to God
about the negative emotions. Having an accountability person who is supervising
what’s happening about our attitudes towards people. Try to engage in a
constructive conversation first. If unable to, pass the person over to another
person.
l In conflicts, if we need help from a third person, it is important
to set up mediation, not triangulation. Triangulation: closed triangle, not all
three people in together. Mediation: open triangle, all three people in
together, the third person doesn’t take sides.
l Confrontations involve a great deal of energy. Evaluate whether this
is a relationship that we have the energy to deal with. For example, if you’re
a pastor, you don’t have time to do this with every single person in the
church.
l Resting in the realisation that it is the Spirit which transforms.
Reframing the perspective of the other person so it helps me move to a
different place. Scriptural themes? Theology of grace: not deserved, not
earned. A place of grace, or game over? 2Corinthians: forgive the guy who’s
sinned. Ephesians 2:8-9. Pastors have a dual role, being both shepherd and
disciple, and there is a tension between grace and growth in Christ at the same
time.
l Boundaries define that I am distinct from you, that we are equal but
separate beings. Boundaries outline what loving relationships looks like, from
the Ten Commandments, or boundaries for the covenant between Israel and God, through
to Ephesians 5:15-21, which is about how to relate to each other. Without
boundaries, we cannot really be in relationships.
From this we can see that the purpose of boundaries is to minimise harm and protect
relationships.
l What do we do with someone who doesn’t agree with boundaries. Who’s
right? Us or them? It depends on what purpose the boundaries are serving. Jesus
challenged and broke the boundaries of Pharisees. Why did Jesus challenge those
boundaries? When boundaries serve as an impediment to the relationship to God,
it is oppressive. Hear them out: we might not have it 100% correct. We have to
look at what’s appropriate for our context, and our culture shifts. So we also
have to regularly re-evaluate whether or not it’s restricting people in their
relationship with Christ.
Quite a few relational issues have crept up
for me lately, leading me to “Boundaries Face to Face” which describes some very
practical confrontation techniques.
Confrontation works best when it serves
love. How can confrontation preserve love? By protecting the relationship from
elements that would harm it.
“Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses” (Proverbs
27:6). The extent to which two people in a relationship can bring up and
resolve issues is a critical marker of the soundness of the relationship.
While we can’t make someone change, we can do much to promote change.
Healthy confrontations help people grow emotionally, relationally, and
spiritually. In fact, without caring confrontation, there is little real
growth. When a relationship has love but no truth, it either keeps the people
too comfortable or even makes them more immature. Good confrontations help
people to see the other person for who they really are.
Be emotionally present:
l Try to be warm. If you are too afraid to be present, don’t have the
talk yet. Better to do that than to come across as cold and distant.
l Being present also means allowing the other person to respond, so it
is a conversation, not a lecture.
l Connect even with differences, which means being there not only when
you agree with each other, but also when you disagree.
l Discomfort vs injury: We need to be willing to suffer discomfort, to
a point, with the limit being injury. If you get in a bad situation with a
person who can truly injure you because of where you are emotionally, or
because of how powerful an influence she currently is with you, you will need
to guard your heart (Proverbs 4:23) to avoid having wounds that would set your spiritual
growth back.
l Observe yourself: monitor what makes you shut down and what makes
you open up.
Be clear about “you” and “I”: It is
important to remember that you and the person you’re confronting are not the
same person. You don’t see things the same way nor feel the same way, and you
have different ideas on what to do about it.
Speak from our need, not his: tell the other person, “I really need more
commitment from you in our dating, or I don’t think I can move forward.” It’s
much better than “You need to be more committed to me.” As he may not
experience that need.
Clarify the problem: the nature of the
problem, the effects of the problem, and your desire for change.
A successful confrontation will always
involve balancing grace and truth. Grace is your being on the side of, or “for,”
the other person as well as the relationship. Truth is the reality of whatever
you need to say about the problem. Grace alone or truth alone can have a
negative effect in confrontation, but having the two together neutralises the
negatives.
It’s always best to start with grace, as it sets the stage for the other person
to be able to tolerate the truth. Tell the person, “Before we get into the
topic, I want you to know I really care about you and about us. I want us to be
better, and I want to be on the same team.”
None of us are totally in the middle here. Some lean towards grace and are too
soft on the truth. When in doubt, go for grace.
Stay on task: It’s important to deal with
defensiveness because it is often related to why you have had problems
confronting this person in the first place. When people are open about
receiving feedback and truth, issues tend to be resolved fairly easily and
quickly. But very often, people who have long-standing patterns of negative
behaviour and attitudes have also developed character patterns that help
maintain those problems. That is, they have some internal resistance to seeing
themselves as being wrong, flawed, or responsible. So, in the face of all
reality, feedback, and circumstances, they turn a blind eye to their immaturity
or hurtfulness. The problem either doesn’t exist or it’s not as bad as you
think or it’s your fault.
If the person has a pattern of diverting things, bring that to the light. “I
have noticed that every time I talk about our problem of…. It seems you get
angry or change the subject.”
Use the formula, when you do “A,” I feel “B”.
Affirm and validate the people you confront
so that they know they are valued.
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in
your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” Matthew
7:3. Don’t confront someone if you owe her an apology first.
Be an agent for change: there are several
ways people confront each other. First, there is the “you got me, now I am
going to get you” type of confrontation, which is “an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth.” The second type is the “wipe the slate clean” type, “now
that we are past that, let’s go on.” No one owes anyone anything anymore. This
kind of conversation can be helpful. The third type is the most redemptive: the
confronter enters into the conversation with an attitude to help, be an ally,
and be an agent for change.
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).
Avoid sweeping, global complaints. Be
specific about the problem, and you are more apt to get better solutions.
Differentiate between forgiving and trusting.
Forgiveness and trust are two totally different things.
Keep the future clearly differentiated from the past. Forgiveness has to do
with the past. It is not holding something someone has done against her. Just
as God has offered forgiveness to everyone, we are expected to do the same
(Matthew 6:12). Reconciliation has to do with the present: it occurs when the
other person apologizes and accepts forgiveness. It takes two to reconcile.
Trust has to do with the future. A person must show through his actions that he
is trustworthy before you trust him again (Matthew 3:8).
“A righteous man is cautious in friendship” (Proverbs 12:26). In some
situations you may forgive someone and reconcile with him but desire no future
close relationship. Forgiveness and reconciliation do not dictate the future
structure; they only wipe the slate clean.
Telling people what you want:
l Many people do not get what they want in relationships where they
could if they knew how to communicate their desires.
Own my “want”, communicate desire, not demand.
Preserve the other person’s freedom, eg. “I don’t want to feel like you ‘have
to’ do this, but could you….”
l Be clear, be direct, by using “I” statements, not “you” statements. “I”
statement is very clear and responsible. Talk about yourself, not the other
person and his or her failures to provide for you. The “you” statements judge,
interpret, and globalise.
l Dealing with the “no”: Accept it and move on.
Or if the want is really important to you, accept the no, but dialogue:
Communicate the importance of your request.
Seek to understand the reason for no.
Empathise and re-ask.
Deal with defensiveness:
The person is free to say no but not free to get you off track or into an
argument. Emphasize real consequences.
Find a balance.
Make someone aware of a problem:
l Only the extent that someone becomes aware of a problem is she able
to take responsibility for the problem.
l Take a “presumed innocent” approach. Being innocently unaware is a
far cry from being resistant, defensive, or blaming.
l Humility has to do with perceiving yourself as you really are, with
both weaknesses and strengths. “Please don’t misunderstand where I am coming
from here. This isn’t about putting you down or saying that I’m better. I have
many things I’ve been working on for some time, so I am in the same position
you are.”
l Empathize: “I want you to be aware of your… because if I were in
your position, I would want someone to tell me. I would hope someone would care
enough about my situation to take a chance and approach me on it.”
l Find out how unaware is unaware:
I think it is a serious problem, but I don’t know how to approach you with it,
because you tend to dismiss my feelings and opinions about something when you
don’t think you have a problem.
l Be direct: To make someone aware of a problem, the best approach is
always to be loving but direct.
l Make a person aware of the effects: on him, and on you.
l Be specific: Using examples can help a person become aware she has a
problem.
l Request change: specific but also preserves freedom.
Stopping a behaviour:
l Generally behaviour you would like stopped falls into one of four
categories: If he stopped doing it, you would stop being bothered. If she
stopped doing it, your relationship would improve. If he stopped doing it, he
would be better off. If she stopped doing it, other people would stop being
hurt or be better off.
l Act justly: in relationships, we need to “judge” each other in the
good sense of the word, the way Paul uses when he tells us that we are
responsible to judge each other’s behaviour and speak the truth to each other
in love (Ephesians 4:15).
l Love mercy: in administering the truth, be kind and compassionate.
Go hard on the issue but soft on the person.
l Walk humbly with your God: You do not assume the role of God the
Judge, condemning the person or meting out punishment. Instead, in your “evaluating,”
you identify with the person you are confronting as a fellow imperfect
struggler and do not “lord it over him.”
l Know when to confront and when to let go: If a woman’s husband is
uninvolved in spiritual growth and leadership in the family and it turns out a
depression has paralysed him, it would be wiser for the wife to talk to him
about getting help for his emotional problem than to confront him for not being
a leader. “A
man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense”
(Proverbs 19:11). Sometimes a person can be offensive, but there is a larger
issue to work on, so we just let it go.
l Clarify your motives: helps one stay focused on the issue.
l Three possible reactions to confrontation: First reaction: “Rebuke a
wise man, he will love you” (Proverbs 9:8). “If he listens to you, you have won
your brother over” (Matthew 18:15). Second reaction: resistance, defensiveness,
or some other form of opposition. “Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse. Do not rebuke a mocker or he will
hate you” (Proverbs 9:7-8). Third response: not only resistance but also
retaliation.
l Choose a right time and place: don’t do it in the middle of
experiencing the issue.
l React with shades of intensity: Don’t confront smacking one’s lips
at the dinner table with the same force you would lying or stealing.
l Distinguish between what you prefer and what’s wrong: whether what
he is doing is really a “bad” thing or just something you don’t like.
l Avoid the line “we need to talk”. Better “Can we go for coffee
tomorrow? There are some things I think will help our relationship, and I would
like to discuss them with you.”
l Be specific and be clear. Remember that there are three things on
the table: you, the other person, and the issue. Speak appropriately to each
one. “When you do ‘A,’ I feel ‘B,’ and I do not like it, and I don’t want that
to happen anymore.”
l Listen and seek to understand. “What is your perspective on it?”
l Speak to the feelings, then return to the issue: Empathize with the
other person’s feelings or position, and return to your issue.
l Request specific change.
l If limits apply, communicate them.
l Make a plan for after the conversation: the options can range from
“remind me” to consequence.
l Look for buy-in: if the other person does not take ownership of the
problem, the past will repeat itself.
l Be patient, but not always: repentance means more than someone
saying, “sorry.” It means he truly has a change of mind about his behaviour and
shos it by changing direction.
Patience does not mean that you let down all limits or guards. Some things,
such as physical or drug abuse, are too hurtful and dangerous to be around to
just forgive and forget.
l Use force if necessary: sometimes soft rebuke does wonders, but at
other times a “sharper” approach is needed (Titus 1:13).
l Stay in control of yourself: Difficult people often have a strategy
to get you upset and out of control. The key is to not regress into a toddler
yourself.
“I need a moment to gather my thoughts”: it is better to be silent than to say
something you might regret.
l Ask, “how can I do this?” Sometimes if a person is reacting to your
feedback in a way that is shutting down the process, ask him, “is there a way I
can give you some feedback about your behaviour that is not offensive to you?”
l Get to the real issue: in every situation, you are dealing with two
factors, the problem and the other person’s ability to deal with it.
l Clarify to make sure they understand and you have agreement. It is
helpful to ask the person to say back to you what he has heard.
l Don’t go it alone: You don’t have to do the confrontation alone. In
some cases it is unwise to do so. Jesus tells us that if previous confrontation
by one person have been unsuccessful, take one or two others along, and if that
does not work, take even more (Matthew 18:16). At other times you may want
someone present for support or to be a witness to what happens. This is often
done in business situations with employee discipline. Unfortunately, even when you are being as
gracious as possible, a person can still retaliate.
Dealing with blame, counterattack, and other
problems:
l
When
it comes to accepting the truth about ourselves, things have not changed much
since Adam first blamed Eve. People who resist feedback negate the very thing
that might give them hope, improve their lives, or even save their
relationships.
l
Shooting the messenger: when a person attacks you for
bringing up a problem, he is “shooting the messenger.” The trigger is not so
much that he doesn’t like the problem, but he sees you as the problem for
mentioning it.
l
Rationalisation: people who rationalize will not deny
the problem exists; however, they will devise reasons that ultimately make no
sense except to them.
l
Minimisation: Admit an issue but speak of it as less
serious as it is.
l
Blame: Finds an external source that, in his mind,
caused the problem.
l
Denial: deny a problem even exists.
l
Projection: When people disallow that they are
responsible for a problem but then see their problem in others, they are
projecting.
l
A multi-tasking resister: People who resist
confrontation sometimes stay away from owning a problem by using more than one
of the above approaches in a single conversation.
Dealing with resistance:
l
Without grace and love, it is unlikely that anything
redemptive will happen in your conversation.
l
Don’t react to reactions.
l
Make defensiveness the issue.
l
Look at your contribution: if the person attacks you,
listen and reflect on what you are hearing to see whether it is true.
l
Speak of the effect on you: the person’s attacks and
blame may protect her from confrontation but they often have the result of
negatively affecting you, the person doing the confronting.
l
Confront defensiveness from an adult position: still
making your points, standing firm, and yet not attacking or condemning.
l
Admit helplessness: some people refuse to see your
side at all costs so let her win. For one thing, she is right: you cannot make
her see your side, you do need to look at her side, and you can’t control her.
l
Being right vs doing the right thing: people sometimes
tend to approach a confrontation as if it were a debate. If a person is
defensive and shows no interest in the truth as you see it, move on to what you
want to tell him without insisting he agree with you.
l
Persist and give it time: you will probably not have
one conversation with her, but several over time. This can be discouraging for
you, but time and persistence can pay off.
l
Have consequences ready if needed: There is a time to
give up trying to correct someone with your words.
How to get ready for
confrontation:
l
Own your failure to confront and stop playing the
victim. To the extent you allow someone to do something you resent, you are
part of the problem.
l
Own your motives: There are many reasons to confront
someone, some good, others not so good. Examples of
bad motives: desire to punish and get revenge, to make someone feel bad, the
desire for a sick alliance with a third party against the other person, the
desire to feel power when you have been powerless and to make the other person
feel powerless, the desire to control when you have been controlled by the
other person. Examples of good motives: to stop a bad thing happening to you
and end the hurt, to bring to light your and the other person’s contributions
to a problem so you can both move forward, to restore closeness, to correct
something wrong in a relationship, to help the other person grow, to stop a
destructive cycle, to protect others from the other person’s behavior, etc.
l
Own your fears. For example, of rejection,
disapproval, retaliation, loss, the other person’s anger, hurting the other
person, requiring another person to take responsibility, conflict, being seen
as the “bad guy”, being hurt, etc.
l
Own the other person’s legitimate complaints about
you. It puts you in
a position of being pure at heart before God and others and of doing all you
can from your side to make things right (Romans 12:18).
l
Own your distortions of who the other person is. We
all have “transferences,” or tendencies to see people in the light of past
experiences. We distort authority figures, men, women, romantic ties, people’s neediness,
and their imperfections.
l
Seek understanding of the other person. What causes
the other person’s struggles and defensiveness?
l
Deal with your emotions somewhere else. Be as healed as
possible and as strong as possible before going into a difficult conversation.
Find your healing somewhere apart from the ones who hurt you, then take your
strong, healed self into the conversation to reconcile the relationship.
l Seek healing first so you can focus on
the issue with the other person’s behaviour.
Specific strategies for preparing:
l Get plugged into your support base
before you confront, since you might have fears and needs for love and
acceptance that can make you vulnerable. Get on a good team first, before you
play the game.
l Script what you want to say.
l Practice and role-play.
l Get expectations into proper
perspective. Sometimes miracles happen, but sometimes people enter into
boundary conversations with very unrealistic expectations. You can expect to be
in control of what you do, but what another person does is totally up to him.
l Set up a “confrontation sandwich”, so
that the difficult conversation is the middle of the sandwich, and your
supportive allies are the pieces of bread on either side of the conversation.
Another words, talk to your supportive people right before you go in. Tell them
you want to connect, get courage, review your goals, know that you are loved,
and know that you will have their support when the confrontation is over, no
matter which way the conversation may end.
Some tips for having the difficult conversation
with the most important people in your life:
l The closeness of the marital
relationship makes confrontation essential.
l Love does not bind you to the other’s
problems; it demands that you pay attention to them so as to help resolve them.
l Marriage is not about making each other
happy; it is about growing and helping one’s spouse to grow.
l The very closeness of marriage partners
makes confrontation more difficult, “since I know you aren’t perfect either,
you have no credibility to confront me.”
l If a problem is serious enough to hurt
you, your spouse, and the relationship, it needs to be addressed more than
once.
l If the parents’ contributions to parenting
are too far apart, they run the risk of raising children who develop two
incompatible views of reality.
l If you don’t confront, you will never
know.
l The less one addresses problems in a
dating relationship, the less likely these problems will be easy to deal with
in marriage.
l What you tolerate is what you will get.
l Waiting for someone may be necessary.
But if you have waited and waited and it looks as if your waiting could go on
forever, you might want to require that something different take place, or you
may want to set a deadline.
l When breaking up, don’t leave a little
wiggle room because you are afraid of hurting the person or you can’t stand the
hurt yourself.
l If you want to change your mind, don’t
do it during your conversation. Go away, talk it out, and wait for a
cooling-off period.
l Over time, the child becomes a
self-monitoring, self-correcting person in contrast to someone who needs
constant supervision and correction.
l All confrontations require love so that
the person you confront can metabolise the truth without feeling hated, bad, or
defensive.
l The key to freedom is spiritual and
emotional growth (Galatians 5:1). Often, a confrontation is not the way to
healing, but the result of healing.
l Make your conversation more about the
relationship and less about your needs.
l The ideal scenario is for an adult
offspring to “leave and cleave.” Many things interfere with this ideal
scenario, and parents find themselves still acting the role of parent to an
adult offspring.
References:
Baptist Churches of NSW& ACT. “Creating
Safe Spaces Awareness Manual 2015.”
Cloud, Henry and John Townsend. Boundaries Face to Face. Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2003.
