Dear 26 Year Old MeSample

Patrick Thompson (Musician with Rend Collective)

I would tell my twenty-six-year-old self that I’m stronger when it comes to facing conflict than I thought I was. I really, really hate conflict. But you can’t live on the road and be at peace with one another at all times. So I’ve worked through conflict and learned to meet it head on. 

Really, I have to credit my wife for teaching me that. On more occasions than I would like to admit, I’ve wanted to brush conflict under the rug, but she’s said, “No, you need to stand up for this. You need to actually tackle that head on. You can’t let that situation unfold the way it’s going to.” What I would tell my younger self is that it’s not so bad—and sometimes it’s good—to face conflict and not avoid it. 

The other thing I’d tell my younger self is about leadership. In our business there are five of us up on stage. People know us and want our autographs and such. But Rend Collective is made up of a lot more people who do a ton of work but who get zero credit publicly. It takes a particular brand of person to not really mind about that. 

I have realized so many times that we need to praise and include and encourage and appreciate the folks who work alongside us offstage. We have to help them capture a little piece of the vision and own it for themselves. Theirs is thankless work—believe me. 

But if they know, at the end of the day, that someone in the audience came back to God because the person in the crew carried the instruments from the lorry or that someone in the audience went home and made things right with his or her parents in part because that team member made sandwiches for everyone or ran and got cough syrup at the chemist’s, then it helps them. They’re going to work more effectively and they’re going to be happier, because they know that God’s work goes on because of them and that they share equally in any victory. 

In the final analysis, we’re a team. And that’s true only whenever everybody is going toward the same goal. This sense of community may make it a wee bit easier when we’re asked at the last minute to put on a surprise show. It doesn’t cost those of us who are onstage a lot of extra time to do that, but it takes the crew an enormous amount of time and work. That’s what gives them sleepless nights and aching backs. 

But if they have the vision and know what it is that they’re a part of and they feel as if they are involved in people being encouraged by the music and moved closer to God, they can do it. 

That’s what I’d tell my younger self about leadership. Everyone shares in the wins God brings about through the work we do. 

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