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dande48 wrote:
Confidence and opportunity can make a great leader. But it can also backfire, and create a lot of people who think they are good leaders, when they’re really quite awful.
Good point. I’m not sure how self-aware many of the leaders are, and there really isn’t honest feedback to them either since we are supposed to sustain and support them.
I also see in church that most people give leaders slack and a pass if they are trying, even if they are gawd-awful leaders. I mean, the end result is to support each other for trying our best, not sure the success metrics are the biggest motivators. Leaders in training are given a lot of slack, especially since they are volunteers.
dande48 wrote:
Question I’d like to put out there: Do you think the LDS Church is effective in cultivating good, strong leadership skills?
In general, regardless of the trainer, I have found the Church is good at training people in procedures and policies. Basically, in the manual, when a new initiative comes out and how it’s supposed to be executed. All very good. Like any organization with employees.
When it comes to training and developing the soft leadership skills — I only remember three people in thirty years who trained me well, and it was achieved simply by observing them. There was little direct training in it. And all three were professional managers who I observed. One was the Human Resources Manager for an international company, one was a professor of Business Administration, and the third was a self-employed entrepreneur.
So, the soft skills training comes by osmosis. And its dependent on the quality of the people you are observing.
My own leadership style seems to be working well, for now, in a variety of contexts (and I say that with great trepidation). But I got it from formal study, and then getting out there and failing repeatedly. It took me three years as a HPGL to learn to achieve the mission of the church without the usual frustration, dead-ends, initiatives that start but never finish, etcetera. It took a mutiny for me to learn who to phrase requests in a way that doesn’t offend people. It also took repeated failure in getting results for me to realize the key to effective leadership is the ability to attract the best and brightest people out there. I have had a mentor for the last few years that has really helped me more than any of the church stuff did. I can call him, explain a problem, my proposed solution, and then he gives perspective. It was from him that I learned how to NOT be held hostage by other people’s inaction. A really important skill that I never developed in the church.
The church did provide a context for all this to happen, however, any organization could probably have provided this context.
The soft skills training hasn’t been very good, and it tends to reinforce existing church culture when it does happen.
FWIW a lot of corporate training is a joke and far worse than ours. Weekends where people go rafting or primal screaming and then get thrust back into the office and told to use those experiences somehow. A lot of jobs are essentially wasteful – books have been written on the subject.
While the LDS is wasteful and inefficient in some sense, it is no Enron. It has issues, but also a plodding persistence despite all its problems. Its conservatism is a mixed blessing.
SamBee wrote:
FWIW a lot of corporate training is a joke and far worse than ours. Weekends where people go rafting or primal screaming and then get thrust back into the office and told to use those experiences somehow.A lot of jobs are essentially wasteful – books have been written on the subject.
While the LDS is wasteful and inefficient in some sense, it is no Enron. It has issues, but also a plodding persistence despite all its problems. Its conservatism is a mixed blessing.
Lol, the further I get into my career, the more I find this to be the case. How do humans survive?
dande48 wrote:
SamBee wrote:
FWIW a lot of corporate training is a joke and far worse than ours. Weekends where people go rafting or primal screaming and then get thrust back into the office and told to use those experiences somehow.A lot of jobs are essentially wasteful – books have been written on the subject.
…
Lol, the further I get into my career, the more I find this to be the case. How do humans survive?
As a person who facilitates a lot of corporate training as part of my job…I’d say humans survive more often by doing and resist training because it is so boring…many prefer to learn on the job through trial and error…rather than wanting to be trained. Of course, those books that have been written that Sambee talk about how different personality types approach jobs differently adding to the waste in most systems…some people loathe sitting in a class to be trained while others fear doing it wrong and want to be trained heavily and love the training. There is a big difference depending adult personality types.
And with the cost of training to the organization, and often the ineffectiveness of it, it isn’t usually popular to go to training. I’m not advocating “learn on the job” for everything since that leads to mistakes and ineffectiveness, in an ideal world everyone would be trained perfectly…just recognizing the reality of organizational management.
I mean…how many of us sat through the general satellite training sessions and came away feeling they knew how to do things so much better???? For me, it was just another meeting with my head in my hands.
dande48 wrote:Lol, the further I get into my career, the more I find this to be the case. How do humans survive?
I worked in a mail sorting office once. Total chaos. I was the only one there with a clue about local geography. Many of the others were foreigners. But it nearly all seems to get somewhere.
Quote:Question I’d like to put out there: Do you think the LDS Church is effective in cultivating good, strong leadership skills?
I’ve never been a bishop but I’ve to a few stake trainings for other reasons and found them to be, invariably, meetings that discuss policy and procedures or glorified priesthood meetings with a “lesson.” Supposedly, the youth programs are supposed to be developing leadership skills by calling presidents of quorums or young women groups. I haven’t seen these organizations work too well, either. The leaders either can’t get the teens motivated to make decisions or take over the whole program and don’t let them make decisions (either one can cause the other as well).
That said, I don’t think I’ve ever had a “bad” bishop. I’ve had a quite a few, too. Some I liked better than others. But all were doing their best. However, I don’t think whatever that was good and effective came from trainings received from the Church. But that’s my own narrow experience. I wouldn’t want to generalize it to all.
We had one bad bishop in our 35 years in the church. He was so bad EVERYONE talked about him, but our SP was too proud to release him early. It took a change in SP to make the right decision. Sac Mtg attendance fell from over 100 to 40 during his 3 year terms as Bishop. The rest were OK given their volunteer status. But I’ve had two bad SP’s. We’ve had an excellent SP for ten years. He’ll probably be gone next SC. He’s very good but the poor man is tired. SamBee wrote:
We’ve had an excellent SP for ten years. He’ll probably be gone next SC. He’s very good but the poor man is tired.
I know 10 years is standard for an SP but I think it’s too long.
DarkJedi wrote:
SamBee wrote:
We’ve had an excellent SP for ten years. He’ll probably be gone next SC. He’s very good but the poor man is tired.
I know 10 years is standard for an SP but I think it’s too long.
Good in terms of providing continuity and stability. He’s been up to the job, and it’s only very recently started wearing.
10 years is a long time to be in one calling, a lot can happen to a person during that time. Perhaps that is why mostly professional type people make it to GA. Maybe that’s why I was never in bishopric. SilentDawning wrote:
LDS_Scoutmaster wrote:
I don’t think that there is any way it could be.
Could you clarify what you mean in that statement? Not challenging it, just trying to understand it.
In my mind, there can’t be a hierarchy where if I become God, there will be another God over me. Like an eternal pyramid scheme. I guess what I’m saying is I see the afterlife more nonlinear.
I hope that we as individuals we will be equals because we’ll all be one.
Gerald wrote:
At the ward level, “leadership” is synonymous with “obedience.” If you want to do something innovative (or shall we say “disruptive”) as a bishop, you’ll quickly be shot down if it varies too much from established procedures. Not that that is a bad thing, but just don’t call it leadership and don’t assume that experiences in the presidencies of the Young Men’s, Young Women’s, Elders, Relief Society, Primary are going to turn you into a “leader.” They may make you a better person but not necessarily a better leader.
Seems like many organizations as you grow in leadership skills you get better at those skills in general but mostly better in the leadership skills for that organization.
I was in Toastmasters which is a speaking organization, and realized as I was almost completed with my skill set that this training and skills in general were good for all areas of my life but this completion would only matter in the Toastmasters organization.
dande48 wrote:
Question I’d like to put out there: Do you think the LDS Church is effective in cultivating good, strong leadership skills?
To my earlier point again, but also I made the correlation between non-lds scouting troops compared to LDS scouting troops. in general and I hate to generalize, but non-lds troops are way more into scouting for scouting’s sake then our boys are.
In general we learn good leadership skills when we apply them, and sometimes we’re just good leaders in a small niche.
DarkJedi wrote:
LDS_Scoutmaster wrote:
In general the idea of God being a ‘King’ makes sense coming from a society where the king was the ultimate Authority.This idea is discussed in
The Christ Who Heals. Givens basically asserts that theology changed from original Christianity where God was the benevolent Father to people becoming servants of a God whose main interest was in his own glory. Likewise, LDS theology asserts that God is more of the loving Father whose aim is to “bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” Therefore, essentially the God as king/ruler with us as his servants is false doctrine or at least pseudo-doctrine. Your point about God and the king being the ultimate authority (usually declaring himself as such by divine right) in former times fits what Givens asserts.
I heard it said that the early prechristian God had to be a male because the culture and populace at the time needed a male role model who could be just fair and compassionate. Women didn’t need this role model as many of the traits that we now attribute to Godliness come more naturally to women. Men needed to see that it was not only okay to strive towards these things, but they were commanded to. Ultimately society benefited from men trying to curb their nature.
I also like the equality of the Temple. Will the afterlife be has the temple describes, with us going through rites etc? Personally I don’t think so. I see the temple as symbolic, not a Preparatory exercise. It was said somewhere else in this thread about how correlation came about because it was what was happening in the world at the time. I think similarly the things that were happening around Joseph Smith influenced his revelation desires to uplift and the temple rites were something that were already familiar to many of the early church leaders. It would make sense then to use things that we are already familiar with to help us learn and grow spiritually.
Old Timer wrote:
I will be whatever is needed wherever I end up, if there is an afterlife similar to what we teach.I don’t worry about it or even think about it any more than necessary.
I try to focus on this life, since it is the only thing that is “real” right now.
When I read this part in bold, I thought “the church requires pretty big sacrifices for rewards in the next life. Are those sacrifices worth it if we we can’t even describe them with enough precision to consider them real?”.
They are worth it to me for reasons that deal both with this life and my hope for the next life – but mostly for this life. My heritage is Mormon. I really don’t want to create a totally new heritage solely for myself and my descendants by leaving (and have to deal with all the accompanying issues) when I can influence a new one for them by staying. I also don’t believe any other theology more than my interpretation of LDS theology, so I have zero motivation to leave and join another religion. I am heterodox in many ways, but I am a religionist at heart.
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