by Michael Pumphrey

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Have you ever left a leadership meeting wondering how everyone heard the same conversation but walked away with completely different reactions?

Why is one leader eager to move faster while another feels overwhelmed by the current pace?

Why does one person see opportunity while another sees risk?

Why do some embrace a new direction while others quietly wonder why the change was needed at all?

In my coaching work with churches across Virginia, these questions surface again and again. What’s surprising—or perhaps not surprising—is that one  of the most common challenges I encounter is not vision, strategy, or even change itself. More often, the challenge is helping people navigate change together.

The reality is that change is rarely experienced uniformly. The same decision can create excitement in one person, anxiety in another, grief in a third, and cautious optimism in someone else. Everyone may be responding to the same change, but they are experiencing it through different lenses, different histories, different responsibilities, and different ways of seeing the world.

This is where many churches get stuck.

We often assume conflict around change means the vision is unclear or the strategy is flawed. Yet in many cases, the issue is neither. Change does not usually fail because well-thought-out strategies are wrong. Change fails because people do not feel seen, heard, or understood as they navigate what the change means for them.

What if conflict around change is not primarily a leadership failure, but a language failure?

What if leaders had a shared language for understanding why people respond differently to the same situation?

What if teams learned to talk openly about how change is affecting them before frustration, misunderstanding, and conflict begin to take root?

One of the most helpful gifts we have discovered in our coaching work is giving leaders a shared language for how people are wired to see the world and experience change. When leaders begin to understand these differences, conversations change. Assumptions give way to curiosity. Frustration gives way to empathy. Teams become less focused on convincing one another and more interested in understanding one another.

Before we teach churches how to change, we must first teach ourselves how to listen.

Because leadership is not simply helping an organization navigate change. It is helping people navigate how they are uniquely experiencing that change.

And while change itself can happen through a decision, progress happens when people learn how to move forward together.

Rev. Michael Pumphrey is BGAV’s director of coaching.

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This article is the third in a series of six on leadership by Michael Pumphrey.

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