Okay. So you're here for some great church leadership content. The podcast is great, but there's also another piece of content you need to be enjoying each week. It is the Leading Saints email newsletter. Now I get it. Email newsletters feel so 2,006, you know, but it isn't as old fashioned as you might think. It's actually one of the most popular pieces of content that Leading Saints produces. Each week, I share a unique leadership thought that can only be found in the newsletter.
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to the general public. So look for leading saints in your inbox by going to leading saints.org/14 or click the link in the show notes. Hey. If you're a newbie to Leading Saints, it's important that you know what is this Leading Saints thing. Well, Leading Saints is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping Latter day Saints be better prepared to lead. And the way we do that is through content creation. So we have this phenomenal podcast. We have a newsletter. We have virtual conferences,
so much more. And articles on our website. I mean, I could go on and on. Right? And we encourage you to, jump in, check out Leading Saints. Go to the search bar at leading saints.org, and type in some topics and see what pops up. We're just glad you're here to join us. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Leading Saints podcast. I'm, as always, excited to welcome back Ryan Godfordsen into the podcast, studio here remotely. Ryan has become such a good friend, such a good mentor.
All his, his research, his thinking, we've got the leadership bug, and we love to, get into a room and just, just talk about leadership. And so we had all sorts of different directions we could take this, but I know if I just hit the record button and start talking, there's always some special themes that come up between me and Ryan. And, this one does not disappoint. In fact, I'm gonna split this up into 2 episodes.
So we'll release the first part of this episode one week, the second part another week, or may do the same time. We'll see. I don't know. I'll make that decision when it comes to it. But Ryan talks about
some crucial things. For example, if you're out there as an elders quorum president, really excited president, and you're really struggling with this new 10 to 15 minute council period at the start of, quorum or or really excited meeting, Ryan gives a phenomenal model that you can use to really get some discussion going, not just to discuss for discussion sake or counsel for counsel sake, but to actually stimulate and establish a plan for the culture
of your organization. And I think you'll you'll benefit from as well. I also throw a curve ball at Ryan asking him about this concept of temple recommends and how we can best, you know, facilitate and administer temple recommends using this, you know, language like worthy and, you know, all the questions and maybe they're too behavior focused. Anyways, it was an interesting discussion about Temple recommends that it's worth, listening
for. And then lastly, we end with a phenomenal discussion about ego. That might be in part 2, but nonetheless, we'll get to it. You'll love it. Here's my interview with Ryan Godtfredson. All right. Back with my old friend, Ryan Godfrey. And how are you, Ryan? Yeah, doing great. I always appreciate the opportunity to chat with you and I, part of me says we should do this more often, but also the listeners are probably think, thinking, ah, it's good that they space these out a little
bit. No way, man. I you're one. I actually just reached out to you, not because I had any topic on my mind. It's not because you have a book coming out, which is we need more Ryan Godfordson in the rotation here at Leading Saints because, a lot of our conversations offline are always like, wow. What a great podcast episode that nobody will hear. You know? So here we are, and I'm glad we can we can chat a few minutes. Now you may you
probably don't realize this. In fact, I barely realize that my assistant brought to my attention that us recording today will be the 8th 800th episode of Leading Saints. How's that for you? Wow. Alright. Man, I was already feeling honored. Now I'm even more honored, but also huge kudos to you, Kurt, for man, that's a grind to do that. And there's a lot of work that I'm sure goes on behind the scenes that are largely unappreciated. So maybe for the
collective group, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And, you know, it's been people ask me, how long you've been podcast? And I say, 10 years. And they're like, woah. Were there computers back then? Like, it seems like forever ago. And, when I started, I didn't necessarily realize how, you know, early we are, and we're in the podcast game. But, yeah, you know, seems like now everybody's got a podcast, so I'm just lost in the mix. So
Yeah. And that's the thing is I I don't I may be the one person who doesn't have a podcast, so appreciate the opportunity to come on. For sure. So just let's just you know, we're we're friends, and these may be a little more informal conversations and and podcast episodes. But I'm curious with what you're doing. I know are you still teaching at the college? Yeah. So I'm at Cal State Fullerton. I've been here for just over 10 years. I do research and leadership or research and teaching
on leadership. I'm currently teaching an MBA course. I'm also faculty director of our MBA program, so that's a new role that I'm in. But in addition to that, and and I feel like while I love everything that I do at the university, I do feel like I get the most meaning out of working with organizations and helping them to develop their leaders. And so I'm working with organizations all
over the world to do that. And I just find it exhilarating to be able to associate with some really great leaders, learn from them, and then hopefully, I'm contributing and adding value to them and helping them to be more of the leaders that they want to be. And I imagine that keeps your skill and perspective sharp in the classroom, right, as you're talking through theory. That's what I love
about it. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a great synergy because I've got this research piece that I then bring into both the classroom as well as my consulting. And then in my consulting, I have some really great experiences and I meet some really cool people that I then talk about in both my teaching as well as I bring them into, like, case studies in my research. Yeah. So what's the typical, like, consulting relationship like for you? Are you going to their offices wherever they are in
the world? Do you have to take time out of the classroom to do that, or is it mainly remotely? Or how do you actually consult with people? Yeah. Everybody everyone's a little bit different. I do all of the above. I would say, just if I could lump it into maybe 3 different categories, is one category is I work with executive teams. Generally, this is extended programming, oftentimes for up to a year, working with them to help
them to elevate their leadership. Because here's what I've learned, is that the executive team, the sophistication of the executive team sets the ceiling for the organization. So if we can help that executive team elevate, in fact, that's the only way to elevate the organization is by helping that executive team elevate. So that's one clump of work. Another clump of work is designing ongoing kind of training for leaders in the
organization. That could be mid level, that could be high level, wherever it is, but just ongoing training. And then the 3rd bucket is largely doing keynotes. And that could be at conferences as well as with organizations. So recently, I was just in Las Vegas. An organization brought me in. They've got locations all over the US. They brought me in to do a keynote for their leaders that they had brought in for this particular conference. So that's largely the
3 buckets that I play with them. Yeah. So I'm just cur and this is maybe an impossible question to answer, but I do this when I have, you know, therapists on the podcast. I'm I'm just sort of take a temperature gauge of temperature gauge of what you're seeing out there. Like, when you walk in a typical organization, are there things that are common issues that immediately jump off the paper, jump off the organization at you? Yeah. Hands down. And I imagine we'll get into this as part of our
conversation. Yeah. But effectively, what we've learned is that leaders can operate at different levels of sophistication. And in fact, there's research stemming from the field of developmental psychology that identifies that there's kind of 3 different modes adults operate as a whole. So the base level mode is where we are wired our bodies are wired for safety, comfort, and belonging. The second level is where we upgrade to where our bodies are wired to stand
out, advance, and get ahead. We're now willing to be unsafe, uncomfortable, and not belong in order to stand out, advance, and get ahead. And then the third level, another elevated level up above that is where our bodies are wired not to stand in and not to stand out, but to contribute, add value, and lift others. And so we know this, and if we look at leaders, and this is what I do, I look at leaders through this lens of where do the leaders in this organization
tend to operate with them. Is it level 1, level 2, level 3? And I'll use different terminology for that. But what the research has found that was done before me that is now being backed up by my own research is that when you look at leaders in organizations, 7% operate at the base level, 85% operate at that second level, and only 8% operate at that top level. And so there are themes that come up because of that.
So most of these leaders in organizations are wired to stand out, advance, and get ahead. Part of what that means is they are much more focused on results and outcomes than they are about creating an optimal environment for their employees to grow and thrive. So what we find is that most elevated leaders, these are leaders like Saatchi Nadella at Microsoft, Alan Mulally when he was at Ford, Indra Nooyi when she was at PepsiCo,
Mary Barrett at GM. These are leaders that when you study them, you find that they are intensely focused not on the fruit of the tree, but on the roots of the tree. They're all of it. They're what I call gardener minded leaders. They wanna cultivate the right environment for their employees to grow and thrive because they know if our employees can grow and thrive, naturally, the fruit will take care of itself.
Mhmm. These level 2 leaders are much more concerned about the fruit, and they're oftentimes micromanagers, control freaks, etcetera, that are trying to control the amount of fruit and kind of almost pull that you almost visualize them in a garden, like trying to pull the tree to get it to grow faster. Yeah. And what they don't recognize is what they just need to do is cultivate the right environment.
I think that those I'll ask you if that makes sense here in just a second, but I will just add a caveat as we're talking about church leadership. I think the percentages of that breakdown is vastly different within church leadership, and we could dive into that. But Yeah. Did I explain that okay? Yeah. That's really helpful because one of my questions was so that 3rd level, that to contribute level, that's sort of the ideal, that's the goal, or the that's where the ideal leader leadership
is typically resides is. That's right? Yes. That's the ideal level, and that's an indication if a leader is there that they are a very cognitively and emotionally sophisticated leader. Yeah. And that's you know, when you read books by, like, Simon Sinek or Bernie Brown or Adam Grant, all of their teachings are directed and pointed toward that particular role. Yeah. I'm actually reading I think it's his newest book, Adam Grant, about hidden potential or something like that. That's
really Yeah. Really awesome that, you know, the first chapter talking about character development and that sort of in that contribute area of, like sometimes we skip over that. We we we go to skill sets or, like, how can I help, you know, people that I lead be able to do something when in reality, it's more about become? And, boy, that sounds like a eternal gospel somewhere that I've heard. So Well, let me if I can, I'll make a I'll I'll make a plug here
as I'm working on my next book. It should be out in about 6 months or so. And that's I actually cite Adam Grant in exactly what you're talking about to make a point, which is there's 2 different sides of ourselves. There's what I call our doing side, which is our horizontal side. Mhmm. And then there's what I call our being side, which is our vertical side. Mhmm. And most of our development effort is solely focused on
our doing side. And that can be helpful, but it's generally only incrementally helpful to improve our knowledge or and our skills. If we want transformational change in development, if we want to truly become come better, then we've got to focus on the being side. And that is ultimately about upgrading our body's internal operating system so that we become more value creators as opposed to self protectors.
And so, anyways, that's the whole focus of my next book, which Well, and you covered a lot of that in your last book, right, about Yeah. The elevated leader. I did. And that's where these three levels come in. Uh-huh. And then in this new book, I'm really unpacking this distinction between doing side and being side. And then the whole focus is on what is our being side exactly? How do I gauge my altitude along the being side? And then how do I elevate
along my being side? Yeah. And to your point, I believe that that essentially is the purpose of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yeah. Is to help us to become better. And that's the title of my book, Becoming Better. Okay. Cool. I and I'm excited to get in an interview when that comes out and, make sure people know about it. So this takes me to on a path that this is why I love more conversations together is so I this may be a little bit controversial question, but that's
what makes it so fun. So when I wrote my book, you know, I I wrote a book earlier this year about grace called, does God disappointed me? Removing Shame from a Gospel of Grace. And I talk about this dynamic between behavior focused discipleship and then and just, like, grace focused discipleship, like, feeling that acceptance from God, but also on this other end of the spectrum knowing that, you know, there's discipleship actions and things that we do, whatever it
is. And I had some people one conversation in particular comes to mind as I presented about the concepts of book. It was not necessarily a fireside thing. It wasn't at a church, but nonetheless, it was sort of I was in that book promotion mode. And this couple comes up to me after because I talk about this, how we get stuck on the behavior side of the gospel so often, and then it defines our entire experience. Right? Like, oh, am I going to the temple enough? Am I going to church? I didn't
read my scriptures today. Right? And we get caught up in, you know, a lot of people come to check boxes of the gospel. And so question that these person that this couple gave that put my way was, so what's the deal with temple recommend questions? Because they can feel so behavior focused. And my response to them and this is my question that so get your wheels turned. Like, with this in mind, focusing on the being rather than doing, how does the church on the administrative side effectively
administer the temple and through temple recommends? Because at the end of the day, like, from an administrative standpoint, like, I think about the councils or even the quorum of the 12 or whomever's, you know, behind the doors, like, figuring out these processes, and they have such a long tradition of, like, well, we sort of always been doing temple recommends since Brigham Young's time, if I'm not mistaken. Right? And it's sorta just what we do, and then
they've evolved over the years. And my response to that was simply, at the end of the day, we need some type of indicator, some type of dipstick that we can pull out of the heart of man and say, where are you at? And so these questions, those many of them are behavior focus in a short, quick meeting allows us to get to a point of saying, okay. I think you're becoming something. It appears that you're becoming something because of these
indicators, so here's a recommend. So I don't I wouldn't say it's like the perfect system or, articulated from the lips of God of how we should do it, but in the administration of things, it's sort of the best we got. So how would you respond? With these concepts of minds, what would be the ideal approach of facilitating
temple recommends? Ready. Go. I surely don't have any solutions, and I think that is an incredibly deep question, and there's a lot of rabbit holes that we could potentially go to. For all intents and purposes, I think you're thinking about it in a good direction. In the sense of, at the end of the day, if we're going to base one's temple worthiness Mhmm. We should have some sort of a measure that is an indicator of one's kind of sophistication or level in which they're living their life.
Yeah. Now I think one of the things that we could debate is, do the current questions, is that an appropriate measure of how one is living their life? Now that's, I think, surely a a door to be debated. But I think it I think we've got to come back to an idea, which is how do we define temple worthy? Mhmm. And how does that actually relate to the gospel? Right? So, for example and as it relates to this being side, I'm sure you have seen it just as
I have seen it. We have seen people who wear rattle off some of the temple interview questions that come to my mind, Wear their garments, follow the wood of wisdom, don't cheat on their spouses, etcetera. They do all of those things. They don't lie. They don't gamble. They're paying child support, whatever it is. Yeah. They're paying attention. They're a complete prick. Like, there's some of these people that we know that they're, yeah, they're paying tithing.
They're checking the boxes, but they maybe they're not even fully a jerk, but they are a closed minded individual that has a tendency in leadership positions, for example, to be command and controlling, to be micromanaging, which are all indicators that they're not very high on their being side. Mhmm. Right? So I think the gospel would suggest it's not enough, and this is, I think, one of the messengers are saying, which I agree with. It's not enough to
just check the behavioral boxes. There's actually something deeper and richer and is a lot more complex than the box checking side of things. And how do we connect to that deeper, richer aspect? Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. There's and anything that tries to do so, anything, is surely gonna be inadequate and imperfect. Yeah.
Yeah. For sure. Because there's a like, I just think of that spectrum of, like, well you know, because some people may argue, no. Like, our temples, yeah, they're holy places, but we're all sinners, and, you know, let's get get rid of the worthy word altogether, which I'm sure there's different ways that we could frame it, you know, spiritually prepared or whatever. And so on one spectrum, someone and they say, well, no. We just lean to anybody in there. If they say they wanna go to the
temple, let's let them in. But then, you know, the other issues come over that. Then the the other thing of the other side, like, no. Let's make even more stricter. Right? And and really make sure that everybody's behaviorally in line. So, anyways, it's it's an interesting thing to to explore. And, again, it's not our prerogative to come up with these questions or, you know Yeah. We leave those to the people who who do that. It's interesting when it comes to these principles.
For sure. And let me open up what is a can of worms. I'm gonna leave this for food for thought. We don't have to dive into it. But regardless of what we're currently doing or could potentially do it differently in this space, does the process, is it almost socially creating a caste system? Right. Yeah. And that there is a when the process is not effective or has options for being not effective or that's a possibility, I think it opens up the door for creating an unhealthy caste system.
And I think if we're church leaders, we should at least be aware of that. Yeah. And when you say caste system, you're saying I mean, there's basically a certain demographic. There's a certain group of people in our faith community that can only attend the temple and benefit from whatever blessings are offered there. Right? Yes. And that there is, along with that, almost a sense of that certain people have greater value than other people because of one's ability in this instance to access
the temple. Mhmm. Right? The famous geographic location with caste systems is India. Right? And the the historically, the caste systems there is depending on, you know, what ethnicity that you have, where you're born, the class in which you're in, like, those are all different social signals, like having access to a temple, can cause people to differentiate how much value they believe other individuals have. So we want to avoid and I believe that this is the Christ like way of
doing this. We wanna make sure that we avoid where a person's sense of worth is connected to whether or not they have a temple recommend and attend the temple. Because the real reality is is that we are all children of God and all carry equal value. But I don't know. Maybe that's a controversial statement in the church. Well and well, I think this is a lot of it really hinges on that leadership experience because and again, these are, like, impossible.
It's and, you know, because we could sit down for hours and debate and put a plan together, and it's just in this fallen state of mortality that we live in. It's almost impossible to create this perfect system where everybody feels that way. Right? Because there's so many there's shame involved there. There's, you know, humans are involved. There's the adversary is involved, you know, in all these things, and so
it's hard to get there. But as a leader, I'm just thinking, like, how can you because it's not like, oh, we just need to get rid of the whole temple thing. I mean, that's a huge chunk of our our theology. Right? Like or we shouldn't do temple recommends or any of that, but it's like, how can we create a community where people still feel, you know, loved and welcomed no matter how they're showing up to church or where they are on the covenant
path. Right? And that's it's really tricky, but I think a lot of it hinges on that leadership experience, how they're showing up, how they're stimulating community and culture and things like that. So impossible questions. Maybe that's what we'll label this episode 800, impossible questions with Ryan Copperson. Oh, that's a big one, and that's a tough one for sure. So I'm just curious, like, you know, sort of giving you a better,
you know, place maybe to articulate this. Like, when you go into when you're consulting with a leader or coaching a leader, you know, in the secular world, like, how what are some indicators where you're know you know, they're sort of in that 3rd stage of where they're more contributing and less focused on behaviors, more focused on becoming? Yeah. Great great question. So here's here's some signals that I look for, and and I've come to kind of say this in this way.
What I find is that the most sophisticated leaders, these third level leaders, they prioritize laying a leadership foundation from which they could lead from. Now I've essentially identified 5 different elements that are a part of this foundation that they lead from. And I'll let you we could ask the question, are these appropriate for a bishop, a relief society president, an elders' court president, a primary president? Are they appropriate?
I think you could say that church is a very different context than the business world, which it is. But I also think these elements are vitally important for any type of leadership in in the organization. So as I go through them, you could also ask the question, how commonly do I see this in my ward, in my elders quorum, in my relief society, etcetera? So here are the 5 elements. And I believe that there's a cornerstone
of these 5 elements. That cornerstone is that the leader prioritizes the creation and implementation of a clear, inspirational, and stakeholder centric purpose. Alright. Say that one more time, Ryan. Yeah. They develop a clear, inspirational, and stakeholder centric purpose. K. That's the vision concept. Right? Like, a leader needs a discussion. No? Okay. Alright. It's the purpose. So this is explaining the why, the why we do what we do. Gotcha.
And right? So, for example, when Satya Nadella took over as CEO of Microsoft, he said, what I felt was that Microsoft has lost its soul. We need to regain our soul. And the way that we do that is we need to reconnect to why we exist. Mhmm. And he said, I spent a whole year, my 1st year as CEO, listening to my employees to try to get a better sense of why we exist. And he said, that was the most important thing I could have done because it laid the foundation for all of the rest of my leadership.
Mhmm. So if you study any high level leader, that's going to be their priority, coming up with a clear, inspirational, and stakeholder centric purpose. Now here's one of the values of this. We as people have a tendency to want to put our eyes on ourselves, right? If we think about those three levels, either safety, comfort, and belonging, or standing out,
advancing, and getting ahead. But if a leader, of course, with the help of the people in the organization, can develop a clear inspirational and stakeholder centric purpose, then what the leader is doing is he he's creating the opportunity for everybody in that organization to take their eyes off of themselves and put it on something bigger than themselves. Mhmm. And a key of this is it's it has to be value creating.
And so the purpose statement has to be focused on the key stakeholders that we want to create value for. Right? So for an elders quorum, the key stakeholders are probably the members of the elders quorum. Yeah. If I'm a bishop, that might be the members of the church. But another key stakeholder might also be people who are not members of the church that we would like to have join our church.
Right? And so the purpose and I think the church had more of this historically, and we've kind of moved away from it at a church level. Like, what was the saying? Perfect the saints, redeem the dead, and proclaim the gospel. Right. Right? That's actually a pretty clear purpose statement. And I think that that we can have a church wide purpose statement, but I also think there's value in having a localized
purpose statement. And, of course, it would need to be in alignment with the church's purpose statement. But I think what happens in a church level is if the bishop in the ward council, for example, does not have a clear purpose, what they end up doing is they end up focusing on what is most urgent, but not necessarily what is most important. Mhmm. And so it's almost every ward council that I've been a part of has been what fires do we need to put out as opposed to what value do we need
to create and for who? Yeah. And that takes discipline. Right? For sure. So let me get your take on that or to see if you have anything to add. Where what stood out to me is when you said, like, it was the Microsoft CEO said we'd lost our soul. Yeah. Like, to me, that's maybe, for lack of a better phrase, like, a come to Jesus moment of standing in, like, sitting in elders quorum, in sacramenting, in in the youth meeting, whatever, and say, have we lost our
soul here? Like, is there soul? Like, is there and and when I think I just love that framing of, like, this because a soul is what beats the heart of the organization of the entity. Right? And so I'm just thinking of some of these questions you could ask them. Where are people here getting invigorated when they come? Like, how's the energy management? Is it something people look forward to? Right? Or is there talk about what's going on here? Is there something special happening? Or, well,
you know, I don't know. Or just sort of doing what the last guy did and, you know, but gotta teach a lesson. The Habakkuk says teach a lesson. Got it. Right? And and, again, those are, like, not that we should dismiss all those things, but we have to go layers deeper to this place of, like, what's the purpose? What's the why of why we're gathering or why we're a church or why we're an organization? Yeah. Because it just what I found is if there's not a clear why,
people tend to do what is easy. Mhmm. Not necessarily what is right. Yeah. Particularly when it comes to creating value. But I love that question. What is this invigorating? Another similar question is, how much life is there in this group or in the system? Mhmm. And that's another question that I think we can ask. And I think my sense is in the church, there is a certain percentage of weekly attenders who are very engaged, and they bring a lot of life, but I don't think that's a 100% of our
churchgoers. Yeah. And so a question could be, what percentage of, for example, my elders quorum kind of bring life to the elders quorum or excited to go to elders quorum and what percentage are not? Mhmm. Because I imagine if anybody's elders quorum is like my elders quorum, is you kinda get 10 people out of 30 who are the 10 people who say all the comments. And then there's 20 people who
never say anything at all. What you know, which suggests that maybe there's life in 10 people, but not so much in 20 people. Okay. Alright. Let's keep going. So I'm gonna combine it's a build off of 1. I'm gonna combine the next 2. So the other two things that I look for is and these are 2 things that should be fueled by the purpose, and you brought up one of them. So we need a mission and we need a vision.
The mission and vision should also be directed towards creating value for our stakeholders, right, in alignment with our purpose. Now, so what's the distinction here between purpose, mission, and vision? So a purpose is why we do what we do, a mission is what we do, and a
vision is where we are going. And so, you know, I think if I'm a bishop, if I'm an elders' corps president or religious society president, whatever, I think I could ask myself or I would I would do well to ask myself, do we have a clear purpose? And it's one thing to say yes and and kind of think it's implicit. I think everybody in the church knows our purpose. But if you were to go around, let's just say your elders quorum or your royal council, and ask them, what is our purpose?
Would you get the same answer from everybody or would you get different answers from everybody? Right? That's something to consider. So so we can evaluate. Do I have a clear purpose? Clear why we do what we do. Do I have a mission, what we do, essentially, how we go about fulfilling that purpose, and then a where we are going. Yeah. And my mind goes to, you know, I know the church recently came out and suggested, like, in the second hour during a leaf sign and elders quorum
that we are having these council meetings. Right? This is such good fodder for because I know people are thinking, I don't know. What do we talk about? Like, you know, this or that or you know? But this I mean, even take one of these every other week or you can try and get through this and say, alright. Let's get together. Like, why are we here? What what's our purpose?
Right? And you reference what's in the handbook with as far as the the mission and purpose of elders core and Relief Society or whatever, and then add on to but what about our elders core? Right? So there's so much this is such a great model that so many could use as we're in these council settings. And along those lines, if one were to kinda jump into these types of questions and let me give just my advice on where to start, is I actually wouldn't start
with purpose, mission, vision. Where I'd actually start is I would do what I do with organizations is I call it a stakeholder analysis. Oh, wow. Okay. So we we ask the question, who are our primary stakeholders? And I go through and I have them list as many as possible. Right? So, for example, if I'm the Relief Society president, one of my primary stakeholders is surely the members of the Relief Society. Another stakeholder might be people who are not yet
members of the Relief Society. Right? Nonmembers. Another stakeholder could be the husbands of the women in the Relief Society or the children of the women in Relief Society. So there's a there I mean, we could come up with a couple of dozen stakeholders. Okay. Now of those stakeholders, who are our, I don't know, 3 to 5 most primary stakeholders? And let me let me ask real quick here, Ryan, with, you know, just defining stakeholders. These are anybody who's impacted by the organization
in which you're you're speaking. Is that fair to say? Spot on. Yes. Spot on. Yeah. Thank you. So once we identify 3 to 5 of our most primary stakeholders, then we get to ask the question, how are we best meant to create value for them? And then the other follow-up question is, are we doing that? Mhmm. Right? And it's only when we answer those questions that it's almost natural that the purpose statement kind of arrives, that we kind of have a sense of what our purpose really is or what it
needs to be. Gotcha. So that's why I say that's where I start because it fuels the purpose statement, and then the purpose statement fuels the mission and the vision statements. Yes. Another thought or a question that comes to mind is, like, when you said something like, what is the value that's being created for those stakeholders? I'm just thinking, like, some individuals might think, you know, come on, guys. Like, go to elders quorum or go to the society, go
to church. I mean, we're there to take the sacrament and focus on Jesus and learn about doctrine. Like, let's just do that. Like, why do we have to overcomplicate it here? What how would you respond to that? Well, here's my hot take. K. I think that people's engagement in the church k. I'm gonna make a distinction between the church and the gospel. Okay. K? I think that those we could think about them as being separate, and I'm going to do so just for the purposes of this context.
I think that one's engagement in the church generally comes at a greater cost than the benefit they receive from the church. Now I do think they're getting value from the gospel, and that's different. But I think that, generally, people, you know, the people that I talk to say, I am putting more into the church than I am getting out of the church. Yeah. And I'm not sure that's the place we would want to be in, particularly if I'm an elders corps president or Relief Society president.
I would want the people to walk out of an elders corps meeting thinking I am better for having been here today. Right. Yeah. And I I think that's important how you said to make that distinction between the church and the gospel because if we're just talking gospel, like, if we're just talking our relationship with Jesus Christ, like, he asked us to surrender at all. Right? Like, come follow me. Like, those types of
things where it's like, forget yourself. Right? And so we sometimes get stuck in that mindset a little bit where it's like, yeah. We're just like, don't complain about church. Like, if you don't like churches, the problem's with you, buddy. Like like, maybe you need to pray a little harder. Maybe you need to prepare a little bit better because just because we have boring teacher or this boring speaker, I guess that's your fault. You know? And I just think it is, like, we're trying to
stimulate something more there. And so I really appreciate this framing even though it may some may feel resistant to it because there is a distinction there. Like, we're not trying to create a organization that produces salvation because Jesus already did that, and we come to him,
and the church facilitates that. Right? But elders quorum, like, what are we trying to accomplish as as Zion, right, as a group that's trying to unify together, establish the Zion, and therefore, you know, do all the things that come with the gospel. So that's where my mind goes anyway. And let's recognize that people communicate with their feet.
Yeah. And what I mean by that is if people are not getting that, particularly the younger generations, if they are not feeling that they get value from the things that they engage in, they lead. Yeah. And I think we would be batting a blind eye if we did not say we have a lot of people leaving the church. Right. And it goes back to my mind goes to the Peter Drucker quote that I've hijacked in by saying, like, culture eats doctrine
for breakfast. Right? Like, it doesn't matter how awesome your Jesus Christ message is, how awesome the gospel is. If they're not walking into that room to be fed by that message, then what use is that message if if it's not getting to the people? Right? And so that's, I think, that where leadership can insert itself and say, let's make a place where we can cultivate and bring people here so that they are nourished. Yes. Alright. Are we moving on to number 4, or is there more to explore? So
number 4. So we got purpose, mission, vision, and the next one is clear, inspirational, and stakeholder centric values. Okay. And so these are designed our values should be explicit statements about how we want our people to operate in common dilemmas. Right? Because most organizations have value statements or they have a set of core values, like honesty, humility, hardworking, whatever it might be. And those end
up just being like window dressing. Right. I mean, if you remember the company Enron, they had all of those great window dressing values, and they were the most corrupt organization. Right? So so we don't wanna just create window dressing. We need to develop values, and I'm gonna call them that they are dilemma resolving. In the sense of, can we find places where people feel torn between going in one direction or another?
And if we wanna guide them towards to lean one way versus the other, let's create a value statement around that. So let me give you an example. I'm gonna try to think of one that's maybe, church related here. So, for example, if we, I don't know about you, I feel this dilemma in my
elders' corn. My dilemma that I feel is if I have something that I feel like I could say, but I feel it like it might be controversial in the sense of some people in the elders quorum might get a little offended that I'm even questioning maybe a doctrine or something like that. But another part of the elders quorum would be like, oh, I'm so glad that somebody is raising this point. I've been wondering
about this. Yeah. Right? If I'm sitting between this dilemma or do I kind of shake the cage a little bit or not, how do I want my members to approach them? Mhmm. Right? And that's where a value statement could be really helpful. Right? And I'm not saying there's one right way to lean in that dilemma, but I think that's up to the leader to decide because a leader could decide, look, rattling the cage can be disrupted to the spirit. I understand that. Right? So let's not rattle the cage.
But another leader might say, man, if we have people who rattle the cage, that might help create a psychologically safe environment, and it might allow our people to be a little bit more vulnerable. And I've just kind of learned that vulnerability is where impact and growth happens. Yeah. So I want people to lean there. Even if it's gonna make some people uncomfortable, I want them to lean that way because I value the benefits that might come from
that versus not. So that's an example of where a place where we could create a value a dilemma resolving value. Yeah. So that value may be in this elder squirm, we are okay with getting uncomfortable type of you know, we we we will have uncomfortable conversations. Right? And Yes. Because that's where growth happens. That's where learning happens. Yeah. And it could be with you know, another along those lines is we we encourage disagreement. Yeah. Right? That would be another way of
articulating something like that. But we could think about, you know, an award level, for example. If I feel a dilemma between there is if I in my missionary work, there's somebody who I think would benefit from the gospel, but I also know they would be a huge drain on the resources of the war. Should I invite them to church or not? Right? We might need a dilemma resolving value that guides somebody on how to handle that situation.
So this is interesting that, like, for you to maybe propose a hypothetical dilemma to sort of go into the the gym of of our values of saying, alright. Well, if this situation happened, how would we want to respond? Right? And that's the and I appreciate that because you don't have to wait for that awkward moment when, oh, bro, you know, brother Godfinson said something that's really uncomfortable. And, you know, I I don't know. Maybe I should talk to right? But
it's more of like, hey. What if somebody said something in this class? Like, somebody's struggling with, maybe a certain doctrinal concern or or or struggle. Right? Like, how do we wanna respond to that? Right? And then it allows that discussion to happen. So when it does happen, they sort of click into that value mode of, like, oh, yeah. This is this is where our value wins out. Yeah. You know, for example, if we see somebody biting
their tongue. Right? So we've we've said the value that we want is the value of just speak up, speak what's on your heart. Maybe that's our value. And we've expressed that, and I see if I'm a leader and I see somebody not speak up, then I now have the opportunity to kind of after class put my arm around and be like, I saw you biting your tongue. Mhmm. Can we chat? 1, because I'm gonna create some space for them. But then in that chat, then I would say, hey, next time, could you not bite your
tongue? Yeah. Because I think everybody else would benefit from that. Yeah. That concludes part 1 of this discussion and be sure to listen to part 2 for the full discussion between me and Ryan Godfersen. And remember, to get on the email newsletter list, simply go to leading saints.org/14. It came as a result of the position of leadership, which was imposed upon us by the God of heaven who brought forth a restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
When the declaration was made concerning the only true and living Church upon the face of the earth, We were immediately put in a position of loneliness, the loneliness of leadership from which we cannot shrink nor run away, and to which we must face up with boldness and courage and ability.