Looking for a meaningful gift for the holidays? The 3 inch Logan Temple Zinc Alloy Ornament from Ringmaster's Jewelry and Gift is the perfect addition to any Christmas tree. Ringmasters was kind enough to send me one and I love the quality of this ornament. And we love filling our tree with meaningful ornaments like this that focus our family on the temple and Jesus Christ during the holidays.
This intricately detailed ornament captures the beauty of the Logan, Utah Temple with an elegant antique silver finish and detailed hand painted enamel work. It looks incredible on our tree. Display it on an ornament stand, Christmas tree, mantle, or shelf. And with over 60 temples available, you can find the one that will add meaning to your space. You can even have them personalized with the laser engraved message on the back.
You can find your own ornament at local LDS retailers or at shopringmasters.com. Anthony Sweat has easily become one of my favorite BYU professors to interview. He's been on the podcast several times, and he also has a remarkable presentation about ambiguity of doctrine in our Questioning Saints virtual library. He discusses healthy and unhealthy ways we approach doctrine, how to help others reconcile doctrine they find difficult to believe, especially
when we don't know much about it. You can watch professor Sweat's entire interview in the Questioning Saints library by going to leading saints.org/14. This will give you access for 14 days at no cost to watch this presentation. You'll be better prepared as a leader when you do. Everyone, this is part 2 of my interview
with Ryan Godfersen. If you haven't listened to part 1 yet, definitely go back and listen to that because there's a lot of context that will be important in order to understand fully this part 2, but a phenomenal discussion. You're gonna love it. So here's part 2 of my conversation with Ryan Godfreykson. 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? And one, 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. Yeah. That's fascinating.
There you know, you establish safety, psychological safety, which you talk a lot about. Right? And it just and we grow. We flourish under that. Another concept that I think of when I we consider, you know, establishing value, I sometimes we feel like we have this knee jerk reaction in the church setting of, like, we wanna emphasize Jesus Christ. Right? Like, absolutely.
We teach doctrine here. We wanna focus on doctrine, and we sort of get these blinders on of, like, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Right? Which sure. I mean, it should be at the core of everything that we do. But then when we talk about values, we just say things like, well, we invite people to come to Jesus Christ. That's our value. Alright. Moving on. Like, wait a minute. Like, what does that look like in real
life? Or give me a dilemma where that would actually be helpful in stimulating a Zion community or establishing unity. Right? So to not just be satisfied with sort of these platitudes of, like, well, we invite people to Jesus Christ. We focus on doctrine. What does that mean? Like, how can we get to the value? Anything else come to mind with that? Well, along those lines, because a lot of that idea of, like, the doctrine piece comes
up in our teaching. So, right, I think a common dilemma that teachers experience in the church is, do I need to cover all the topics in the lesson manual? Or do I need to get all the way through my lesson? Or if somebody takes us on a tangent that where they ask a question and it takes us on a completely different topic, but it is incredibly authentic, vulnerable, and growth promoting, where do we want the teacher to lead?
Do we want the teacher to kinda run with that person who's kind of stepping into this vulnerable space? Or do you want the teacher to say, okay. Great comment. That's not the direction we're gonna go. I'm gonna reel this in because I've got 4 other topics I've gotta finish. Right? So it's, are we where do we want people to lean in teaching? Do we want to lean towards kind of downloading information and content? Or do we want them to lean into vulnerability, experiences,
etcetera? Yeah. Right? That could be another place for a value. Yeah. And and correct me if I'm wrong. I'm just thinking sort of workshopping this in my mind of, like, how can I present this to my elders quorum of because it's easy or it's sort of might fall flat to stand up and be like, okay, what are our values or what type of values you see do you wanna see in the quorum? It's almost you almost get get the wheels spinning more in in people's mind when you start with some dilemmas.
Alright. Let's here's a dilemma. Here's a hypothetical. How would you respond if somebody started crying in this room right now or someone got angry or you know? Yeah. And you can process before, like, you know, that gathering what those dilemmas are. And then as you workshop a dilemma in that setting, you can then say, alright. I see some value swapping up here. How do you feel about these? Right? Yeah. Yeah. No. You're spot on. You do. You start with the dilemmas.
Another way to kind of approach that is, do you ever feel torn and you're, like, between 2 different directions, like, on where to go. Right? So though that would be the place to start, to surface the dilemma in one of those fashions. And then, okay, what's a value that is gonna best direct us moving forward? Yeah. Really
good. Alright. Number 5. Alright. Number 5. And we've kind of already touched on it, but the 5th thing that these really elevated leaders focus on is creating a psychologically safe culture. They are intensely focused, the culture. I used this terminology earlier. They are gardener minded leaders. So gardeners understand three things. They understand that they cannot force a seed to sprout, a plant to grow, or a tree to bear fruit, but they can create the conditions under which
those things will occur. And the better the conditions, the greater the growth and the greater the yield. And so at the end of the day, these most elevated leaders are way more focused on ensuring that the conditions in the environment are optimal for growth and for thriving. They're not as focused on the outcomes because they know those outcomes will take care of themselves.
And so it's but we should have in mind because we've got the purpose, mission, vision, we should know where we wanna go, and we should be able to ask ourselves, what is it? And we should be asking, what is it about our current culture that is holding us back from fulfilling our purpose? Mhmm. And that is a question we should ask over and over and over and over and over again because there will always be an answer to the question. And if we stop asking that question, we stop gardening.
Mhmm. So we've got to ask, what is it about our environment, our culture that is holding us back from our purpose? So that's another reason why we start with purpose because we got to know the why. Yeah. That is such an important question. And sometimes, I appreciate you, like, emphasizing this question we need to keep asking ourselves
almost every week, you know, at least. Because this I think this is what's so powerful when there is, like, a bishopric change, a state presidency change, elders you know, really state of present change, where you get new fresh blood coming into that fresh perspectives, and they start with that question naturally because they think or, you know, or some type of questions related that they're like, how are we gonna
do this? Right? And unfortunately, some of these callings, like you think of a typical state presidency calling this, you know, a good 9 years by year 4 or 5, you're sort of in the in the mode of the, you know, the MO of things and doing the things. You got another state conference. Let's do kinda like the last one with a new theme. And but there's but if we intentionally say no, let's start as if this is our 1st week. You know, what would we see that needs to change here? I
think that was in a a book. One of those what are the who are the brothers that write those leadership books like making things stick? Chip and Dan Heath. Yeah. The Heath Brothers. Right? I think it was in the making things stick, but there was this, like, like, this business wasn't going well. There's Liz Wiseman does rookie smarts. Oh, yeah. Right. But they asked themselves this question of, like, if we were the the like, we're gonna get fired, we know that, if we don't
shape up. But what if how would we respond if we were the new CEO or the new executive team coming into this, and it totally shifted their point of view to the fact that they didn't get fired and they they had great results going forward. Yeah. So Yeah. So the question that we're talking about here is largely asking over and over again, what is it about our culture that is holding us back from our purpose?
So I'm gonna make the stance that I don't think a lot of church leaders ask that question, or at least they're not kind of taking it seriously in terms of, like, following up on it. And so I feel a valuable question is to ask is why don't more church leaders ask that question? And it comes back to our 3 levels. Okay. So leaders who operate in that base level, they're wired to protect their safety, their comfort, and their belonging.
When you ask the question, what is there about our culture that is holding us back from our purpose? Inherently, in asking that question, you're giving yourself a job to do Mhmm. To fix something or change something in a way. And when we give ourselves the jobs to do, that doesn't generally feel very safe, very comfortable, or necessarily like we're gonna fit in. We're just adding one more thing to our busy plate.
Yeah. And so I think part of what we need to recognize about it is about our church system, which there are some massive pros and there are some massive cons. But when we have a lay ministry, then that means we've got people who are busy people, who are already busy being asked to do busy things. And then the idea of doing these 5 things that we're talking about just feels like it's adding on to what we're already doing. Yeah. Right? So the reality is, is that most this is my
perspective. Most church leaders are incredibly good people. But also, most church leaders operate in this mode of self preservation. Yeah. How do I protect myself from more work? And their bodies are just more focused on preserving themselves than they are about creating value. And I think a lot of church leaders would say otherwise. They would verbalize, no, I'm all about creating value.
But then I would ask, how often are you asking this question about what about our culture is holding us back from our purpose? Are you even focused on developing a purpose, mission, vision? What values have you espoused and tried to promote within this group? Right? If leaders aren't doing those things, that's an indication that they're operating in self preservation mode. And so I wanna empathize with church leaders because I understand. Like, I get why leaders in the church
operate in self preservation. Yeah. Yeah. It But that's not the level of leadership that I think we should aspire to. Yeah. Yeah. My mind goes to, like it's sort of like saying, a lot of the time, bad leaders are bad leaders because they're human. And guess what? You're human. And so if you're sometimes a bad leader, well, you know, hey. I'm human too. Let's, like, give a
let's hug it out. You know? Like, it's like we just have to recognize, yeah, we're limited or we have a lot going on, and I appreciate that empathy statement of saying, like, we get it. Like, it's not like Ryan has it figured out or Kurt's got it figured out if you just do it our way. This is just the messiness of mortality. But the more we can reach for these principles that we've discussed, then we're gonna start to see progress. And then it's like, oh, this is getting easier, and people are
enjoying this. There's a good culture here. I'm looking forward to going to church. I love this calling. Right? Like, those are Yeah. The the progress that that we see. So And if we can you know, we've kind of been drawing a comparison for the corporate world to the church world, and the reality is is in an organization, the CEO is paid a massive amount of money to do this work. In a church, the bishop or the stake president has not paid any money to
do this work. Yeah. And you can even think about different churches. They pay, they have a ministry. Yeah. They have a pastor, a priest, a ministry that is paid to do this work. And while there can be a downside to a paid ministry within an ecclesiastical setting, it does create more it creates more a more optimal condition for leadership effectiveness. Yeah. And that we just is it that is a part of the constraint
within our current church structure. Yeah. So I'm not saying we should change that church structure at all. I'm just recognizing it as a constraint to elevated leadership. Yeah. So, essentially, you're saying, like, that that stage 1, the safety and comfort. Like, we are naturally, the natural man inside of us wants to create that safety and comfort and make sure that we don't look terrible as a leader. And so we're we naturally go to that that level one type of approach just because
it's like, you know what? I just have to do 90% of this work even if I get burned out because I don't want this to look bad on me. You know? I'm I'm the elder's going president. I'm really excited president. I should be able to make this work, and then that's when we get stuck in that level one. Yeah. I do find that a lot of church leaders, and I've been there before too, so I'm as
guilty as anybody. I do find that a lot of church leaders are much more concerned about not messing up in some way than they are about creating value. Yeah. And one of the ways that I saw this, it was many years ago, I was Sunday school president, and I approached our bishop, said, I've got an idea for an alternative Sunday school class. It kind of isn't what, you know, is prescribed by the church, but I think it meets a need for a certain demographic in
our church. And I felt like I had pretty good backing and rationale for the inclusion of this particular class, and it was a very quick no. And it just made me wonder, like, like, why such a quick no? Why not even a little bit more discussion? You know, I'm not bent out of shape that it was a no, but it it seemed like the bishop was more about focused on protecting his potential backside if something were to go wrong than he was about the value that could potentially be created. Yeah. Yeah.
And that's where there's so many that's when the person feels, you know, whether you felt this way or not, but we come back too fast with that. No. We start to diminish our word counsel. Right? And Yep. As far as the bishop goes, like, if you have a diminished or disengaged word counsel, it's gonna be such an uphill battle. Right? So we're always thinking like, yeah, go for it. Lean in. How'd it go? Oh, like, that was that was crazy, wasn't it? Like, what did you learn? What'd
you take away? Right? And because it might fail, but we we have to be, you know, out of that stage one to be okay with it sort of crashing and burning. Yeah. And when I study leaders like Sachi Nadella at Microsoft, another good one is Ed Catmull, when he was leader at Pixar animation and Disney animation, is the value they actually created values around this particular dilemma. Mhmm. Do we kind of protect our backside or we do we are we willing to try something
innovative and creative and new? And their value statement was, let's jump towards innovation. We and in making that value statement, they are implicitly saying, we know missteps are going to happen. Problems are gonna be occur by doing this new innovative stuff, and we're okay with problems, and we're even okay if those innovative steps fail.
Because what we believe is that we're going to learn something in the process of implementing that new idea that allows us to ultimately be better off because we tried as opposed to if we didn't try. Yeah. And Netflix is another example. I so so here's some really great books. Okay. If people is that okay if I just share some book recommendations? If people wanna study really vertically developed leaders, these are the best books that
I've come across. So, Hit Refresh, which is about Satya Nadella and Microsoft, American Icon, which is about Alan Mulally at Ford, No Rules Rules, which is about Reed Hastings at Netflix, Creativity Inc, which is about Ed Catmull at Pixar Animation, and then a new one. Here's a new one that I love. Those are ones that I may be given before, but there's a great book called Unreasonable Hospitality. Oh, yeah. I've read. Yeah. Yeah. So those in my mind, those are maybe the best books for studying
elevated leaders Yes. And how they implemented all 5 of these practices that we've talked about. Perfect. Yeah. And that's that's the thing is it's not like you can listen to this 10 more times and, yeah, if you feel the urge, please do. But and then, like, Ryan didn't give us, like, the 5 steps. Like, just do these 5 steps, and you're good. But we're talking principles, and sometimes the best way to, like, connect the dots or have the inspiration of saying, oh, I could
do that. Right? And this is exactly why we do How I Lead Interviews is go read one of these books and learn about go through the narrative of what it was like, what they do, and suddenly these little nuances will will jump out and you'll say, I can do that. Right? My interview with Kurt Brown, which is, quickly becoming most downloaded. We actually won an award, a podcast award
for this this episode. And that's all all we you know, it's not like he had this 5 step plan that was perfect, but there was these moments where these principles come out and you think, oh, I can do that. Right? And so people go back to those episodes thinking, yes. This is what good leadership looks like. I wonder if I can establish that in my own my own leadership. So really good stuff. But this plays into sort of the last part we talked about being at the stage one is
this concept of ego. And we had sort of an informal conversation a few weeks ago because I released I sent out a newsletter. I sent out a newsletter every week. And if you're not on there, you can go to leading saints.org/subscribe and make sure you get the newsletter. It's actually become one of the more popular things about the Leading Saints brand. Some people read the newsletter and they're like, I didn't even know he had a podcast. Well, I it's right there in the newsletter.
But I talked about this concept of, as leaders, you've given me words or or framework to touch in as we we go to this that stage one of safety and comfort where it's like, you know what? I've been asked to do this. I love the gospel. You know, you just think of the richness that the the gospels bless us with, the the richness of our relationship with with Jesus Christ and heavenly father. And, I mean, all the all the things, they're just beautiful about their gospel. And so then we're asked to
serve in a capacity. And sometimes maybe it's a quote unquote heavier capacity of Bishop, Relief Society president, Elder Scrolls president. You think, I want to do so well at this responsibility. Yes. I'm gonna do it. And if even if I have to stay up late or work overtime or whatever it is, like, I wanna do such a good job. And then naturally, as happens in mortality, our ego kinda gets inner tangled with the experience of, like and if it doesn't go well, I guess that says something
about my discipleship. Or Mhmm. I guess that means that I'm kinda not as good as the person as as the bishop is or the stake president is because I obviously will never reach that level of influence or calling. Right? And and then we, you know, one example that I'm often experiencing of, like, it's easy to get stuck in this mode of thinking, alright, where am I administering interviews at? I gotta get a 100. I gotta get a 100. And sometimes I stop and say, Curt, why do you gotta get a 100?
You know, of course, we get it on paper why the that's an effective thing to do, but if I I start to define myself with some of these things. But, anyways, that was sort of the premise of my newsletter that we have to just keep that in check. Recognize that our ego is there. And I'm I'm a proponent of that ego. Isn't just this negative thing. Like we're all born with ego. I'm sure there's some Latin roots that would better explain this, but the reality is we're
blessed with an ego. I mean, the fact that I put together a podcast and did 800 episodes, I had the ego to actually do something like this as if I could stimulate a conversation or have something to say that would bless the the church and the world. But, actually, that ego became a great blessing to many leaders across the world. Right? So ego is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can get in our way or get too intertangled with our experience. Where where do you wanna jump off with
this conversation with about ego? Yeah. And here's one of the my pet peeves about ego is that, as you allude to, it could be defined in a wide variety of ways. Mhmm. And it depending on our how we define it, kinda shapes whether we see the ego as being good versus bad Yeah. Or helpful versus not. And and the reality is, as I think all of us would say,
there's pros and cons associated with ego. And so what I maybe a direction I would like to go is just to simply suggest a redefining of ego in the context of the topics that we've talked about that might be helpful for us. Awesome. So the way that I would like to define ego, at least again, just for the purposes of this conversation, is our ego is anything, any part of ourselves that causes us to focus on us
and our own safety, security Mhmm. Or standing out advancing Gideon, versus creating value for others. So if we are in this tension between, do I do something that makes me feel safe or do I do something that's more inclined to create value in the long term? Which way do I value for others in the long term? Which way do I lean?
And anything, what I'm gonna suggest is any part of ourselves that causes us to lean towards self preservation as opposed to value creation is our ego getting in the way of leadership Yeah. And of our leadership. And I say this by being incredibly, like, just I struggle with this as much as anybody. Right. Right? So while I might know some have some ideas on this, that doesn't mean I'm necessarily walking the talk. So I I have my own issues that I've got to get over, but I don't know.
I guess, let me come back to you with that definition of saying any part of ourselves that causes us to move towards protecting ourselves and away from creating value from others is our ego getting in the way. Yeah. And this actually I don't know if I think it'll be the episode before this one. I actually do a whole episode talking about the concept of motivation because
this is, like, how to motivate people. And I've done other newsletter articles about this as well, but I wanted to create one episode that I could point people to that would really hit the nail on the head about this concept because I get so many messages from people saying, you know, like, why don't people do this stuff? Like, don't they know we're supposed to do ministering visits? Don't they know, like, the same time people can't do all
the service assignments? Right? And so they're like, they want just give me all you have about motivating people, whether it's manipulation, whether it's shame. Like, just give it to me, whatever it takes. I need to motivate people, and that's where we do sort of retreat to some of these negative places of,
like, motivating through manipulation or shame. Right? But when I consider this, like, my self preservation, that is also in terms of, you know, in a church calling, that's like, maybe people will be so disappointed in how I lead that they'll just release me, and they'll forget about me. Right? They'll put me in the dustbin of or or put me out to pasture and say, well, we gave brother Frank him a shot, and, that was a disappointment. So we'll never do
that again. But at the same time, like, I have to have, you know, the surety of walking in the state president's office knowing that he may get after me, that I'm only at 70% of ministering interviews. And I have to say, you know what? If you need to find somebody else to do this calling, I'm okay with that. Right? But my ego says no. Like, just make sure you don't have to have that conversation. Right? Like, just do it. Do whatever it
takes to do it. But when reality, if I if and I mentioned that episode, I let my state president. He he doesn't approach me that way. But if he did, and I'd say, will you just come to elders' corpsman and see what's happening there? Because there's a culture dynamic there regardless of how many ministry interviews are being done, like, something special is happening there. Right? So anyways, that's where my my go goes
that I have to constantly remind myself. I have to disconnect myself from the numbers, from the key indicators, even though those are good, you know, places to stretch and understand what's going on at times. But I don't need to be in a place of self preservation. If they need someone else to do this gig, there's probably plenty others, people to do to try. Yeah. As you're saying this, I kinda come back to my I look back on my
own mission experience. Oh, yeah. And, you know, how we were incentivized, we were measured. Every night, we were measured. Yeah. Yeah. Essentially, how many discussions did you have today? Right? And so when I would talk to somebody and they would kind of express, oh, life isn't going well, you know, x, y, and z. Honestly, rather than try to help them with their need, I'd be like, I've got a story for you. Let me tell you about
Joseph Smith. Uh-huh. Yeah. Right? And it was just like, ultimately, at the end of the day, what I was doing is I was making it. I was approaching them not to create value for them, but to recreate value for me or to report a certain number for me at the end of the night. Yeah. And I'm, you know, I could say that jokingly because, one, I'm ashamed of that, but I'm also very forgiving of myself. Mhmm. That's past self, and Yeah. I still have my own issues. But that's kind of the idea. Right?
So it's one thing to be able to kind of say, do I have parts of myself that pull towards self preservation as opposed to value creation? Mhmm. So that's a really powerful question. And honestly, it's led me to several years of therapy, which has been so incredibly gross promoting. Yeah. But a deeper question that we can even ask is, am I aware of the parts of me that are more wired for self preservation as opposed to value creation?
Yeah. And that opens up a lot because the reality is is that I just find that most leaders that I work with in organizations, they are not aware of their self preservation tendencies. Mhmm. But if they were, I think that they might operate a little bit differently, and I would say the same thing about all of us. Yeah. And let let me mention some of that sort of a way that sort of creeps up on people, and let me know if if you agree with this. Sometimes
people think, oh, yeah. You know, they're listening to us totally. Ryan and Kurt, I'm totally on board of this. And then we slip into this, like, fake humility place where it's like, yeah. You know? And then we say things. I'm probably not a very good elders, quorum president or yeah. I can't even believe they picked me. Right. We're trying to and we do it a lot of times in a joking setting, and I'm even saying, like, I work to even get rid of that.
Like, I never joke about the sort of the self deprecation of, like, yeah. I'm kind of a mess. You know? And because I think that's the ego trying to convince us of, well, if I show people that I'm kind of already thinking about that I'm a failure and then I become a failure and then people know, like, oh, yeah. He knew what was going on or or, you know, I don't know. So when in reality, when we're in that sort of fake humility or, like, oh, golly, like, I just don't know what I'm doing here.
Like, we may be missing that ego standpoint where we may be in a place of safety, but we're also not producing value for our organization. And this is what I love about the stories, you know, the, you know, I think the the hero with a 1,000 faces like the what what do they call that? Like, you know, movies follow the storyline where the the farm boy on a, you know, a far off planet is called in this larger story to be a Jedi knight. Right? Like, that story comes from God. Like, that is
the Bible story. Right? He went to he went to Abraham who was, you know, practically nothing, and he's like, you will have so many children. I'm not doing these Bible stories very well. Or or Moses who's like, man, I can't even talk. Like, yeah, well, you're gonna go to Egypt and, like, free my children. Right? So this is, like, the power of that larger story of when we're we feel that calling. Like, that's where when we have our ego in line where it's like,
no. Like, there's something larger than me. And I I have the capacity through God to create a remarkable experience. Right? There's no fake humility in that. There's no, like, woe is me or self deprecation. And that's the sweet spot where it's like, I'm gonna make a difference, and maybe this goes to, like, I'm gonna be a contributor. Right? Because God's called me to be a contributor. Right? Put me in line there. Anything
I'm off base there? Well, no. It's just I'm gonna be I'm gonna use my terminology. I'm gonna be a value creator. Yeah. Exactly. Right? And that's what I'm intensely focused on. And to be here look. If we're leveling up on these levels, here's one of the things that I've learned about leveling up is part of the process of doing this is healing and deepening our relationship with ourselves. Yeah. Right? What keeps people at lower altitudes in these levels is insecurities
Yeah. And limiting beliefs and fears. And so at the end of the day, if we wanna be this high level elevated leader, that's this gardener minded leader, we probably need to do some work on healing our relationship with ourselves at a foundational level. And I think that that's we can come back to the gospel. What's the purpose of the Christ's atonement? Is to help us foster that healing Yeah. So that we could be more value creators. Yeah. That's powerful.
And then, you know, there's that the ego often wants to go to our quorum, go to our relief society, go to our ward as the leader, and get that validation of, like, oh, you're such a great bishop. You're such you know, but, you know and people have used said this quote in different modes, but the modern day philosopher, LeCret, that's a joke because he's a Christian hip hop artist. But he said, if you give people the power to validate you, you also give them the power to invalidate you.
Right? And so if we go to our validation in our leadership, like, if we would need that pump of ego there, it can also deflate that ego and really cause us to spin out of control. The only source for our our personal value is God. And so those moments where all I can do is get on my knees and say, alright, God. Remind me one more time. Like, do you love me? Like, am I worth Yep. What you say I'm worth? Like, am I really a child of god? Like, you know, what's that divine identity
that that you bestowed upon me? You know? So I do. Well, it's as you're saying this, I'm thinking of there's several CEOs that I've worked with that come to mind. And one of them was actually fairly self aware, but he was also not a very good leader. And as we dug into things, he's kind of this command and control, hierarchical top down leader. As we dug into it, one of the things that he said to me, I'll probably always stick with me, he says, deep down,
I don't like myself. Mhmm. The reason why I push my team so hard is because I know that if we could get wins in the business world, it makes me feel like I'm of greater value. Oof. And at the end of the day, like, he's not gonna never gonna become a great leader until he gains a sense of self worth, which he currently doesn't really have. Yeah. And I think, you know, he's not alone. All of us have that to a
certain degree. We all have a tendency to want to feel like we get confidence when others compliment us, which may seek us or cause us to seek compliments. Or I once had a stake president who was maybe the funniest person that I know, and he was always telling jokes. Uh-huh. But I also recognized I think it was a way for him to mask his own insecurities. Mhmm. Like, if somebody brought up something controversial, he would be quick to tell a joke
to diffuse any tension. Yeah. And I think he had a hard time sitting in that. I think he had a hard time sitting in the tension, and I think everybody loved him because he was so funny. But at the same time, I think people felt like they were never heard by him. Yeah. And that's where that self awareness comes in of just asking people, you know, because it's so hard to see that sometimes from this side of your eyeballs, you know, but to get feedback from others to be more
self aware really goes a long way. So And let me add, if it's okay, just really quickly. Just a theme that I see across the executives that I work with is when I do 360 feedback with leaders, I ask a wide variety of questions. There's one question that leaders always score the lowest in. Then explain what 360 feedback is. So 360 feedback is when if I'm a leader, I have my subordinates, my peers, and my boss give me feedback about how I show up in the workplace.
And it's a wide variety of questions. There's one question where leaders always score rather low in. And the question is, to what degree is this leader good at being vulnerable? Mhmm. The question is not great at being vulnerable. It's good at being vulnerable. There's already a low bar, and most leaders struggle with vulnerability. Yeah. That maybe shouldn't surprise us.
But connecting to this topic of ego, and the reason why I bring it up is I I think that most people struggle with vulnerability. And vulnerability, if we are unwilling to be vulnerable, that is a signal that we prefer to lean towards self protection versus value creation. Because I don't know about you, but vulnerability is where relationships get built. That's where trust gets built. That's when impact happens,
is in when we're vulnerable. And I've kind of had to learn this the hard way myself, and I'm still not great at it. But I've had to learn I'm not naturally a very vulnerable person. And I would say maybe particularly with my wife. And so in our relationship over the last we've been married 14 years, almost 15 years, I've come to see how my I tend to lean towards not being vulnerable because it helps me to not feel uncomfortable in that moment where I could have been
vulnerable. Mhmm. But the cost of leaning towards not being vulnerable has been a reduced connection with my wife. And so that's it. I think whether it's with relationships, the people that we lead, or the groups that we lead, I think a common place where leaders struggle and have this egoic self protection tendency is to move away from vulnerability
as opposed to step into vulnerability. Yeah. And I think that might be an interesting way to consider what is my altitude of my leadership by gauging how willing am I to be vulnerable. Yeah. Alright. So get then then vulnerability is sort of becoming a buzzword these days, and so sometimes we miss the principle just because it's such a high level. Give us a crash course. What comes to mind? It's like, okay. I'm I'm a leader. I wanna be vulnerable. Like, what do I
do? Do I talk about, like, terrible childhood? Do I talk about my tough week? Like, what how do I be vulnerable? Yeah. Well and I I love the way that Brene Brown talks about it. She talks about it in terms of removing your armor, And I don't think there's one right way to do that. But it is create I think one part of it, it's creating openness and space for others and even for ourselves. But here's another way. This is something that I've had to learn as part of my
relationship with my wife. But I had a one of my MBA students is having a tough time with this student group at the moment. And he sends me an email and he says, can you put me in a different group? I'm not having a good experience with this group. And I essentially said, no. I can't do that, but there's some things that I think you could do to improve your situation. And one of the things that he expressed to me was, I feel like my group doesn't listen to me. I say something and I feel like
they dismiss what I say. And I asked him, have you told your group members that? And he said, well, no. And I think that's a place of vulnerability. Right? It would be incredibly vulnerable for him to say, hey, group members. I'm not feeling like you guys are valuing my voice. And that's where he just needs to stop. Stop there. Like, I don't feel like you're valuing my voice. That's lowering his armor,
exposing himself in a very vulnerable way. But what he's what he would be doing is he would be seeing, will they catch me when I express a sincere need? And if they were to catch him, then that would help build the relationship. But if he never expresses to them this concern that they're not listening to him, nothing is going to change. Yeah. So in order for change to occur, I think almost all change is preceded by some form of vulnerability.
Again, so that doesn't mean that we're airing our dirty laundry. But in order for us to deepen our relationship and connection with others and to have an impact in the lives of others, it has got to come from a place of vulnerability. Yeah. I just recently heard a story, a real life story of, in an elders core
meeting. The elders I don't know what the setting was or how he got to this point, but there's a moment where this the elders core president got really vulnerable and said, I feel like I'm failing as an elders core president. Now naturally and and this happened, you know, we wanna, like, oh, don't worry about it. You're great. You're wonderful. You know, keep going, you know, which is good, but he put himself out there basically saying, will you catch me?
I feel like I'm failing. Right? And it's not that he didn't then spin it into a guilt trip, and that's why you need to do a, b, and c. It was just like, this is where I am as in my humanity. Right? And Yeah. From what I heard, it turned out to be a really vulnerable discussion and one that really kind of moved the quorum to that next stage as
an organization. You know? Yeah. Another thing I do at the end of my core meetings as elder quorum president is I make sure that we wrap up discussion about 10 minutes before some, you know, 5 or 7 to 10 minutes before the end of the class, and everybody circled up. And I say, I wanna know how we, as a quorum, can pray for you this week. And I usually lead out with, here is what I
am struggling with. Right? And, you know, depending on the week as far as what I share, I so I lead out as a leader and I then I say, anybody else here, how can we pray for you? This week, we had a guy raise his hand and say, business is not going well for me, and, you know, we're we're living off our savings right now, and I could really use some help. Right? And we usually get and sometimes I'll just sit there and it'll be silent for 30 seconds until someone raises their hand
and when they feel comfortable. But then we pray as a korma call on somebody to then pray, and it's a beautiful experience of these human, you know, mortals coming together in worship and saying, I need some help here. And as a quorum, we're praying for for them. And we may not specifically say, you know, bless Johnny there that his job can get better, but it's been stated and it really has stimulated, a more openness and safety, you know, psychological safety. I know it's in the in the
quorum. So Oh, man. I love that. I love everything about that. Right? And I I just imagine I'm sure you have great teachers and they do great things, but I'm sure sure that that's I'm guessing that that is more impactful on the people in the quorum than any lesson that could be delivered. Yeah. As good of any lesson could be. Yeah. I hope so. Hope so. Anything else, Ryan, that we missed? Ego,
anything. I mean in terms of, like so what what are some practical suggestions that people can have as a result of our conversation? And here's some questions to consider in addition to the ones that we've already talked about. So one question is, are you as a leader creating space for learning and for new ideas? Mhmm. Right? That might be a valuable question. Another question is, have you developed a clear purpose that is about creating value?
And just side note on this is I do think that if we're gonna create a purpose statement, it shouldn't just be me creating it and then top down delivering it to my group. It should be in partnership with the group that I lead. And then another question, similar question is, am I in learning mode, performance mode, or safety mode? Right? Safety mode is, am I just doing, like, the minimum for my stewardship to just make sure we're not rocking the boat?
Performance mode might be, am I getting all of my interviews done? And learning mode is this mode of how can we make the culture one that is more optimal for our my our people to grow and to thrive. Love it. And I think there's kind of a higher order nature to that. Yeah. Perfect. Cool. Let me I'll ask you 2 more questions. One being, if people wanna know more about your books, obviously, they're on Amazon and or your consulting work or anything like that,
where would you send them? Yeah. Best place is my website, ryangoffordson.com. In fact, there's a couple of self assessments that are on that website that many of the leading states members have taken, and I've gotten feedback from them about how it's been very eye opening to kind of awaken to their self protective tendencies and how they could be more value creating.
So there's a couple of assessments there that I think, you know, if you're listening and you wanna deepen your self awareness, I think those will be valuable tools for you. And then, like you said, I've got some books to support people in terms of making some shifts in these regards.
Awesome. And then lastly, just what final encouragement after all these these things we've talked about, the three levels, the five responses, or whatever, like, what's the final encouragement you give to this group of leaders who just wanna do better and be better leaders? Yeah. Well, I I hope one of the maybe there's 2 core ideas that I I hope people connect with. 1 is the notion of gardener minded leadership. How are you doing as a gardener within
your garden? How intensely focused are you on cultivating the right conditions for your people to grow and thrive? That includes your family, right? That's an easy place to start. The other piece of this is just the idea of ultimately, if we want to be these gardener minded leaders, we might need to do some work on healing our relationship with ourselves. That concludes this episode of the Leading Saints podcast. Hey. Listen. Would you do me a
favor? You know, everybody's got that friend who listens to a ton of podcasts, and maybe they aren't aware of Leading Saints. So would you mind taking the link of this episode or another episode of Leading Saints and just texting it to that friend? You know who I'm talking about, the friend who always listens to podcasts and is always telling you about different podcasts. Well, it's your turn to tell that friend about Leading Saints. So share it. We'd also love to hear
from you. If you have any perspective or thought on this episode, you can go to leading saints.org and actually leave a comment on the, episode page, or reach out to us at leading saints.org/contact. Remember, go to leading saints.org/14 to access the remarkable presentation by Anthony Sweat about ambiguity and doctrine. 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.