Truth or Grace? Yes.
— by Mike Sharrow
But I thought you were a Christian!? How could you fire me? You’re not actually going to enforce that contract are you? But I thought you Christians were supposed to love everybody – where’s the grace in this? Mike, I know I breached this contract and you technically have every right to make me pay according to the terms, but I want you to ask, “What would Jesus do?” (sorry, that’s too real!)
One of the hazards of embarking as a faith-driven entrepreneur is you’ll inevitably hear statements like that. Worse yet, you might actually believe those voices – and play their tapes in your own head!
One of the false gospels of faith-driven entrepreneurialism is this sense that being a Christian means always being nice and being nice means only doing pleasant things and gracing past any grievances or gaps. We call this “sloppy agape,” an ignorant and crude application of the “God is love” principle. This Christian management ethic is heresy and will hurt your testimony in multiple ways – you’ll misrepresent Christ and His gospel (ouch!) and handicap the business you’ve been entrusted to steward for His glory to perform at perpetually suboptimal levels!
Jesus modeled an incredibly dangerous and winsome love, a light that pierced the darkness and for some liberated while others retreated because they preferred the darkness. Consider this fantastic diagram by the folks at the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics on the topic:
Numerous sources have begun to zero in on just how limiting, in fact, the disease of “terminal niceness” is. When we practice this false gospel everybody loses! High performance teams actually need and want accountability (case study).
The great Mr Lencioni masterfully addressed this organizational dynamic in his classic 5 Dysfunctions of a Team (get it, read it, do it). He found that at the bedrock of what determines the capacity for results or high performance in organizations is trust and (healthy) conflict, which are essential prerequisites to commitment, accountability and the end result everybody wants. One of the barriers between trust and healthy conflict was actually the absence of conflict due to “artificial harmony.” That’s where it’s the illusion of harmony because there is very little overt conflict – but there is tons of disagreement, resistance, uncertainty and a host of other problems!
As a leader, you are actually called to stand for truth (Ephesians 6), walk in the light (1 John 1), champion was is true and excellent (Philippians 4:8-9, Colossians 3:9, Proverbs 11:1, Acts 24:16, Ephesians 4:15) and to walk as Jesus walked.
There are great resources out there (check out Crucial Accountability). There are systems and processes to learn.
But please, for the sake of the true Gospel and that your leadership has potential to be a Matthew 5:16 type endeavor – don’t let sloppy agape woo you into a needless prison of terminal niceness. It will cost you a ton and in the end you get nothing for your suffering but regret!
I was impacted years ago by the culture described in Execution: the Discipline of Getting Things Done where the emphasis was on ultimate results not political niceties along the way. This kind of thinking germinated in our own culture code for the team I lead where we have tribal rules of things like “Results Over Glory,” “Fight for Health,” and “Be the Buffalo” as expectations (along with Entrepreneurial Spirit, Leadership Mindset, Big Trust and others).
Being Christ-like is a giant and often-times mysterious aspiration and calling for sure. One thing it is not is the call to poor integrity, dishonesty, conflict avoidance or terminal niceness. As Lucy was told by the Beaver in that famous scene in the Chronicles of Narnia when asking “Is Aslan safe?” – “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you!”
In a tough labor market where all growth firms are contending for talent, creating the kind of place that is “good but not safe” is actually a competitive advantage.
How are you modeling truth AND grace in your leadership? Where has the heresy of sloppy agape and terminal niceness infiltrated your organizational culture to the point it is hindering both the gospel and performance? How do you navigate high expectations, high truth, high conflict while demonstrating support, grace, compassion and goodness?
In their latest book, 100X Leader, Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram unpack this powerful 2×2 matrix of the essential relationship between high challenge and high support to achieve a liberating leadership style:
If you’ve been held back by the voices I described at the beginning…be set free! Let’s build excellent organizations with cultures that are transformatively and refreshingly bastions of truth AND grace to the glory of God!
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[ Photo by Mason Kimbarovsky on Unsplash ]
Church and Theology of Work, Servant Leadership, Global Church
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Church and Theology of Work, Servant Leadership, Global Church