By way of introduction, here is one of my favourite Monty Python sketches:
When I became chair of
Warwick Statistics, more than ten years back, I had to learn fast in a hands-on-way about dealing with people. This, you must realize, is a difficult task for an abstract mathematician, more comfortable with α-β-γ than with real characters. But when you've got to learn, you've got to learn. Over the course of my three-year stint as chair the truth gradually dawned on me; the people I should treasure, the ones I should nurture and value above all else, were not necessarily the people who agreed with everything I said. No, the ones who taught me how to be a better head of department, who protected me from my mistakes, who brought out my very best, were the ones who disagreed with me, the ones who brought me the bad news, the ones who always looked on the dark side. They gave me the full three-dimensional view of reality. Charged as I was with the responsibility of growing and protecting my beloved department, they became some of my most important and valued assets.
Obvious lessons here for a church warden clambering up the learning curve! If I want to serve my church and my Lord as well as I can, then I need to be open to the people who
don't think like me, the people who value parts of church life that I don't really get, the people whose definition of Christian discipleship may have only a very small overlap with mine. And in order for that openness to happen, I have to show I am listening to them; I have to concentrate hard to try to see things from their point of view; I have to communicate to them, without pretense or manipulation, how I respect them and I respect their position. It isn't automatically easy for someone who has spent all their life in the astringent cut-and-thrust of mathematical debate, but it's the only way.
It was some comfort to learn, a couple of years after I ended my term as chair of Warwick Statistics, that a fictional president of the United States and his chief-of-staff took a rather similar view:
"The President likes to hear from smart people who disagree with him."
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