Lost in Translation

I just finished reading The Five Dysfunctinos of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. I would recommend the book, not for being profound but for clearly portraying something that I´ve seen happen here in Colombia. His book can be summarized in the pyramid illustration that he uses, which includes the following levels from the base on up: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, inattention to results.

For me the point that most interested me was the fear of conflict. According to the author, in a good team there should be healthy conflict. If there´s no conflict in meetings, that shows that something is wrong, probably that there is a lack of trust because people are afraid of what others will say. This lack of trust leads to a fear of conflict, and when people don´t express their thoughts openly, they don´t commit. When there´s no real committment there´s no accountability and without accountability we can all do what we want with inattention to results.

I recommend this book for executives, pastoral staffs, and missionary teams. I think that it crystalizes some neglected concepts about working as a team.

The church conflict continues, and I keep learning. A concept that is very important to understand in Colombian culture is the malicia indigena. The word indigena is the word for "indigenous" or "native." Supposedly this ability comes from their Indian roots, but it's probably more from their Spanish heritage. It's a difficult concept to translate directly, so I'll try to explain the idea. The term refers to the ability (or vice) to see beyond the surface and judge the motives of another person, usually to avoid getting ripped off or to rip someone off. It's the ability to connect the dots in a situation in order to come out ahead or to tell what's really going on.

I asked my Colombian co-worker if it's ever a good thing. He said that it never is... but that sometimes we misname wisdom or precaution malicia indigena.

The malicia indigena can have terrible effects on a church. No matter what a person says, he or she can be misinterpreted under the guise of the malicia indigena. Lately I've heard comments, such as, "You just can't understand how so-and-so is manipulating because you are so pure and you don't have the malicia indigena."

How does this concept affect a reconciliation process? Wow, it can utterly derail it. "No... so-and-so doesn't want to reconcile, he just wants to manipulate." "When he asked for forgiveness he really didn't mean it." Or you ask someone, "Do you have proof of that?" "No, but I have the malicia indigena with which I can see through the smokescreen."

I've also learned some things about counseling. You have to directly ask people what they mean because they can easily use ambiguous words (obviously this happens in the U.S. too, but I think that it's more pronounced here). For example, "When you said that, did you mean A, B, or C?" This is an important lesson for me to learn so early in my missionary career here. I tend to take things at surface value (they reconciled), when in reality they carefully crafted their words to avoid confessing anything or to admit that "progress is impossible so why bother."

At any rate, I continue studying faithfully in the school of hard knocks.

I was feeling super discouraged by the church situation the other day, until I picked up The Peacemaker by Ken Sande and read the first chapter. It's amazing how God can use one chapter of a book to infuse a person with hope and change disaster into an opportunity.

Read the first chapter of the book in PDF format.

Also see the related websites: www.peacemaker.net and www.peacemakerchurch.net.