Knee Deep

“How do you typically handle team conflict?”  

It was summer and all I could think about was how hot it was.  

“I don’t usually generate much conflict. There’ve been a couple scuffles over the past few years, but nothing major. Actually—in the last couple months, two of my supervisors have told me I need to be more assertive and express my opinions with confidence, so I’ve been working on that with my counselor. I wanted to mention that up front because it’s something I’m trying to grow in.”  

My team leaders were young and tired, but overall I really liked them. We’d worked together before and I had no doubt we’d get along. Our area leader rubbed me the wrong way sometimes, but I tried to remind myself that it takes a headstrong leader to build a team in an unreached people group. I hadn’t forgotten the day I lay on his family’s couch with a broken collarbone, and he offered me a shot of liquor when he saw the pain in my face. There was compassion and tenderness there, though he guarded it carefully with a tough exterior. I’d heard from a few former teammates that he could be hard to work with, but I was determined not to believe it until I saw it.  

Every now and again, I did see it. We all saw it in each other. We saw it on the days when we were exhausted, the days we had food poisoning, the days we were homesick, the days we got on each other’s nerves. Some of us got mean and some of us got sad. Some of us got stubborn and some of us became fault-finding. But, for the most part, we all did the best we could.

For the most part.   

It went downhill when we disagreed about the dress code. My team leader proposed that we let the women show their knees, and I thought someone would have an aneurysm.   

It was a long-standing argument and people had vented to me about it for years because it was so disproportionately conservative. Maybe in the Muslim world it would have made sense, but we lived in a tourist town where the local women wore miniskirts to work and danced on tables when their teams won sporting events. There were summer days when the heat index was 120 and I had to concentrate on not scratching the heat rash on my legs. Former staff complained about it in their exit interviews, and all of us complained about it behind our area leader’s back.  

Finally, the topic became so tense that my area leader and his wife called for an open discussion with our entire team. It happened on a Friday night and I was baffled as to why it couldn’t wait until Monday.  

My area leader took the lead.  

“I know we’re here to talk about the dress code issue, but I wanted to let everyone know—if you ever have a concern that you’re not comfortable bringing to me, you’re always free to bring it to the international director.”  

That’s humble, I thought. This conversation is already going better than I expected.  

“Now, let’s move on to the dress code discussion. First, I want to recognize that we’re asking our ladies to practice a level of modesty that isn’t necessary for the culture. As Christians, we’re called to stand out from the culture, not to blend in with it. So, my view is that nothing needs to change. In the past, we’ve only followed the dress code when students are in town, but, for integrity’s sake, we need to start abiding by it all the time.”   

Never mind.  

There was an unnaturally long silence. Maybe I’d been presumptuous, but I thought an open discussion would involve openness and a discussion.  

Voices started chiming in, one cautious opinion after another. I was surprised by how timid my coworkers were, how different their comments were from our conversations behind closed doors.  

I mustered my courage. “It makes sense to me that we would have a clear expectation for how we dress in a work context, but I think it’s important for our staff to have some flexibility when the students aren’t here. I think we can trust our team to abide by the spirit of the law without needing to impose a blanket rule in our time off.”  

I was caught off guard by how fast my heart was beating, how risky it felt to express a reasonable opinion. Did I come on too strong? Was I assertive enough? Did I practice the confident humility my counselor and I had talked about in our last few sessions?   

There were more comments and questions and rebuttals, but none of them were enough to change my area leader’s mind. It was a confusing feeling, watching someone else make such a heavy-handed decision about my body. Was this as outrageous as it felt? Or was this one of the rights I laid down when I became a missionary?

The official meeting ended and all the angsty after-conversations started. There were email threads and biting comments and venting sessions that went unchecked. But there were also legitimate questions—good reasons to ask, “Did that meeting seem off to you?” or “Am I missing something?” Sometimes the healthy and unhealthy talking was so intermingled that I didn’t know where one stopped and the other started, but it was clear that we were unresolved.  

I might have been the most unresolved.  

Because, no matter how spiritual we tried to make it, I couldn’t reconcile the inconsistencies.   

Because, when it came to other gray areas, we all shrugged and tried to use our best judgment.   

Because my area leader poured shots of bourbon for the locals at his birthday party, and he didn’t seem concerned about being above the cultural standard then.  

Because they trusted me enough to send me through counter-interrogation training, but not enough to dress myself.  

Because our team broke all the rules we gave our students, like not running air-conditioning and not shopping at the nice grocery stores and not using a washing machine, and we didn’t seem to care about integrity in those areas.  

Because we didn’t even say the name of Jesus in public—we were trying so hard not to look like missionaries—but then we dressed so conservatively that we gave ourselves away.  

I wasn’t all that concerned about getting to wear what I wanted, but I was concerned by the relational dynamics I saw.  

Prayerfully, I took it to my missions pastor. With his encouragement, I took it to my area leader, because I preferred to talk about it directly than to whisper about it in angsty little groups.  

It didn’t go well. In fact, it didn’t really go at all. I had to bring it up four times for us to start a conversation about it, and the conversation we finally had was so unproductive that I wished I hadn’t tried.   

If he made an honest attempt to listen, it got drowned out with patronizing statements that I was being selfish, that I was in a state of culture shock, or that no one else on the team felt that way. There was profanity and pouting and even a comment that “it hurts my feelings when people wear shorts,” and—for goodness sake—I wished I had left well enough alone, because now it was out there, and somehow I was the child throwing the tantrum.   

I knew better than to think that my own frustration didn’t show, or that I expressed my concerns with perfect clarity. I also knew something was wrong when open discussions became unilateral decisions, and legitimate questions became accusations of rebellion. I knew something was wrong when team members said one thing when a leader was listening and something else when he was away.  

Most of all, I knew this sweet country was home—knew that I couldn’t imagine a happier station in life. I knew I was committed to this team for the long haul—committed to addressing conflict, committed to reconciliation, committed to not sweeping things under the rug.  

That commitment got me knee-deep in a power struggle.