Lost Sheep

For the past few weeks (during which my blogging has been iffy and sporadic, I apologize) we have been discussing a concept called divine-centered leadership.  As indicated by the name, this is a style of leadership that strives to emulate Christ's method of leading and influencing others.  There is a list of several criteria that pertain to leading as Christ would have us lead. 

One in particular off that list caught my attention as being especially pertinent to my leadership role: knowing each heart.  Christ knew the hearts of all the people He loved and served and led; He knew how to best love and serve and lead then because He didn't just know them, He knew their hearts.  Knowing someone's heart is deeper than just knowing someone.  When you know their heart, you know what makes them tick and how to motivate them and what obstacles they are facing and how you can help them overcome those challenges.  Knowing each heart also calls attention to the individuality of the work of leadership, especially in the church.  Some of my training materials for my calling as the secretary said that while we count numbers to have records of attendance and visits, we also count names.  It shouldn't just be, "We had 7 sisters missing from Relief Society today."  But we should also talk about specifically who we missed that day and how we are going to reach out to each of them individually. 

As the secretary, it's my job to keep track of everyone--who comes to church, who is getting visited and taken care of, and who might need some extra love and support.  When I do my job right and try to know each heart, to discover the motivations and fears of the girls I serve, then I can be a more divine-centered leader and also allow the Relief Society presidency to be more divine-centered leaders.  (Random shout out: our RS presidency is wonderful.  All three of those girls really do love and look out for all our girls and I'm thrilled to get to work with and learn from all of them.) 

The object of divine-centered leadership is to lead as Christ would have us lead.  We can't lead exactly how Christ Himself would lead because we aren't Christ.  But we can lead in the way He would have us lead and I think the core of leading as He would is loving others and trying to know them and see them as He does.  In my leadership role I have the opportunity and responsibility to keep tabs on everyone and see how their doing.  It's a very individualized process.  What we do to serve one of our girls will be completely different from what we do to help another, depending on each girl's unique interests and set of challenges.  The commonality in everything we do to reach out to our girls and help them is that we try to do it in the way Christ would, lovingly and patiently motivating them to overcome their challenges.

Quote of the day:  This is from Jerry Jaccard, one of the elementary music ed faculty members, and hopefully one of my future teachers!  "Reaching the individual and the group at the same time is the art of teaching."

Thanks for reading as always and I hope you have a happy happy day today. =)

Leaders in History

On Wednesday we talked about examples of leaders throughout history ranging from President Hinckley to Adolf Hitler.  (Yes, putting those two in the same sentence makes me squirm just a little.)  We discussed why these leaders were so effective and why we still remember their legacies.  The commonality that struck me was this: all of them proposed something new and radical.  Leaders don't make history's headlines by observing the status quo. 

Of all the leaders we discussed, President Hinckley is the nearest to my heart since he was the prophet for most of my life.  When I think about the prophets of the Church, "radical" is not the first word that enters my mind.  But when I step back and try to look at the Church from the perspective of one who hasn't grown up in it, some of the things we believe seem quite radical indeed.  A 14-year-old boy seeing God and Christ in a grove of trees, angels helping push handcarts across the plains, 19 to 21-year-old kids being sent all over the world to tell the story--it's definitely radical.

So to add to our assertion that a leader is one who proposes radical, new ideas I would say that an effective leader is one who makes the radical and impossible seem indubitable and achievable.  President Hinckley's vision of building temples all over the world may have seemed ambitious and not realistic when it was proposed, but now all those temples stand as a legacy of achieving the improbable.  Great leaders make achieving the impossible seem like second nature.

So, what radical proposal am I, as the secretary in the Relief Society, going to make not only  a possibility, but a given? 

100% Visiting Teaching every month and 90% attendance every week.

Obviously, a lot of this lies outside my realm of choice and accountability.  But, if the record I keep is accurate and detailed then the presidency will always have a very clear idea of which girls in our Relief Society need extra encouragement and motivation to come to RS or visit their sisters. 

Lessons learned, lessons to learn

Assignment #2: Recap what we talked about in our lecture last Monday and apply it to our leadership roles.

For part of the class we watched clips from various movies and talked about the different leadership qualities we identified in each of the characters.  We came up with a sizable list of admirable qualities, all of which are important to the successful leader, but what I'm taking away from that lecture is that there is something to learn from everyone.  From Lord of the Rings to Evan Almighty to A Bug's Life, there are qualities in all kinds of different people and characters that I can and ought to learn from.  My parents, my friends, my professors, and everyone I know has something I can learn from.  There are seemingly limitless definitions of leadership and innumerable qualities associated with it so it's a good thing we are all surrounded by others who can help us learn.  As someone new to the RS presidency, I have oodles to learn.  As a college kid, there are mountains upon mountains of things I don't know yet.  Just as a person, there are soooooo many lessons I've yet to learn.  It can be overwhelming.  But then I think of all the people I know and all the good qualities they have and I suddenly feel lucky and relieved.  I'm surrounded by excellent people who have wonderful qualities of service and leadership.  If I keep my mind and heart open, then theoretically, there's no limit to what I can learn from them.

Quote of the day: (yes, I'm stealing Nat's quote of the day idea, wait, let me rephrase that.  I'm watching her success and learning from it. ; ) Plus, I have a great one today that fits really well with my topic.)   "Whoever told you that experience is the best teacher was wrong.  Somebody else's experience is the best teacher." -Adam Davis

my leadership role...

Welcome to my leadership blog! =)  Our first assignment is to define our leadership role and I'm already at a loss.  The syllabus defines a leadership role as "any role where you are in a position of influence over others."  We talked about 360 degree leadership and how we influence EVERYONE with whom we come in contact.  So my leadership role could be ANYTHING.  What to choose?  Maybe this sounds like a cop out answer, but in all honesty, my strengths as a person and therefore as a leader lie in the quiet, behind the scenes type of work.  I'm not shy, I just work better when people aren't watching me.  I love watching other people shine on center stage and knowing that I helped them get there.  That said, my leadership roles might be subtle.

My most significant leadership role is in my family--I'm the oldest of eight kids.  And yes, I've grown up under the friendly threat of "do anything wrong and you'll lead all your little siblings astray."  I guess you'd have to ask my siblings about my leadership style there.  I don't think I was too bossy, most of the time.  But working at that leadership role in a long distance sort of way isn't what I want to focus on for this class.  If I haven't made my mark on those little cuties by now, whoops!

Ruling out the familial leadership role for distance purposes, I have chosen to focus on my church calling--Relief Society secretary.  We had a training meeting on Sunday where our adviser said that while the secretary works behind the scenes, the work she does if done well enables the entire organization to work at a happier level.  It plays right to my strengths, though I have every assurance that I will learn things I never expected.

Here goes!

the beginning =)

And so the blogging adventure begins--thanks to my lovely leadership class--wooohoooo!