When I started managing employees at the young ripe age of 24, I had a hard time being confident in my approach to confronting employees that weren’t hitting the mark. Really, it was a lack of confidence in keeping short accounts. I would allow people to get away with small indiscretions or minor issues without really confronting those employees. That didn’t last long, mostly because my boss asked me for accountability, and I couldn’t deliver. I learned an important lesson: to be a loving boss, I need to be a confidently confrontational because to love people is to charge them with accountability.
If this is something you want and need to improve at doing, then the Apostle Paul has a word of encouragement to help us develop a mindset of Christ centered confidence when confronting an individual about his or her lack of accountability.
For he [Jesus] was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God.
2 Corinthians 13:4 ESV
There are two important truths from this little verse that I want to share with you today.
Weakness helps us see our need
A lot of times, we do not hold others accountable because we are afraid of our own weakness. It may even feel shameful. But the Apostle Paul shares with us that even Jesus Christ, the son of God, sent forward into death because of weakness. He wasn’t afraid of his weakness, but embodied weakness. When we look in the gospels, we find every story about Jesus’ crucifixion acknowledge Jesus’ own humanity. He died when crucified with the weight of sin for all people who believe in him.
When we jump head first in acknowledging our weakness, we will begin to see our own need because of shortcomings we have as human beings. Don’t feign perfection or a death-defying strength. We don’t have that. Before you are a boss or a leader, you are a human. To have weaknesses is to acknowledge your humanity with humility and to publicly share that you have needs beyond your own ability to compensate.
That’s where confident confrontational conversations with others begins– with our acknowledgement of our own weakness and how our needs and the needs of others we are having that conversation with coincide.
Our power comes from God
Secondly, remember that our true power comes through faith in God. I love how the Apostle Paul simply captures this truth, Jesus was “crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God.” Jesus died, that is historical truth. But our hope as Christians is that Jesus didn’t remain dead. He rose again because the power of God raised him from death to life. He walked on this earth forty more days after he had died and was raised into heaven in front of hundreds of witnesses.
When we deal with people we manage confidently in our own weakness, knowing that our power comes from God, our posture toward them in conversation is not with chest puffed up and chin lifted high. It is with humility and love knowing that the same power of God that saves us from our sin, is offered to the person in front of us. When we keep this truth in mind, we can approach any confrontation with the same confidence we have in our salvation through Jesus.
Prayer: Father in heaven, when we examine ourselves, we realize that sometimes we are being faithless in our approach to confrontation. We are so petrified by fear and weakness, that we forget our power comes from you. Help us confidently approach confrontation with the same love you approached Calvary. Let us love the people we are confronting and in humility speak love and accountability. We pray these things in Jesus name, Amen.
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