Have you ever heard of scrupulosity? This is a mental health concern that is impacting more Latter day Saints than you think. Scrupulosity is religious obsessive compulsive disorder where individuals are hyper obsessed about their worthiness and repentance. Sam Baxter, a former bishop, sat down with me to talk about his lifelong struggle with scruplosity and how he got treatment. You can watch this interview for free in the mentally healthy saints library by going to leading saints.org/14.
This gets you 14 days free access to Sam Baxter's interview about scrupulosity and 25 plus other interviews about ministering to those who struggle with mental health. The content is priceless for leaders, so visit leading saints.org/14 for free access. So you're checking us out as maybe a potential podcast you could start listening to. I know many of you have been listening for a long time, but let me just talk to the newbies for a minute. What is Leading Saints? What are we trying to do
here with this podcast? Well, let me explain. Leading Saints is a nonprofit organization. A 501c3 is what they call it, and we have a mission to help Latter day Saints be better prepared to lead. Now, of course, often means in the context of a calling. It may mean in your local community, your work assignments. We've heard about our content influencing all sorts of leaders in all sorts of
different contexts. We invite you to listen to this episode or maybe a few others of our 500 plus episodes that we have out there. Jump in and begin to learn and begin to consider some of these principles we talk about on the Leading Saints podcast. Here we go. Everyone, this is the Leading Saints podcast. And guess what? Today, it's just me and you. No guess. This is a monologue episode, but an important one at that. Every once in a while, I feel like there's a concept.
There's a theme that there's not necessarily a perfect guess. Okay. There's probably 20 perfect guests. But a core question that keeps coming up that I wanna get on here and share, and that is about motivation. I'm gonna call this the motivation episode because I get this email so many times, which to narrow it down to simplify to a few words is simply this. How
do I motivate my people? This is such a common requested or a common asked question that we did a whole virtual conference about this, which you can find the whole library to this in the core leader library. We'll link to that. Again, you can get access to that 14 days and no charge for free. So we'll link to all that so you can access it and listen to it, whatever you need
to do. But today, I wanna just, like, narrow it down to one quick episode that I can send people or that you can send people when when it comes to up to the surface of, like, how do I motivate my people? And this is very common,
and it can be very frustrating. I just, like, wanna take a moment, space, put my therapist hat on, and create space and just say, wow, like, that's hard when you want to accomplish so much, and those that you lead don't, or those that you lead seem so apathetic, so lazy at times, or so non responsive. You see, I get these emails we send out when somebody signs up for our newsletter, which you can do that if you haven't already at leadingsaints. Dotorg/subscribe,
you get a series of emails. And one of those first emails that you'll receive is what is your biggest leadership concern that you're experiencing right now? So typically, the response to this email ends up in these general categories as far as, like, how do I build community or unity within my ward or my quorum, whatever it be? How do I effectively delegate is another big question or concern that always comes back.
Lots of questions about stimulating faith or helping people who've questioned their faith, maybe going through a faith crisis. Another one is, a big one is, how do I lead youth? That's why we do so much content about leading youth. And then some more practical ones like just staffing award. How do I call people? How do I delegate that calling process? There's a good amount as far as, like, women in leadership. And then I just have
a category for general leadership concerns. And then the other big one is how do I motivate others? And I have a whole list of of these emails that have come through. And actually before I started recording, I went through those and just tried to capture what are the general concerns that or the general ways that people are asking about motivation and how do I motivate people? People bring up things like apathy coming out of COVID. Now we're several years
separated from the heavy COVID times. However, I bet this is still a lingering issue that many people experience as far as engaging people or reengaging people after there was such a, you know, a a long time of us not doing the traditional go to church thing. Right? Motivating people to minister. Right? Ministering brothers and sisters. Man, that's a huge one that I hear from a lot of Relief Society presidents and Elderskorn presidents. Missionaries are they're they're just in it for
the numbers. Right? So it's not necessarily that people are motivated, but sometimes we interpret motivation incorrectly or we think they have ill intent or bad motives. Like, oh, they're just after numbers. So they're pushing this or they're they're trying to motivate us when their motivation is off. Right? So so not always in this concept of of laziness. How about other leaders aren't motivated? I hear that a lot. Right? Or administering interviews. Right?
I'm a stake president, and my elders quorum presidencies aren't doing the ministering interviews, or I'm a bishop, and the Relief Society presidency isn't doing it. And, you know, these are numbers we turn in. I'm sure you've experienced this one. People, they say they're willing to help. They ask the question of, is there anything we can do for you? And they don't
show up. They don't help. Or when push comes to shove, they don't come to the moving assignment, the canning assignment, the service assignment. They're just not showing up. Right? Too many excuses. I've heard that a few times. They're every time I ask them to do something, they've always have have an excuse why they
can't. We see this maybe a lot in the youth the youth organizations, whether the youth have excuses or the parents are are running their children around and they don't have time to engage in in youth experiences. Right? Youth activities. A question I saw come up in a few emails is how do we empower others to take on more responsibility? Right? It seems like they only wanna take a a slice of of the responsibility pie, and we need a, you know, all hands on deck. We need to engage more
with this. Or people have to you feel like this pressure to bribe people to show up. Right? Maybe youth only come if there's food involved or, you know, the food or other type of bribing can can it feels like this pressure to bribe people. Counselors in my presidency aren't motivated. Isn't that tough? Right?
When you're in this presidency, you're excited. You feel empowered to lead, and now you have counselors that aren't engaged or they don't even think twice about the calling until the next time you see him on the following Sunday. Right? Or the same 10 people just show up. There's always this there's we've talked about this on other episodes where the same 10 people are always get called to service assignments. But then behind the scenes, when you ask the leaders, why are you do you keep
calling these 7 10 people? They often respond, those are the people who get things done. Those are the people who show up. Those are the people who actually engage in the work. Right? Alright. So we've framed this issue pretty well, at least I hope. Right? When I get these emails or I even have one to one conversations with individuals and and by the way, maybe I shouldn't put this
out there. If you're a church leader and you're just sort of struggling and wanna bounce some ideas off each other and get another perspective, I'm usually generally available if you wanna ever wanna set up a Zoom call, and we can chat that way. Obviously, we'll see the type of requests that come in. But and again, I don't claim to be I'm
not a consultant. I'm not a coach. But I've interviewed a lot of people, and I can usually steer you to certain content that would maybe help some and it really helps me as the leading saints guy to, kinda have my ear to the ground as far as what's happening. What what dynamics are you experiencing? So I actually enjoy those conversations if you ever wanna jump on a Zoom call. But alright. Let's just take a step back when it comes to motivation.
If you're that leader that's listening right now and you're thinking, alright, Kurt, this is the episode for me because I am at my wits end. These people are not engaging. I'm trying so hard. I'm setting the goals. I'm doing the things. I'm going to the meetings, the word council meetings, whatever. Other people aren't pulling their weight, and I cannot put this quorum, this relief society, this award on my shoulders and do it anymore. I need help or I'm gonna burn burn out. Right? And then
that's another thing to to consider. Another episode. So if motivation is the problem, my invitation to you is you need to rethink the problem. Motivation is a I don't know the best way to frame this. It's almost a false problem. K? Just to give you some perspective, you'll elder Bednar, there's a I'll we'll link to the the text of this interview. It was actually an interview done for church, like, managers
who work for the church as employees. Elder Bednar said this, in my former life as a professor of business management, I wrote books about motivation and stuff like that. It's all bogus. Let me read that line. It's all bogus. There's no such thing as motivation. The word motivation stems from a Latin root mover, and what that means is to make move. Well, nothing outside of you makes you move for any sustained period of time. The only thing that will cause you to move is what's inside,
close quote. Alright. I there's so much there in this quote. 1, the fact that motivation's bogus. So if you are thinking, how do I motivate people? Maybe I can manipulate them enough to get them to move, to get them to act. And like elder Bednar said, that will work, but not for any sustained period of time. Maybe in the short term, you
can get people to show up. Maybe the guilt trip is enough for this week, but if you become the leader that's simply leading week after week, day after day with guilt trip or manipulation, it will be, a culture poison. Right? It will it will dwindle the trust that you have in those that you lead. K? The only thing that will cause you to move is what's inside. So food for thought there. So here's the reality of the situation.
There is a lot of ego in everything we do, k, especially in the context of church leadership. Now if you think that ego isn't a problem, well, we all experience a natural man, and we live in a fallen world. And, yes, you experience some level of ego, especially those who are high performers who often get called to these types of positions usually have an ego ego to go go along with it. This is a whole other topic and I'm the first to admit
I have an ego. The fact that I have developed a podcast to talk about church leadership, even the the fact that I I feel empowered enough or my ego drives me to the fact that I can do a whole episode talking about motivation as if I'm some type of expert. Not necessarily an expert, but, yeah, I've got some experience to talk about, some perspective to share. So I recognize that even myself, I have an ego that
drives me. And when it comes to motivation, it's usually the ego that's doing the driving. Because here's the thing, you were, like, called on the phone, invited into the bishop's office, the stake president's office, sat down, extended this calling, and maybe it's one of more responsibility and you thought, yes. I will do this. I will bring the motivation to the table to get this done. Right? There was a
formal process. There was a formal calling. And even though that congregation raised their right hand and said, yes, we sustain brother so and so or sister so and so, we sustain you, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be motivated all the time like you. Nobody is motivated like you, the leader. And so that's just just take that in. Just okay. As a as a hypothesis statement, just let that let
that sit. You are the most motivated person in the quorum or in the organization, in the group, in the ward because you are the leader because the buck stops with you. Right? So, of course, you feel that pressure. That ego is sort of activated. Like, if I don't perform here, if I don't get these people moving, that's gonna show up
bad on me, on my ego. So we'll come that back to ego in a minute, but the the short of it is we need to keep our ego in check and say, even if this doesn't go well, it's not on me. I'm not a terrible person. I'm not that does make me less of a person. I'm a child of God. Right? But we'll come back to that. So here's what typically happens. We are we feel this level of zeal. We wanna get to work. We've been called as the leader, and we will not let those above
us be disappointed. We will not let God be disappointed. Reminds me of Buck I heard some more. Anyways but we feel like we're gonna take this on, and we're gonna do it in a way that's gonna make some change happen. Or we're gonna do it in a way that hits the goals, that makes things move forward. Right? We might come across a resource like Leading Saints, and we go through the episodes. We go through the interviews.
And what we're looking for is the 5 step plan, or or maybe we've tried some things on our own, and now we're in that stage of frustration. And so we turn to, like, Leading Saints or other maybe lead secular leadership books, and we're looking give me like, what do I gotta do? How do I how do I motivate people? How do I, you know, flip the switch in the back of their head or wherever it's at to get them moving? That's as if we want some hypnosis
process. Even if we get close to that place of manipulation, whatever it takes, what do I gotta do? And typically what happens, you know, I'll give you a few hypothetical situations. Maybe a bishop in a ward has had a lot of individual setting appointments up coming in, talking about their struggles with pornography. And it's like, wow. It's like appointment after appointment after appointment that I they need to be motivated past this problem. So this is what I'm
gonna do. We got a 5th Sunday coming up. I'm going to talk at everybody long enough until they get it. Because obviously, they don't get it because they're not performing. They're not behaving in a certain way that's most ideal. So if I can just get everybody in the room and talk it. Right? Or I'm the elders quorum president or the reside president and ministering isn't happening. You know what I'm gonna
do? And believe me, I I gave the best guilt trip lesson about home teaching back when I was a a young YSA elders quorum president. Okay? Second to none. Anyways but we we think I'm going to take the whole core meeting on this, you know, this coming Sunday, and I'm gonna remind people of the duty we have as priest and holders to do our ministry. Right? And yeah. Sure.
Do we have a duty? Yeah. Sure. I mean, is it sort of is there responsibility added upon us as we step into covenant, as we take on priesthood or whatever it is? Yeah. Of course. And so if I could just get everybody in the room this is the the typical, like, the natural place to go. I'm just gonna get everybody in the room, and I'm not gonna talk at them until they get it. And most of that, what happens is they won't get it because humans don't function
that way. Let me take you to a and there's I'm trying to find the exact source for this. There's a few, like, lightweight sources, but the science and the principle's still solid. So here's what I've been told. And, during World War 1, World War 2, there was this effort, you know, lots of things are being rationed for the war. As, you know, during this wartime effort, there are certain amount of resources and a big chunk of them needed to go to the war
effort. And so that left modern you know, those at home that are not in the war, it left them with a certain certain resources that were less ideal. Okay? And this may have been maybe they didn't have the best meats anymore in the grocery store for this typical housewife or couple to to take home and feed their family. And so they had to get they had to get, creative with the, you know, the less ideal ingredients. I don't even know what they were. And so they approached us in 2 ways.
The first way they did that is they basically instructed families as far as, like, here's what we have. Here's a list of recipes. Just do that and you can feed your family and we'll be fine. And, yeah, it's not ideal, but this is the war effort and come on everybody, you know, needs to put in, you know, sacrifice and do their part and here we go. And so they took that process of propagandizing this effort of saying, this is the way you should do it, and we've given you
all the instructions. Now go do it. And they witnessed about a 2% change in the behavior that they wanted. Okay. 2% was not ideal. They wanted more than that, so they tried something else. What they did instead of going to them and saying, well, here's your instructions. Just do it this way. They went to the the group, their focus group, and they said, here's the problem. Here's the resources we have. We need ideas.
How can we better feed families with if these are the ingredients we have as so much has taken up with the war effort, what can we do to better feed families? Right? And then they took feedback. They got unique points of view. They got ideas that even their experts couldn't think up. But when they approached this focus group, this general audience of housewives and people doing the cooking in the home, they got great
ideas. And then in the long term, what they saw was a they went from a 2% change to a 35% change. K? So the person actually who taught me or or told me this story and this research that was done, which it comes from Paul Gustafson, and we'll link to his interview that he did on Leaving Saints, really impactful. So I always frame it this way. As a leader, it's not your job to bring people solutions.
It's your job to bring people problems and invite them to engage and accept whatever offering that they can bring to the table. Whatever loaves and fishes they have to give, that's what we can accept. And that's what the Lord will do the miracle with. So currently, right now, I am at this time of this recording, I'm serving as an elders quorum president. Do you wanna know how much time I spend talking about ministering assignments, ministering, you know, efforts in elders quorum? 0.
Never do I talk about it. Because I know me speaking in front of a group of people and asking them to do something and telling them all the reasons they should and maybe sprinkling in a few guilt trips would give me a 2% change. Yeah. It will be it will, change people, manipulate people, motivate people, but very few. Or it could maybe it does make a 20% change, a 15% change that week, but then we'll be back to
the problem. And then you become a nagging leader who's always reminding people we should do more. Right? Or I'm just thinking in different context of, you know, a lot of stake leaders feel this. We have state conference every 6 months. Finally, the we have a platform. We're bringing the whole state together. We're going to talk about how they could be behaving differently.
Again, you stand up in a state conference and you instruct individuals of how they should act differently, why they should go to the temple more, why they should minister more, why they should be more charitable, you will get a 2% change. But if you find ways to gather people and invite them into the problem and say, what do you think we should do with this? How can you contribute? Who can contribute? Who can't contribute? Right? Then you'll start to see progress that's,
more effective and longer term. Now I recognize that you're you're listening to a podcast where I'm, like, quote, unquote, instructing you. I'm not necessarily instructing you to motivate you. What I'm trying to do is offer a point of view that will allow you to step back and reconsider what you're doing and maybe frame the problem differently so that you can then receive your own inspiration. Right? So I I'm not
it's very meta episode. I'm not, like, talking at you in order to motivate you differently. I'm offering maybe a different point of view. So going on with it, this is why it's this is one of the biggest controversial things I I say in leadership is you hear this this, model, this approach of what a leader needs to do is have high love and high expectations. If we just do high love, high expectations, then that stimulates motivation. I completely
disagree with it. It is nothing more than trying to motivate people through short term passive aggressive means. High love, of course, we should have, and high expectations. Expectations I I wrote a whole chapter about expectations in my book as God disappointed in me. Okay? Expectations are simply leadership through shame. I'll jump into this more, but my alternative, what I would offer is leaders should be high love and high identity.
A perfect example of this. I can't encourage you to go back, and and listen to this stronger. We'll link to it. My recent interview with Robert Farrell. K? He just got back serving as a mission president in Peru. Talks about this awesome I mean, just it's such proof about the dynamic leader that he is and why he is a dynamic leader. The way he led those young missionaries via their patriarchal blessing, He took them to that document that articulates their identity.
Right? Even to the specific tribe in Israel that they come from. That is a strong identity roadmap. K? And to see how he did that and to see the character change the individuals had on the path and they began to behave differently, better than anything president Farrell could articulate in his own conference. It was president Farrell pushing them to an identity place, a place of identity. That stimulated motivation when we remember who we
are. This is why the temple, the doctrine of the temple is so powerful. This is why our prophet, seer, and revelator is building a temple on every corner of the world, begging us, making it so simple for us to get to the temple. Again, another motivation thing. But, again, if it's, you know, 5 minutes away, it's a little bit easier to get there. But, you know, but the fact that when we're in the temple, we don't get a list of, well, you should really do things differently. You should really
try a little harder. What it is in the temple is simply high love, high identity. In fact, you are given a new name in the temple, a new identity. And as you study that name, that identity, you will experience motivation. So imagine as you shepherd whatever quorum or group or ward that you're leading towards their divine identity and say, let's just go spend some time there. Forget ministering. Forget the service assignments. Who are you? Articulate
it. Explore it. Discover it. Articulate in your own words. Right? Like, who are you? Who does god think you are? It is from that identity, right, going back to the elder Benar statement, where people will begin to find motivation. Right? Now here's the tricky part. That motivation that they find may not always be according to your agenda as a leader. Right? That's the tough part. Well, I got them
all motivated, but they're not ministering anymore. They're not doing this, but they are becoming remarkable disciples of Jesus Christ when they are awakened to their identity. And that they may go down a path that God is leading them has nothing to do with your agenda in elderscore. You may not change anything as far as how much ministering is getting done, how many people are showing the service
assignment. But over time, when you do that with a good group of people, you'll start to see this positive trajectory. So if we're not careful with this concept of motivation, it can turn into leadership of manipulation, leadership of shame, which does nothing more than stimulate a negative culture. And culture is at the foundation. As I say, culture eats doctrine for breakfast. It doesn't matter what you say in that core meaning. How true or how doctrinal the the lesson is
that week. If you don't have good culture as your foundation, nobody will will care. In fact, nobody will come or no people won't come or people will only come because they feel like, I'm a bad person if I don't show up. Right? That's from a place of shame. So this concept of motivation, if we don't keep it in its place and recognize it for what it is, it can stimulate such negative culture. And you see this in some fortunately, some of the most prominent places you see
this is in mission culture. Right? This is it's such a all consuming experience. It is your life for 18 months or 2 years. And so we, you know, high love, high expectation, you begin to, introduce shame to the process and missionaries, any human being is not going to function well under that. So again, going back to the president Farrell example, I encourage you to go listen to that episode again if if you haven't already and see how masterfully he does the motivational
thing. Alright. So at this point, as we as before we wrap up, like, I just invite you, like, just when it comes to motivation, if you feel that tension that just man, I I wanna do so good as the elders quorum president. I wanna be a bishop who makes a difference. I wanna be a relief society president who who sees change. Like, I can't, like, hug you enough through this podcast. Look, I get it. I know you wanna do such a good job. Your ego does too. Right? And that's a that's a healthy
ego. You know, ego can have such heavy or negative connotations. That's we all have ego, and that's a healthy ego thing. You wanting to do a good job. But let's just take a breath and remind ourselves that this is God's work. Jesus does the saving. It is already done. Right? The salvation is there for our taking. And, yes, there is not just salvation, but exaltation. There's not just justification. There's sanctification work to be done to become something,
and we're gonna create those opportunities. Right? But we can't shove people into sanctification. We can't make them do it. We can't make them embrace Jesus Christ and make them do all the things and make them become a disciple. We have to create the space. We have to create the opportunities. No matter how lazy individuals appear, no matter how apathetic they continue to be, Jesus will find them on their path. And you'll be standing by ready to embrace them as you as a representative of Jesus
Christ. But we have to surrender their motivation to the relationship between them and Jesus Christ. This is one of the hardest things to do as a parent. Right? When you surrender their journey to Jesus Christ, we have to do the same thing as leaders. I surrender my elders quorum's desires to Jesus
Christ. When they show up to elders quorum meeting, I'm gonna do my best to stimulate community, to preach doctrine, to embrace them in a hug, to make an engaging experience, but I cannot change their hearts. But maybe I can be a little bit of help along the way. Right? But it's not my role. My ego surrenders that. So, again, I've probably reiterated this too much. One is just to recognize you have an ego. I have an ego. Let's just recognize that's in the way sometimes.
And at the end of the day, I I don't like going and meeting with my stake president as he asked me how elders quorum is going, and I'm sometimes, I don't know. I don't maybe it's not going very well in ministering interviews and ministering in general. Right? I don't wanna be that, but I'm setting my ego inside and say, I'm doing my best. I really wanna see change and I'm trying to listen to the spirit. I'm trying to engage. I'm trying to encourage people. I'm trying
to delegate. I'm trying to stimulate a positive culture. I'm probably falling short. But guess what? We're all falling short. That's great space for Jesus. Okay. So let me give you a crash course on so what do I do then, Kurt? You know, mister smarty pants podcast boy who says that motivation is bogus. Hey. Wait a minute. I didn't say that. Elder Bennar said motivation is bogus. Okay. Just saying. So
what do we do here? Let me kinda just share my general approach, my general vision when it comes to how am I stimulating motivation? How am I encourage people to come into Christ? As an elder corps president, how am I getting things done? Well, the simple answer is I don't always get things done. Right? I don't always hit a 100% ministering interviews because, you know, I've tried to visit there's probably 20 to 25 elders on my list that no matter what I try, they don't
wanna meet with me. I go to their house. I try and text them, and they're not responding. What am I supposed to do? Right? Try harder. Well, try harder gospel is a short term false gospel. The surrender gospel to Jesus Christ is the gospel. So what am I focusing on? First of all, I'm simply focusing on building relationships. We'll link to some recent newsletter articles I wrote as far as things I did in elders quorum earlier on as a new quorum
to just start unifying the group. What I'm doing, I'm I walk into that elders quorum room, every other Sunday, and I think, how can I stimulate relationship in this quorum? If I can stimulate relationship, people will start to talk. If they start to talk, they start to make friendships. They start to make friendships. They start to hang out. If they start to hang out, they are ministering to one another. They are living a higher holier way of
home teaching, which we call ministering. I don't care if they're assigned ministering brother or sister does it as long as they're being ministered. Right? And I getting that feedback. I'm about 3 months into this, and I'm hearing people say, I look forward to going to Eller's Quorum. I hear people say, I've got friends.
I know such and such. Oh, we I even showed up, at someone's house to do sort of a drop in visit, and they invited me up and consider my surprise, my shock and awe when they had invited 2 other families over their house for dinner, and they're they're they were eating and offering me food. It was beautiful. Did they go? Did they invite those families over so that when they met with me, their elders quorum president, they can say, oh, we did our we invited these families over.
No. They weren't even assigned. But the culture was stimulating that. Now I don't take credit for them inviting over, but this is what I'm trying to do. Right? We're spending so much time in elders quorum. Building relationships, taking time. We're not jumping into the lesson. We're not saying here's some announcements. Let's say the prayers. Alright. Who's got the lesson? No. No. No. We're getting in groups.
I'm bringing new questions. I'm using I'm really leveraging that counsel time to not just counsel as a whole, but something we often break into groups and say, here's a question. Talk about this question. Right? And they're talking about it. They're coming up with their own questions. Right? We're stimulating relationship. We're stimulating community. So wherever you're at, no matter what, you know, motivation, frustration you have, let's go to, like, a bishop break. And here you are as the
bishop. You're very motivated, but your second counselor just doesn't seem motivated. Right? Well, what I would do is go out to lunch with them. I would create a bishopric activity where you're just getting together to be real, to be human. You're not talking about word business, and you're establishing a relationship so that you get to a place of friends or, dare I say, brothers.
And then when you're in that place, you'll suddenly realize that when you ask him to do something, that second counsel that seems so apathetic, he's more willing to do it because he knows you love him. He knows you love him because you know he knows you know him. Right? So that's another thing we're doing in our elders quorum is every every week, whether it's a my place or another place, we just have an hour
gathering elders quorum gathering. I have some simple hot chocolate there, invite them over at 9 o'clock after the bedtime routines are over in various households, and they're coming to my house or just chatting or watching a a short movie or watching a guy flick or whatever it is. We're getting together, and we're stimulating relationship. The next thing I would I would suggest as far as motivating is offering autonomy. Right?
Releasing how you think it should be done and saying, dear brother, dear sister, what do you think? Like, how do you wanna engage? Right? You're you're not bringing the solution. You're bringing the problems. I've got this problem here. How can we be more united as as a quorum or as a ward? Right? Or, you know, there's a lot of whether people realize a lot, there's a lot of struggles with faith in our ward. How how
could we come together? Imagine a 5th Sunday lesson where you're not lecturing to the group. You're circling up and you're saying, here's the problem. What ideas do you have? What are you saying? How can we make this word better? What can I be doing as a leader? What am I missing? You know? So you're offering autonomy to the group. How do you wanna do it? Or to the counselor who seems apathetic. Good brother. Like, why don't I give you
this problem? And guess what? They'll probably do it 10% as well as you could do it as a leader. But you've offered them autonomy, And you look for opportunities to give feedback. You ask them if they want feedback. Right? You don't expect them expectations to take it to a 10 because you take it to a 10. If they only take it to an 8. Right? And just say, it's obvious this person didn't do it as well as I could and that's okay.
I surrender that to the lord and savior who at the end of all this mortality mess somehow saves us when we turn to him and say, I wanna follow you. Let's do this. Right? So build relationships, offer autonomy, and I guess build relationship, but I also sort of slash stimulate community. Right? Because not only are you as a leader building 1 on 1 relationships, but you're trying to help others build 1 on 1 relationships. So and that's community. Right? Relationship is between
you and the person you're leading. Community is between the community itself. Building relationship, simulate community, offer autonomy to those you lead. Hey. Let's do it your way this time. Right? Let their agenda lead. So what what I mean by this is you may see your quorum is very or your group, your ward is very lazy. You may call it apathy, whatever it is. But if you follow them around with a camera, you would actually find very engaged individuals.
People are maybe putting extra hours into the office, who are coaching their sons or daughters sports team and are really putting in time there as a father or mother or whatever it is. You're missing the broader spectrum of, actually, this is a very motivated individual, just not with my agenda. And my ego is going to surrender my agenda to it. Give buy in. Don't offer solutions, offer problems. I've I've hit that pretty well. And then finally, teach identity. Right? Remind them who they are.
Every Sunday, no matter what meaning, should be focused on Jesus Christ. Because what does Jesus Christ do when we turn to him? He says, let me tell you who you are. Come to my temple this week. I have more to tell you about who you are. Read my scriptures this week because there's something about your heart in those scriptures I want you to better understand. And that enables enabling power of the atoning Jesus Christ. That enables us to do more. That enables us to be
covenant keepers. That enables us to be disciples of Jesus Christ who do the things because we're manipulated, not because we're ashamed, but because we want to. Because that's who we are. That is who that's just what we do from that identity. So I hope that this content was helpful. I've I've gone over this outline so many times. I'm like, there's so much more I'm missing or I should could research this more. There have been 100, literally thousands of books written about motivation.
And so I'm not gonna fit it all into this episode, but my main goal is to help you in that place of frustration. Just step back and say, you know, it's okay that this isn't an ideal quorum that doesn't say anything about me as the leader, but I'm gonna reach out to the one. I'm gonna take the extra steps next Sunday to just chill. And we're not gonna rush to any, you know, program or thing that needs to be
done. We're just going to start with culture by getting to know one another, by learning each other's name, by making a little bit more fun, right, by engaging the class. There's a long list of how that's done. And, unfortunately, when you take on this point of view, I wish that all content of Leading Saints led to, like, the key indicators to shoot up off the chart. Right? And because I listen to Leading Saints, the content there occurred. I had this
great episode about motivation. And ever since I listened to the episode about motivation, my stats have tripled. It's awesome. Often what you find is that it turns out less ideal in the short term. But in the long term, you stimulate discipleship in Jesus Christ. And it's beautiful. Like, to like, when you look at my numbers in elders quorum, like, the ego comes down like, I gotta do more to get these things get these ministering interviews done. Right?
And I am doing more. I'm trying different things and but at the end of the day, there is no doubt that culture is being stimulated in core meeting. And I love my stake president. Shout out to the president White. He sometimes listens. You know, he's gonna keep tabs on me. But he's so loving when I meet with him. And he's never, like, pushing the stats. And we may talk about things. Like, here's some key indicators. What is this? What can we
learn from this? Whatever it is. But never does he push me or ask me why aren't we a 100% ministering interviews. And if he ever did, let's say in an alternative universe he did, I'd say, yeah. You know, my ministering interviews aren't aren't awesome. But would you mind coming to Elders Quorum on Sunday? Or, hey. We're actually gathering together as a elders quorum. We're just doing that casual elders quorum gathering on Thursday night. Like, would you mind coming and just seeing what's
happening? And no matter what leader came and saw what was happening there, how we're stimulating culture, they'd be like, okay. Something special is happening here, and I'm okay with that. Let's just keep just keep going. And I know over time, ministering will happen even when it doesn't show up on the report. There's no doubt in my mind more ministering is happening even though we're not recording it because we don't record it anymore.
And more ministering is happening even though maybe I'm not hitting that 100% ministering interviews every time. And I could hit it every time, but it would be at the expense of positive culture several times. And, of course, hopefully, I can find that balance and get all the interviews done and simulate culture, but my priority is that culture. My priority is the community we're building. My priority is the they're filling the the buy
in. My priority is that they're filling that autonomy that they're not spoken down to in core meetings. So I've gone on long enough. I hope you found this episode motivational. I couldn't help it. But I love your feedback. What am I missing? Right? Call me out on these things. I want to master this concept. I wanna learn more and whatever I learn, I'll I'll do my best to bring it to you. But really at the end of the day, I wanna give you a big hug. You are doing so great
as a leader. Like, just please know that I I don't even know who you are, where you're at, or what you're going through, but I know, like, you're doing just fine. Just keep going and just offer one more hug today. Connect with that person and talk about their identity, who you see them to be. And that's the beauty of leadership is when God opens your eyes to not what they're doing,
but who they are. It's beautiful when you see these divine creatures in your quorum, in your belief society, in your ward, and you're like, wow. Like, we can do this together. Sanctification is real. Let's let's do this together. We'll repent together. We'll engage together and get it done. Alright. My prayers are for for you out there. Put your ego aside, motivate. God bless. I gotta stop talking, but, keep going. Thank you. The end. That's it for this Leading Saints
episode. I encourage you to check out some of the most popular episodes of the podcast that we list at the bottom of the show notes. If you haven't listened to all of those, do so now. Remember, to watch the interview about scrupulosity, go to leading saints.org/14 for free access to the mentally healthy saints virtual library. 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.