Latest / Prayer Before Work / Being the Bad Guy - Prayer Before Work
Transcript
- Sean Graver: You just told someone their work isn't good enough. And now you're the one who can't sleep over it. Hey, this is Sean, and welcome to Prayer Before Work. If you're a manager, you know this feeling, right? Somebody on your team messed up. You know, maybe they missed a deadline or or botched a client call or or maybe they just kept showing up late. And it's on you to say something about it. So you do. You have the conversation and you're fair. You're clear, you're you're even kind about it. And then you spend the rest of the day feeling like the villain. You replay the look on their face, you're wondering if they're in the break room right now, telling everyone what a jerk you are. Well, this is a thing nobody tells you about leadership. You know, wanting to be liked and being able to lead well are sometimes at war with each other. And if you let The wanting to be liked part when? Well, you're you're not actually leading. You're just avoiding the realities of your role. So let's look at Proverbs 27, verses 5 and 6, because it puts it in a way that makes it pretty clear. It says, Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Now read that again. A wound from someone who actually cares about you is called faithful. So it's not being mean, it's like a form of caring or love. The person who tells you the truth, even when it's really uncomfortable for them, is doing you a bigger favor than the person who just tells you what you want to hear and sugarcoats it. So if you had to hold someone accountable today. Or you're dreading having to do it tomorrow, here's the move or the shift to make. You're not choosing between being kind and being honest, because real kindness sometimes looks like just hard honesty that may cost you their approval for at least a little while. I mean, don't you know someone who's just always out there telling it like it is? And don't you feel a trust from that person that you're getting a straight answer, even even if you don't like it? I mean, that doesn't mean you should be harsh or mean. There's a way to correct someone that still honors them as a person. And really, tone matters and and your timing matters. But softening the truth until it's not truth anymore, that's not love either. It's just self-protection. So here's what I'd ask you to do today. If you've got a hard conversation ahead of you. Don't build it around whether they'll still like you afterwards. Build it around whether it's true and whether it's necessary and and whether you're saying it in a way that respects them. That's the job. That's the wound that will heal instead of avoidance that will fester. So let's pray through this. God, leading people is heavier than we like sometimes. And we want to be light. We want people to We don't they w we want people to walk away from our conversations f feeling good. And and sometimes that's just not possible if we're going to be honest with them. So give us the courage to say hard things well. Take away our need for everyone's approval and and replace it with a real love for the people we lead. The the kind of love that tells the truth instead of hiding from it. And and help us hold the line without losing our heart for them. In Jesus' name, amen. Now go make today count.