Ken Wright, Former Royal Mail COO: How to Handle Conflict in Church and the Workplace

In our third conversation with Ken Wright, former Chief Operating Officer of Royal Mail, we turn to something none of us can avoid: conflict.In previous episodes, Ken shared how God took him from a teenage conversion and the "upper room" of 1972 to one of the most senior leadership roles in the UK. In this episode, he takes us inside the 1996 national postal strike — a dispute that stopped the nation's post but not the mail piling up behind it, with businesses, hospital letters, and cheques caught in the backlog, and the media, politicians, unions, staff and board all watching. Ken describes it as being in a bunker in a war zone: 24/7, with communication as the only real weapon.But this conversation reaches far beyond Royal Mail. Ken argues that conflict itself is not the problem — the failure to resolve it is. He explains why so many Christians bury their heads in the sand, why big churches quietly avoid each other while small churches lose people out the back door, and why Jesus in Matthew 5 leaves no room for a trail of unresolved conflict.Along the way, Ken unpacks the ACAS arbitration that changed his view of mediation, the 24 hours he spent briefing 500 staff face to face rather than letting a message filter down, the discipline case where he dismissed a young man and then helped him find his next job, and the danger of dressing up a personality clash as a theological issue.Underneath it all is grace and truth — in that order. As Ken puts it, we usually get it backwards: a soft mind and a hard heart, when what we need is a hard mind and a soft heart. And the reason he keeps returning to grace is simple — he knows how much he himself has been forgiven.Whether you're leading an organisation, serving in a church, or navigating a fracture in your own family, this conversation offers hard-won wisdom on facing conflict rather than fleeing it. Blessed are the peacemakers.#RoyalMail#Prayer