Episode 799 RESPECTFUL Communication
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 799 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm
[00:00:07] Fraizer Rice: [00:00:07] Frazer rice, author of wealth. Actually, I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling, having the right relationship with all of your gifts is the key to doing this one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader.
[00:00:37] Scott Maderer: [00:00:37] well to call them out and to challenge their thinking out of love, because only out of doing that, is there any hope of them modifying their behavior? And the truth is that is better than yelling or ignoring. You're not yelling and screaming. You're not calling them out. You're not saying they're wrong.
[00:00:55] You're not calling them an idiot. You're simply saying, this is my view. [00:01:00] This is how I feel. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling.
[00:01:17] In the inspired stewardship podcast, we'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
[00:01:33] And today's episode about investing in yourself through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about how the acronym, respect, covers many things about how we need to communicate. I share how that also doesn't mean you have to be a doormat or ignore wrong behavior. And I also talk about the difference between being tolerant and just letting people do things that aren't right.
[00:01:57] You've heard me talk about developing your [00:02:00] talent and what are the best ways to do that is through books. But if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial.
[00:02:19] There's over 180,000 titles to choose from. And you can pick one and listen your way to developing your talents via audible. That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. Let's talk about communication and specifically, I want to talk about what I call respect communication.
[00:02:48]I teach lay servant ministry classes. And one of the things that we cover in what's called the basic class is this acronym of respect as something that as [00:03:00] Christian leaders, we need to keep in mind when we're communicating with others. And that acronym stands for take responsibility. That's the are and respect for what you say and feel without blaming others.
[00:03:13] Use him. Pathetic listening or empathy. When you listen to try to understand how the other person feels empathetic, listening, be sensitive to differences in communication styles. Which I've talked about on the podcast before P ponder on what you hear and feel before you speak E examine your own assumptions and perceptions.
[00:03:38] See, keep confidential what others have to say and T tolerate what others have to say. What's interesting is when I talk this through with folks, most people have no problem with the idea of taking responsibility for what you say and feel without blaming others. The difference between saying whenever this happened, I [00:04:00] felt like this was the case, as opposed to whatever you did this.
[00:04:05] It may, you were doing this to me there. One of these is set up for a fight and an accusation. The other opens the possibility of dialogue, empathetic listening. Most people don't have a problem with that. Either the idea of trying to understand where the other person is coming from. I do think that sometimes being sensitive to differences in communication is something that we overlook because we usually assume that everyone communicates the same way that we do, but that's certainly not true.
[00:04:36] And especially in emotional times, pondering on what you hear and feel before you speak can be really difficult. And examining our own assumptions and perceptions. We all have biases. All of us do it's part of being human. But what I would say is we're often very unaware of our own biases.
[00:04:57] That's part of what makes them a bias. And [00:05:00] so it can be challenging to be asked to examine our own assumptions and perceptions. Keeping confidential. What others have to say. I would hope that most of us don't have problems with that and then tolerate what others have to say. That's the one that I think for most of us is probably the single biggest hurdle, because at first glance, when you hear tolerate what others have to say, it sounds like I just let anyone say whatever they want.
[00:05:28] And I don't call them out. I don't speak up if it's something inappropriate or something out of line, but that's not really what this means. It's not asking you to ignore bad behavior. It's not asking you to allow others to run all over you. Instead, it's asking you to do the things that come before to be empathetic, to be sensitive, to ponder and think to examine our own assumptions.
[00:05:55] And then, and only then. To call someone out, but to do it in [00:06:00] a respectful way to not call them out with the attitude of tearing them down are proving them wrong or out of anger, but instead just confronting them and allowing them to know that you didn't appreciate the behavior. So often what happens, especially with those of us that are Christian minded or spiritually minded, is when someone says or does something that we don't feel is appropriate.
[00:06:27] We tend to not speak up. We tend to just ignore it and go on our own way. We all say, I know that they really are an okay person. And I know that they didn't mean it, or we'll say, I'm so used to just ignoring whatever this particular person says. I'm just going to ignore it one more time.
[00:06:45] Other times you get really angry and you confront the person out of anger and you yell well and you scream. And you say that wasn't Ryan and how dare you do that. And this made me feel this way. And you did that to cause this to happen happen. And it escalates the [00:07:00] situation. And what I would argue is neither of those is really tolerating.
[00:07:04] What others have to say. Ignoring someone is actually in some ways, almost worse than yelling at someone. Because it basically means you're discounting what they have to say completely. You're saying it's not even worth paying attention to. And the truth is if it's inappropriate, if it's out of line, if they're doing or saying something like a racist joke, or if they're discounting or adding to injustice in some way, we are not called to ignore it.
[00:07:37] We are called to be tolerant, but still to call them out and to challenge their thinking out of love. Because only out of doing that, is there any hope of them modifying their behavior? And the truth is that is better than yelling or ignoring. You're not yelling and screaming. You're not calling them out.
[00:07:56] You're not saying they're wrong. You're not calling them an idiot. You're [00:08:00] simply saying, this is my view. This is how I feel. I understand how you feel, ask questions, really, make sure you truly do understand their position. And only then do we go ahead? If it is something that needs to be confronted and confronted out of love to make sure.
[00:08:23] That at the end of the day, there's the best chance possible of the behavior no longer continuing, because that's the true thing that we're after. We're really trying to, in most cases, protect the group or the leadership or other people from bad behavior. And when you think about it, that way, that is respectful communication.
[00:08:44] That is tolerant without letting someone just get away with bad behavior. Thanks for listening.
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