Why Trumps What

I decided to get ahead of the game this week and use my brilliant time management skills from last week.  Our presenter this week, "didn't say anything substantial" for the majority of the lecture.  (I'm not going to reveal who that quote is from...)  Amidst his long-winded train of not much, he said a few things that good leaders should remember. 

The core of leadership is character and the crust is skill/confidence.  A strong core with a strong crust = a solid, capable, inspirational, safely followable leader.  Strong core + weak crust = a kind person without the confidence to be a great leader. Weak core + strong crust = awful person with enough charisma and suavity to do serious damage.  Weak core + weak crust = a pathetic person who isn't really a threat. (We didn't actually talk about that last one, that's just what I'm guessing it would be.)

After the speaker finished, one of our teachers, Tommy Montoya, presented to us the RACE model of strategic planning:

R = research
A = action plan
C = carry it out
E = evaluate

We further discussed it on our lab yesterday and put it into application with a hypothetical situation.  Something Tommy said helped me realize the importance of being methodical in decision-making and planning.  If we make the right decision for the wrong reason or any reason that we can't back up with substantial logic, then it's almost as though we made the wrong decision. 

Last week the campus devotional was about motive and I've been thinking about it ever since.  Brother Osguthorpe posed to us these questions: What if everything we did, we did out of love?  What if everything we said was motivated by love?  He told us that in end why we do what we do may very well matter more than what we do. 

So to apply this to my leadership role... I need to keep the focus where it should be and make decisions for the right reasons and do everything I do out of love.  The focus isn't on getting the numbers.  Sure, 100% visiting teaching and attendance looks wonderful, but why?  Because it means that everyone is being taken care of.  =)  In our ward, our RS adviser is really good about keeping everything focused on the individual.  She told us that the numbers and the reports don't really matter.  We still do them because we are "a record keeping people" and we keep ourselves organized like that.  Also because we aren't perfect and we would forget who needs our help if we don't keep track. 

Earlier this week the presidency (minus me) met with the visiting teaching supervisors to talk about how the system works and to encourage them.  The decision to have an additional meeting was not an arbitrary choice—we don't just up and decide to have a meeting for kicks.  The problem was a breakdown in communication between the girls, supervisors, and the presidency.  So we met to clarify who needed what information when.  Research = problem identification. Action plan = decide, with careful reasoning, on the best way to solve the problem.  Carry it out = self-explanatory.  Evaluate = well, did it work? Do we see an absence of problem?  I think we did it. 

Strategic planning sounds all professional and intimidating, but really, it fits seamlessly into our regular lives and we do it all the time without consciously acknowledging it.  I think that as long as we take time and really think about why we're doing what we're doing, we won't get too far off track or make stupid, arbitrary decisions.

Quote of the week: 
It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.  -Roy Disney