In our last blog we began to look at the concept of leading a divided team. This is obviously one of the more challenging, and potentially damaging, aspects of leadership. None-the-less, it is critical to your efforts as an effective leader and if managed properly, will have an overall positive impact on your parish environment.
We are focusing on an excellent blog written by Pastor Carey Nieuwhof (https://www.biblicalleadership.com/blogs/4-keys-to-leading-in-an-angry-era/). Our last blog focused on the first of 4 principles that Pastor Nieuwhof offered; “Start with the core, not the crowd”. He urged us to gain unity among your core team. In this blog, we will move beyond the core to the larger crowd.
Have you ever heard of “negativity bias”? It is when our brains give more attention and focus to negative information as compared to neutral or positive information. Researchers believe this may have evolved from earlier times when negative things would be more likely to harm us. The brain functions in this way to protect us. Unfortunately, like other things, what once served to protect us can now in some ways hurt us.
We often receive many more compliments and praise than criticisms. Because of the negativity bias, it is our natural tendency to focus on addressing the negative comment rather than understand its proper place. It may actually represent a minority opinion or perhaps may just be one individual. If that person or minority is more forceful in expressing that opinion, our minds, acting in a protective and defensive manner, trend toward assuming the worst. That is, is this actually the opinion of a silent majority?
Someone once told me when I was an executive, 10% of the people are glad you’re here, 10% hate the fact that you showed up and 80% could not care one way or the other. Pastor Nieuwhof echoes this but he breaks down the 80% a bit further. He says, of that 80%, 30% are quietly supportive and the other 50% are quiet and neutral. Either scenario means that in general, 90% of those you lead are generally supportive or neutral.
Groupthink is a bias that forms when someone believes something because others do. There has been a good deal of research in psychology on this phenomenon. As a leader, you can use this effectively as a tool or you can be derailed by it if it works against you. Given the dynamics we expressed above, it is important that you can get the 90% that are supportive or neutral to influence the 10%. You will be derailed if it goes the other way and the 10% starts to win over or negatively influence the 90%.
You must accept that you will rarely, if ever, get 100% support and compliance but you cannot allow the minority to hold your plans hostage. That does not mean being an authoritarian and forcefully imposing your will. It should encourage you to move forward confidently when you have engaged everyone, understood all perspectives and addressed concerns when possible. In our next blog we will focus on how to build unity.