Grace vs. Accountability | Tensions | Part 4 of 10

Welcome back to our “Tensions” series. In this episode, Chip Parker unpacks the next tension in our series: grace vs. accountability. Listen in as we look at the importance of holding both grace and accountability in leadership, and how we can effectively balance the two in our organizations.

Thanks for listening to the Impact Leadership podcast! We are so glad that you're here. If you're looking to connect with Chip Parker, send him a message at chip@theorchardcc.org. New episodes are released weekly on Wednesdays. We'll catch you in the next episode!

Transcript

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Hey everybody, welcome in to the Impact Leadership Podcast. My name is Chip Parker, and I'm the lead pastor at the Orchard Community Church, a multi-site church in North Central Florida working to impact lossness and impact the next generation. This podcast is all about helping you as a church leader grow your leadership to grow your impact. Let's hop into this week's conversation. All right. Well, welcome back in. We are in episode four of what I think has been a really good conversation around tensions versus decisions in our leadership. If you've missed all of that, need to go back, listen to the first three episodes. But we're talking about how we can tell if things are tensions that we need to manage or they're just decisions we need to make. Because if we try to make a decision that is really a tension, we're going to create damage in our organizations. And if we try to treat decisions that we need to really just go ahead and make, if we try to treat them as tensions, we're going to bring about drift inside of our organizations. And so what I want to do now is kind of even shift categories a little bit. In the first two other episodes after the introduction in the in this series, we've kind of talked about tensions around who we are. We talked about the tension that is actually a decision between our identity and our performance. And then we talked about the very real tension of humility and confidence. Well, today, what we're going to do is kind of shift gears a little bit and look at some tensions, not really around who we are as leaders, but in how we lead the people that we are entrusted to lead. And so what we're going to do is really look at this tension that may seem weird at first, but I think is massive and goes much deeper than we may realize. We're going to look at the tension between grace and accountability. Grace and accountability. Now, if you don't serve in a church context like I do, it may feel strange to use the word grace in leadership, but the idea is core to what we do as leaders. There are times when, as leaders, we have to choose to make exceptions. We have to choose to let something slide. We have to choose to give someone the benefit of the doubt or to give someone a second chance. I think all of that is just examples of grace. So there's this tension in our leadership, right? Do we lean towards grace or do we lean towards accountability, drawing a line and sticking to it? Well, I think pretty obviously, this is not a decision that we can make. This is a tension that we need to hold because we can't choose one of these, grace and accountability, without actually damaging both of them. So I want to kind of pause right now and kind of zoom out because this podcast is all about leadership. And I said that we're going to be talking in the next couple of weeks about how we lead people, but really I think this idea of grace versus accountability does in some way go back to who we are as individuals, not just as leaders. See, what I believe is that inside of every person is a leaning toward either what I would call grace or truth. Grace or truth. And again, as a pastor, I see both of those in scripture. And we read in John chapter one that when Jesus came to this earth, he came full of grace and truth. And by nature, by birth, how we are wired and designed, I think you and I will just naturally gravitate either toward the grace side of the equation or to the truth side of the equation. And where I think that gets problematic is that in the world we live in today, I believe that we're told you cannot hold on to both of these. You either have to be a grace person or you have to be a truth person. You can't be both. There are people who say, well, if you hold on to any kind of truth and willing to tell someone that they are wrong, that's not showing love. That's not showing grace. And that in order to show grace and to show love to people around us, we must not be able to believe they are wrong. And so we let go of truth completely. And so what that creates is not just people, but churches, I think, that say, hey, we are going to be a grace church or we are going to be a truth church when I believe that we are called to hold both. We are called to be people of grace and truth. And really, even though we're going to naturally lean to one side or the other, one is going to come easier than the other. It doesn't mean that we are not required to walk out both. Okay. So let's now zoom back in to leadership because I think we see this play out in our roles as leaders. Are we a grace person or are we a truth or accountability person? Well, let's just stop and say that good leaders really do need both. Why? Because when we show grace, that is how we build trust with the people that we lead. When we give them the benefit of the doubt, when we allow for needed exceptions, when we offer second chances, when failure is just an opportunity to learn, you're going to see that your people begin to trust you. They know that you care for them. They know that you see them not just for what they do, but for who they are. And you are going to draw in people as a leader, gain their trust, increase your credibility. You need grace. But as a leader, you also need accountability because accountability builds clarity. Accountability says, hey, we all have jobs to do and we are going to do them. This is your responsibility. This is my responsibility. This is the deadline by which this needs to be done. Hey, I love you, but you didn't get your job taken care of. We need that accountability so that there is clarity inside of our organizations. And if we are going to be a healthy organization with a healthy culture, and you know I love to talk about culture, we have to have both grace and accountability. We have to hold the line and set standards, but we have to be willing to allow exceptions when they are needed in the moment. But here's the problem when we are not willing to manage that messy tension between grace and accountability, when we are not willing to hold on to both of those, we are going to create either entitlement in our organization or we are going to create fear in our organization. If we choose accountability over grace, then we are going to create a culture where people are scared to death to get something wrong. They are going to be incapacitated and immobilized by their fear of what happens when they don't get it done right. And so they may hit all the deadlines. They may never show up late. They may bank their vacation days for fear of using them, but you're never going to be able to move your organization forward in meaningful ways because you will lose creativity, you will lose innovation, you will lose the growth that comes from failure that is really opportunities to learn. But on the flip side of that, if you choose grace over accountability, you're going to create entitlement. You're going to create a culture where people don't take their jobs seriously. And what happens is they are going to begin feeling entitled to those exceptions, entitled to those second, third, fourth, fifth chances. And what's going to happen is the burden of their work and the burden of their responsibility will not go away magically. It will just transfer to other people in the organization who will get bitter, not just at them, but at you as a leader for not handling this. And so we cannot afford to choose grace over accountability. And we cannot afford to choose accountability over grace. We really do have to hold both in tension. And so let me ask you this as we wind down. Where do you find yourself drawn toward the most? Do you feel yourself drawn toward grace? Or do you feel yourself drawn more toward the idea of truth and accountability? I think knowing that is important because it helps us to overcorrect in the other direction. Because what may feel like an overcorrection in the opposite direction of that which you're wired may not be an overcorrection at all. So ask yourself, pray about it, think about it, ask others around you. Do you see me as a grace person or a truth person? Because uncovering that will affect the way you lead others tremendously. So again, as we end today, let me leave you with one last bottom line reminder for this tension. Grace without accountability creates entitlement. Accountability without grace creates fear. We have to hold both grace and accountability. One last thing before we end this conversation is just let me say if you are a leader, specifically in the local church context or even outside of it, I would love to be able to connect with you if I can help. If you would like, I'm gonna have my email in the show notes. Reach out to me. We can set up a time to connect because here's what I know leadership is bigger than any one of us. If we are truly going to have an impact in our communities, we need to lean on each other and we need to learn from each other. So I would be more than happy to do what I can to connect with you and help you lead right where you are. So reach out, let us know how we can connect. But until then, we'll see you right back here next week on the Impact Leadership Podcast.