Some weeks, something is just in the air.

You can feel it before you can name it. A leader you’re working with is volatile in a way you can’t predict or steady. A person on your own team turns cold, and you realize they’ve quietly decided they’re working against you. And then, right when you’ve got your hands full, the hostility jumps the fence and pulls one of your own good people off center, and now they’re reacting from the gut too.

I had one of those weeks recently. I’m not going to tell you the players, because the players don’t matter and they’d never recognize themselves anyway. What matters is the pattern, because if you lead anything — a company, a board, a family, a team of two — you will have weeks like this. Hostility is not a sign that you’ve failed. It’s a sign that you’re in the arena.

The question is never whether you’ll face it. The question is who you’ll be when you do.

I keep coming back to Paul for this. Not the Paul of the stained-glass windows, but the working Paul — the one who planted communities and then watched people inside those very communities turn on him. He knew what it was to pour yourself into people and get resentment back. And out of that experience he wrote some of the most bracing leadership instruction ever put on paper, in the twelfth chapter of Romans:

That’s not soft. That’s a battle plan. Here’s how I try to live it.

1. Be the shock absorber

A car with no shock absorbers doesn’t just ride rough — it falls apart. Every bump goes straight into the frame until the frame cracks. The shock absorber has one job: take the jolt so the rest of the vehicle doesn’t have to.

That’s the peacemaker’s job, and it is not a passive one. When hostility comes into a room, someone is going to absorb it. If the leader doesn’t, the team does — and a team that’s constantly absorbing blows starts to crack. People get defensive, they get anxious, they start bracing for the next hit instead of doing their best work.

So I try to take the blast myself. When someone comes in hot, I let it land on me and go no further. I don’t pass it down the line. I don’t let it ricochet around the group. I absorb it, and I keep the ride steady for everyone behind me.

This is the hardest one, because absorbing a blow is uncomfortable and unglamorous. Nobody claps for it. But it is the single most protective thing a leader can do, and it’s exactly what Paul means by not repaying evil for evil. The chain of hostility has to stop somewhere. Let it stop with you.

2. Their hostility doesn’t set your terms

Here is something I’ve had to learn and re-learn: another person’s behavior does not get a vote on who I am.

When someone is hostile to me, cold to me, working against me — that does not change how I respond. I will be polite. I will be collaborative. I will be winsome. Not because they’ve earned it, and not because I’m naive about what they’re doing, but because those are my terms, and I set them. I decided a long time ago what kind of leader I am going to be, and I’m not going to let the rudest person in the room revoke that decision.

Notice the phrase Paul slips into the middle of his instruction: as far as it depends on you. That’s realism, not resignation. He’s not promising you can make peace with everyone — some people won’t let you. He’s telling you to make sure that if peace fails, it isn’t because you were the one who quit trying. You control your side of the exchange completely. Keep your side clean.

The moment you match someone’s hostility, you’ve handed them the steering wheel. You’re now being driven by the worst version of them. Staying winsome isn’t weakness — it’s the refusal to be controlled. It’s you keeping your hands on your own wheel.

3. You’re not performing for the malcontent

This one changed everything for me, so let me say it plainly: when you’re dealing with a difficult person in a group, they are not your audience.

For years I made the mistake of aiming all my energy at the hostile person — trying to win them over, convince them, soften them, get them to finally see me clearly. It’s exhausting, and it usually fails because a person committed to their grievance isn't looking to be convinced.

But here’s what I finally understood. In almost every one of these situations, there’s a whole room of other people watching. And they are who I’m actually leading. They’re watching to see what happens when someone comes at me. They’re learning what this environment is — whether it’s safe, whether it’s fair, whether the person in charge keeps her composure when it gets ugly.

I don’t stay gracious for the malcontent. I stay gracious for everyone else. The quiet ones. The loyal ones. The ones doing good work who need to know their leader won’t come unglued the moment someone pushes. When I refuse to take the bait, the room sees it. That’s the impact. That’s the discipleship happening in real time, and it’s happening on those people, not on the one causing the trouble.

Stop performing for the person you’ll never win. Lead the people who are actually with you.

4. Kindness is the long road home

And yet — sometimes you do have to keep reaching for the difficult one, even knowing the room is your real audience. Because occasionally you’re not dealing with a passing conflict. You’re dealing with an alienated follower — someone who was once on the bus, once part of the mission, and has somehow drifted into opposition. They’re not a stranger being hostile. They’re one of your own who has turned.

Paul knew this pain intimately, which is why the end of Romans 12 is so striking. His counsel for an enemy isn’t to defeat them. It’s to feed them. To heap kindness on them until something breaks loose. “Overcome evil with good.”

I’ll be honest with you: this is the tough one, and it is a long road. Kindness does not work like a light switch. You don’t get to be gracious once and watch the alienated follower melt. Sometimes you pour goodness into a person for a long time and see nothing. But here’s what I’ve come to believe — with a genuinely alienated follower, kindness may be the only road that goes anywhere at all. Force won’t reach them. Argument won’t reach them. Authority just hardens them. The only thing that has a chance of thawing an alienated heart is sustained, unearned, stubborn kindness.

It’s the longest road on the map. It’s also, sometimes, the only one that arrives.

The week ends. You’re still standing.

That hostile week I mentioned? It passed, the way they all do. And when I looked back, I noticed something: I didn’t lose a single relationship I cared about, I didn’t damage my own witness, and the good people around me were steadier for having watched me stay steady.

That’s the whole return on this. You will not win every difficult person. Paul didn’t. But you can refuse to be made ugly by ugliness. You can absorb the blow instead of passing it on. You can keep your terms when someone tries to set them for you. You can lead the room instead of chasing the malcontent. And you can keep the porch light on for the follower who wandered off, in case kindness is the road that finally brings them home.

“As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Your side of that sentence is entirely yours. Keep it clean, and let the rest belong to God.