Reflective Thinking Process Applied to a Case of Developmental Step Omission

Most of us have had to deal with conflict in church at some point. During the summer of 1997, one of our church teams experienced a severe case of interpersonal conflict while on a mission project. Although I tried to the best of my ability at the time to facilitate a resolution to the problem, the conflict was never resolved. It actually resulted in personnel changes, hurt feelings, and several months of decreased morale. If analyzed according to the Reflective Thinking Process of problem definition, problem analysis, suggested alternatives, solution selection, and implementation, the problem could have been prevented or dealt with in other ways that might have proven more effective for resolution (Folger, Poole & Stutman, 2001).

Problem Definition

After having been on the pastoral staff at a relatively large and growing church for a couple of years, I approached the senior pastor about starting the process of making staff changes. We had just hired a young youth pastor for the summer. I was his direct supervisor, but as I was attempting to move the organization toward a more team-based approach to ministry, I placed the bulk of the responsibility for the youth program upon his shoulders. Desiring to transition of the youth ministry from me to him, I took two teams of youth under what I considered to be his direction on a mission trip to Mississauga, Ontario. The church had already been involved for several years in taking summer youth teams to Mexico, and new volunteers each year filled positions eagerly. I had already put a process in place to prepare a team for 6 months prior to the actual trip. Logistics, budget and task distribution were all worked out in detail, and intense prayer went into each year’s team-building activities. Parental permission slips, medical insurance documentation, and spiritual gifts inventories were just part of the comprehensive files kept on each participant. All of our past trips had met great success and were usually deemed life-changing events for participants.

But as 1997 plans for preparation for the summer trip and new personnel additions were underway, several things went wrong. First, when the teams found out that new personnel not yet in place would be directly supervising the trip, an atmosphere of hesitation prevailed in our prep meetings, and some parents even refused to allow their teenagers to go unless I also went. I had already begun transitioning the youth groups and the youth leadership teams to a more team-oriented management approach, but the new youth pastor still functioned from a traditional management style in many ways. Secondly, many of the volunteer youth leaders and chaperons who were veterans to such trips failed to regularly attend the weekly prep meetings, citing lack of time and not really seeing the need to repeat last year’s preparation as the main excuses. Also, we merged this particular trip with another church group who was preparing their team in another location. I had a sense of impending problems, but I naively went forward with the project.

As we traveled from Georgia to Ontario, serious interpersonal conflicts immediately began to arise among team leaders. In an effort to express his new leadership position, the new youth pastor actively attempted to resolve these conflicts but was met with mutiny by almost all of the team leaders. Conflict grew so intense that serious verbal fights broke out between individual team leaders, between leaders and youth, and between teams from the two churches. One of the drivers threatened to return home early, another leader expressed that he would never again be involved in future projects, several evenings of crying ensued, and daily telephone calls back to the senior pastor of the church resulted in this particular trip being classified as the worst project in the history of the church. The young youth pastor was devastated at his inability to lead and at the unchristian reaction to his leadership, and he resigned his post within a couple of months on a very sour note. For almost a year following the event, morale remained extremely low within the youth program and there was relatively little numerical growth in the year that followed.

Problem Analysis

Looking back and knowing what I now know, I can see several areas where our 1997 teams were not properly prepared nor facilitated. Tuckman and Jensen’s stages of group development (as cited in Huszczo, 1996) show that a team needs to go through a natural process from forming to storming to norming to performing in order to function effectively (p. 159). Although the core group of youth met weekly to prepare for this trip, a change in leadership meant having to adjust to or form again with new members. A change in leadership also meant a change in leadership style, and in our case it was a reversion back to a management style prior to my own leadership. The lack of attendance by some of the youth leaders also resulted in their not being included in the forming and storming stages. Because the team from another church experienced its own development of forming, storming and norming, these stages had to be revisited when the groups merged. All of these dynamics thrown together created a situation of the mission team undergoing the forming stage when it should have actually been performing.

There were instances on the trip when assertive tactics, aggressive tactics, authority tactics, and coalition tactics were employed that should have been immediately dealt with. Folger et al (2001) defined verbal aggression as “shouting, blaming, browbeating, etc.” (p. 243). These behaviors really have no place on an effective team let alone in a church group, but they were evident throughout the trip. Since no one had really ever experienced this before, none of us knew how to approach the bizarre behavior. The young youth pastor attempted to invoke the formal authority of his position while others in the group attempted to invoke even higher authority by calling home to ask the senior pastor to resolve the conflict. Individuals also began to withdraw from the larger team to form alliances with subgroups within the team. These tactics should have been dealt with in a spirit of love, and rules to handle such behavior should have been laid out and agreed to in advance. However, due to the task of ministry in two Canadian congregations that expected results from the week, the tactics were ignored and were only handled upon return back to Georgia.

Suggested Alternatives

One of the problems with the Reflective Thinking Process is that “parties may not be able to agree on a problem definition” (Folger et al, p. 272). However, there are several alternatives for dealing with the exhibited behaviors that might have been warranted. Although the members of the team might not have agreed to why the problem existed, I believe they would have all agreed that something should have been done to resolve it. They may not have been able to verbalize what the problem actually was, but they could have cited their feelings and thoughts in relation to the trip.

Groups in preparation for projects normally undergo natural stages of development. Ours did not. Because factions within our teams did not participate together, perhaps they should have remained working as separate factions while on the project. If the group had not properly formed, stormed, and normed, perhaps I should not have expected them to perform. Of course, the trip itself was no place for the group to form; so I could have kept the groups that had developed separate from the others by assigning separate tasks.

When aggressive behaviors such as shouting and blaming began, perhaps there needed to be an immediate clarification of individual perceptions, agendas and feelings. Each person brings her own emotional baggage to the table, so perhaps time allotted for the group to process some of these emotions in a safe atmosphere of corporate prayer each evening might have helped. Our team’s work was very time-defined and pushed to the limits for project completion, but perhaps time clarification of feelings could have been structured into the overall plan.

A separate time for mentorship and actual transition of leadership to the new youth pastor would have also been useful. Thrusting a large task upon new personnel after having only been in the position for 2 weeks was perhaps unfair. Bridges (1980) said that “any time any member of system changes, the other members will feel a twinge” (p. 69). Great care could have been taken to help the youth group and youth leadership properly process this transition time.

Solution Selection

All of the aforementioned alternatives are useful for seeing how the problem could have been solved. If I were faced with the same scenario again, I would take extreme care to insure that task groups develop naturally and experience each stage before expecting effective performance as a team. I would encourage bonding activities that teach members to show patience and tolerance in the forming stage. I would encourage embracing the unique differences that each member brings to the team and a celebration of the team’s makeup. Of course I would clarify tasks, but I would also encourage the establishment of norms if group rules were broken.

I would also be more prepared to handle verbal aggression by not taking things personally but seeing each behavior as a reaction to some uncomfortable stimulus. I would attempt to discover that stimulus by providing time for feeling clarification, and I would build this time into the programming for a future trip. A proper orientation stage in task development assumes that there would be task definitions, work expectations, and an explanation as to how information should flow; so I would try to redirect the verbal aggression back into a context of our common purpose in the project.

I would also have foregone the torch-passing to the new youth pastor until a later date when the transition had more naturally run its course. Perhaps a gradual shift to his leadership would have been the key to unlocking the hesitation expressed in the prep meetings. Huszczo said that “a team concept effort requires virtually everyone involved to think of themselves as a leader” (p. 105). I probably needed to work with this new youth pastor more to help him understand the group’s recent transformational history. Perhaps only then might we have possibly integrated our team leadership knowledge to the exciting agenda of new church personnel.

Implementation

Herrington, Bonem & Furr (2000) said that “in a working group, each individual is responsible to a supervisor. In a team, each individual is responsible to the rest of the team” (p. 131). Analyzing the situation, I would have to say that our group was not yet a team. Although I would have liked to call it that at the time, the members had not yet had the time to gel into a team. The group had existed as a direct result of my personal leadership over the course of several years, and it had not yet transformed into a self-directed work team. Even with the conflict being experienced, the group did not know how to evaluate what was happening nor determine a proper course of action.

Perhaps these alternatives might not have changed the conflict at the time, but I think they would have done a great deal to mend the broken relationships that followed and would have created an atmosphere more conducive to healing the low morale of the team. “Reflecting Thinking does not work well when people have fundamental disagreements over values, because it presumes agreement on criteria used to evaluate solutions” (Folger et al, p. 273). In this conflict, however, the group agreed fundamentally on their vision, mission and core values; they simply got sidetracked on secondary issues, because they had not been formed into a team.

References

Bridges, W. (1980). Transitions: Making sense of life’s changes. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.
Folger, J.P., Poole, M.S., & Stutman, R.K. (2001). Working through conflict: Strategies for relationships, groups, and organizations. New York: Addison Wesley Longman.
Herrington, J., Bonem, M., & Furr, J.H. (2000). Leading congregational change: A practical guide for the transformational journey. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Huszczo, G.E. (1996). Tools for team excellence: Getting your team into high gear and keeping it there. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black.