I’ve written a fair amount on understanding General Authorities. With this post I will address a few lessons almost all of them have learned:
- Don’t inhale.
- You know less than you think you do.
- Capture.
Of course you can get the “don’t inhale” message in almost every talk by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf. Other Church leaders have given similar talks, where they realized that the attention and the respect they received had nothing to do with who they were, and everything to do with the office they held. Early on they are all cautioned not to “inhale” the respect and attention — not to let it go to their heads. Many of them have a story about how that lesson hit home from them, whether it be watching the change in the way they were treated before, during and after being head of an organization like Rotary to some other story.
It is an important message, an important lesson, and it really affects those who have learned it. I’ll revisit the other side of this lesson, later, below.
You aren’t as smart as you think you are comes in a lot of flavors. From Dallin Oaks “I could be an attorney who is also a general authority, or I could be a general authority who was once an attorney” to Boyd K. Packer’s talks on that subject. The lesson has two parts: those above you in the Church often know things you don’t and other people often know things you don’t. You need to listen to both, but in different ways.
You can see both of those parts at play in Elder Boyd K. Packer – Talk to the All-Church Coordinating Council.
Elder Packer’s talk has been discussed quite a bit, but a huge part of what has made him what he is today is a sense of his own limits and that others know things he does not.
He gives several examples.
- He had prepared a talk, read it to some others at BYU and they looked at him askance. He was proof-texting. He stopped and asked what was wrong. When they explained his mistake “I simply said, “What do you suggest?” He said, “Better find another scripture,” and he pointed out that if I put that verse back in context, it was really talking about another subject. Others had used it as I proposed to use it, but it was not really correct. I was very glad to make a change.” He could have taken a different approach (which he mentions in his talk), but instead of doing that he asked for their suggestions. Afterwards “This brother lingered after the meeting to thank me for being patient with him. Thank me! I was thankful to him.”
- He also gave an example from his early days when he had his first calling. He was asked to take a side against a proposed change, supported by all the logic he could see. He did not, and later, with the benefit of a broader perspective that the change made it so that the program served many more people, better, with a focus on the scriptures rather than on something else.
- He also gave some examples of when he was edited, once when the talk he gave missed a word that was actually in the written version … he had just missed it while reading.
- His conclusion “Now you may not need a correlating hand in what you do, but I certainly do.”
Most general authorities have times when they have submitted to the advice or counsel of others and were better for it, or saw people who were too proud to do that and who were worse for it.
The next lesson I’m putting under the general topic of capture.
I’ve written about capture before. How government agencies that are supposed to regulate groups get captures by those with an interest with them. Next thing you know, they are cooperating and co-opted, not regulating.
A similar thing happens in large corporations — or can. Been a lot of attention on how CEO pay went from 4-5 times the pay of line workers to 10 times the pay of line workers to up to 400 times the pay of line workers. Funny how that was predicted, rejected, and then became the basis of the entire leveraged buy-out industry. The essence of a leveraged buy-out is that the assets of many corporations are worth more than the stock. The difference is the value being shunted into the pockets or lifestyles of the managers. I once read a collection of stories about young millionaires, and the vast majority of the ones in the book had realized that leveraged buy-outs were possible, had written papers on it in their MBA programs, gotten Cs, C- or less on the papers, and then gone out and made themselves rich taking companies away from the managers who had captured them.
Well capture occurs in Churches as well. Programs take on a life of their own and a focus that has nothing to do with the purpose of the Church. The same is true of causes. Capture leads to several related results. One, a loss of focus on the big picture. Two, shunting aside the feelings of those who are in other areas (kind of part of one). Distortions of core values. For example, athletic programs in the Church led to a number of problems. President Packer early in his career dealt with almost being captured by a group who favored a focus on competitions (other than sports) that was serving to sideline and alienate the vast majority of people in a program, while greatly rewarding a few.
A flavor of capture occurs whenever someone faces the issue or the question of: “How can we give solace to those who are justified without giving license to those who are not?” Sometimes it isn’t capture, of course. I think everyone recognizes President Hinkley’s many talks on how any abuse by a priesthood leader is damning to the leader and how no person, woman or child should ever be abused as focused on giving solace and protection while denying license. But it is easy to go the other way because you are trying to help someone or some group and you’ve lost the larger picture.
All of these lessons are behind correlation.
Consider. Every time a Bishop fails to call the police when he has discovered the abuse of a child, because “this time is an exception to the rule” you see someone resisting correlation. They are trying to help someone, but really giving license. They are not accepting that the policy makers above them in the Church know more than they do. They are inhaling the attention and efforts of the person seeking a different outcome. Every time you see one of these situations, you are seeing someone resisting correlation.
Not only are some of the worst mistakes that leaders have made the result of resisting correlation, some of the things that occur have given rise to a growing group of the disaffected. President Packer brings that up in his talk when he talks about a “growing group of the discontented. That is the rank and file who are trying to do what they are supposed to do and feel neglected as we concentrate on solving the problems of the exceptions.” Many have probably been in wards where they felt that they were doing what they were supposed to do and that while everyone with a cause got time and attention and help, they were just ignored, exploited and neglected. It can be a serious problem.
Bottom line, of course, is that these are things you need to understand when you want responses from the Church
I’ve written before on how to communicate with the Church. You can make yourself holy and prevail on the head of the Church. I’ve written on how you can become a prophet (with a small “p” and have a major impact).
That is hard. If you want to take a different route, if you either want to understand or if you want to communicate with the Church, then you need to understand the people you are communicating with.
They want to give solace. They want to minister to those in pain. But they also want to avoid giving offense to those who feel neglected and they see, over and over again, people taking license from the comfort given others. They see over and over again actions taken that overlap with results in areas that the person taking the action did not intend or understand.
From that perspective you can see why many communication efforts fail completely. I’ve already written about how you will fail if you are trying to communicate a need for personal satisfaction over duty. Everyone you are likely to communicate with chose duty and caring for others over everything else. I’ve written about other factors.
But I think that these core experiences also color the perspectives of our leaders, who they are and what they think. It also colors their expectations of others.
The talk (linked to above, at a DAMU site), is powerful. It probably has something to offend just about everyone in it, if you read the entire thing.
But it also exhibits how Elder Packer learned that he makes mistakes, how he learned and relearned that he needs help from others, and how he came to understand just how much he needs correlation.
The core lessons are significant,not only for the way they look at themselves, but for the way they look at others. For example “don’t inhale.” The lesson that you don’t give way to pride and accept adoration as meaningful or personal. That is an important lesson. However, not only do they apply it to themselves, they are likely to see it in others who are inhaling. So, if someone has a coterie that they are a part of, people who respect and admire them and their perspectives, and have started to inhale, when they deal with leaders in the Church, they can expect that to be noticed. For the reader, if you deal with general authorities (or many area authorities) they will notice if you are part of a group and have started to inhale, given how steadily they are schooled on the subject.
As to the need for a broader perspective, and an acceptance of hierarchy and inspiration as a channel for that, unless the Spirit is speaking through you, don’t expect to get too much in the way of acceptance if you are challenging that lesson. In a way, that is the reason for a Church to exist, to provide broader perspective and a hierarchy to function as channels for inspiration.
Those are my take-away points from these last perspectives on General Authorities.
What are yours? What would you add to the lessons every leader has had to learn before becoming a general authority? Why?
Related material at http://www.wheatandtares.org/2010/10/28/on-being-heard-revisited/
Wheat & Tares 
when you talked about inhaling, my first thought was bill clinton.
One lesson would be to remember that every word you ever say is going to be quoted by someone sometime both in and out of context.
“Capture” is the right word but the initial insight on offer here ultimately gets lost in a mess of wishful thinking and wrong conclusions.
Chino, where did I go wrong on capture?
Mh, first time I heard the talk in conference I had the same thought.
GBS … that is so very true.
Chino … the capture analysis is pretty much justified by leveraged buy outs. I know Chemical Bank pretty much stopped the trend, but it had assets worth five hundred million dollars more than its stock. Do you have a better explaination for how that happened … or for CEO pay in America right noe?
I think it would be very, very difficult to be a General Authority. You’re not trained in theological matters like a Catholic Priest, you spent a lifetime studying your own career goals and then all of a sudden your thrust into full-time service and supposed to be an expert in Theology and leadership. I recall Elder Oaks some years after his call to the Twelve was asked about Hermaneutics and he didn’t know what that was. Plus you’re most likely raised and lived in a one or a few areas and now you’re in an Area Pres. in an area you’ve never probably been to and you are responsible for. I recall Elder L. Whitney Clayton’s wife saying they enjoyed their lawyer California lifestyle and had friends and a social life and then all of a sudden they were living in an apartment in Argentina and she didn’t speak the language, didn’t know anyone and her hsuband was gone alot of the time. I am amazed marriages stay intact or wives don’t just up and lose it altogether
Whizzbang — It can be different and difficult, but at the same time, the theology of the leaders doesn’t get to far from the theology of the followers.
That is a huge plus.
Stephen, thanks for this piece. It causes me to think about those who serve a little differently, and I appreciate that.
I also appreciate your thoughts on correlation and the example of the bishop who does not report the abuser. Excellent.
#6 Whizzbang, as I read your comment I thought about when we lived in Venezuela. We were good friends with the mission president and his family who were in our ward and whose kids attended the same American school our kids did. We were having a lovely Thanksgiving dinner together at our home and the MP’s wife mentioned that the Area President (with whom they’d recently met) would be eating sandwiches because the gas in their apartment in Ecuador went out so often, they could not reliably bake anything.
Those who serve do not do so without sacrifice, to be sure.
Paul, thank you for sharing that.
🙂 My first thought was Bill Clinton, too.
I’ve never been able to get through to the church on anything I thought important. I got some “thank you for writing, but you don’t know what you’re talking about” responses to letters.
I’ve been red-flagged in our stake for my outspokenness on issues dealing with sexual abusers; how do you get through to a bishop or stake president on those issues when their minds are closed? I clearly suck at it.
How much more can I say about women opening sacrament/stake meeting in prayer? How can we get their attention without jumping up and down and screaming? (or what Brent did?)
I love the gospel; I love the church; I hate some of the policies and the way I’ve seen friends and acquaintances lose their focus in power grabs and self-righteousness. I think I even sort of get where you’re coming from (capture is a really really hard concept for me).
I’m starting to feel really uncomfortable with the knee jerk reaction of the bloggernacle to anything that comes out of a mouth of a general authority. Nobody could be that perfect and it’s starting to feel like politics.
But somebody said in Brent’s post “I’m tired of crumbs” That person has a point.
Annegb, you capture an issue I do not have an answer for. How to be heard in spite of what are issues of social class and social strata, especially in the face of apostacy — which is what you are facing.
annegb-Something I have learned the hard way is when it comes to sexual abuse is go to the Police first then the Church second. The Police are trained at dealing with that stuff way more so then the average Bishop
But, the issue of what do you do with “minor” apostasy? That is a hard one. So, what if your Stake President has decided to kill early morning seminary for self-study — and is doing it in the name of that being the “preferred” solution?
What if your stake excludes everyone from a particular social strata (e.g. enlisted men in the military) from any leadership — to the extent of not even presenting their names when a visiting general authority asks for a list of all worthy high priests?
What if your stake president has decided women are not to give opening (or, as in some areas, closing) prayers at meetings in spite of specific counsel from Salt Lake to the contrary?
Some times someone will “pull their chain” pretty hard (I remember my brother complaining about some false doctrine, and the stake president responded with “Now I’m not going to release him [which my brother had not asked for], at least now” and then, well, the bishop in question still speaks in a strangled voice) … but sometimes they won’t.
Maybe I should do a post “Looking for Answers … what do you do about …”
Well, I did http://ethesis.blogspot.com/2011/10/looking-for-answers-what-do-you-do.html but I don’t have an answer.
Annegb, you’ve made me think. Wish I had an answer right now.
BTW, while the author is not a general authority, this is the sort of thing you would expect from one, the kind of perspective that fits with general authorities:
http://mormonscholarstestify.org/2867/margaret-blair-young
#13-I know of whence you speak. Our Stake President cancelled a decades long women’s retreat because they didn’t have Priesthood there and sometimes it has gone on Sunday and some, not all, but some miss sacrament mtg-meanwhile the exact weekend he cancelled it he and his wife go on a 3 week Alaskan Cruise (pretty sure they don’t have sacrament there either) He makes fun of women, especially his wife-according to him there are two kinds of single women in the Church “old bags” and “pretty little things” He gave a talk once that was plagiarized-outright gave a 1984 BYU devotional as his own stuff. He attended missionary zone conferences until the then new Mission President told him to bugger off. He can’t get enough of himself and his talks are mostly about himself and how wonderful he is. I just leave and sit outside in the foyer although one person quit the Church because of him. With the Temple coming here he is only going to get worse, I wouldn’t put it past him to personally take credit for it
Whizzbang, sounds like he is inhaling. That has ruined a lot of people who otherwise would have been very good men.
I worry that I would inhale if I ever had the chance.
when it comes to church leaders, we get what we pay for. They may be fallible human beings, but I would still take them over some kind of professional clerical class. Something else no one seems to address is the incredibly busy schedules most GAs have. They are constantly on the go, whether traveling or at HQ and, consequently, really don’t have a lot of time to sit around and think great thoughts or engage each other in deep discussions. It’s a marvel we get as much good counsel and teaching from them as we do.
That’s true. I don’t know, maybe it’s just a chauvinistic feel here in southern Utah that has me up in arms.
Now I’m thinking that inhale thing is a very good description of what happens to a lot of leaders–and that can include women who lead as well. “I’m the decider” mentality.
I think I need to learn to follow as much as a lot of my leaders need to learn to lead.
Then again, I think our church attracts a lot of men who need to feel in charge.
Don, you and Annegb both really added valuable comments and perspectives.
Stephen, I would think I’d died and gone to heaven with you as my bishop. Although, all my bellyaching to the contrary, I’ve liked all my bishops as people. I suspect I gave each of them far more trouble than they ever gave me.
I don’t know if it’s inhaling, but I always get OCD over my callings and think whatever I’m doing is the most important thing in the church and make hate lists of people who don’t follow through on their commitments or give me grief.
The more I ponder this post and Brent’s at Wheat and Tares, the more I realize what a pain in the a** I am.
Getting OCD over a calling is getting captured by it.
One of the best, and worst, bishops I ever had responded to every issue by just loving people and telling them to do the same.
Great for some things. Terrible for giving advice to an abused spouse.
I remember him saying to me “Steve, I’m just an uneducated man. I don’t know any better than to tell people to love others [the way he loved everyone — kindness and charity were his continuous legacy and way of living].”
He was the best available, at the time, for the ward he had. But we are all such flawed, human, people.
One of the things I learned in the Corporate world years ago is that when you take over for someone else or just examine someone’s work, you will almost always find problems. Why is that?
Because they did it slightly different than you would have. In fact, in some circumstances, the person will appear totally incompetent. It is usually not the case. It is just that two people approach and perform the same task differently. The result may be exactly the same.
That is certain true in the Church as well. We think we know the way things are supposed to be run and when we see it done differently. we are critical.
Sometimes, things are way out there and just wrong, but most of the time it is style and not substance.
We just see it differently. And we need to cut other folks some slack.
Nicely said Jess
Nicely said Jeff.
Hey Stephen M, I shoulda just stayed out of the conversation rather than dropping a drive-by comment. Just to clarify, I don’t think you’re wrong about capture, I just happen to think it neatly describes what has happened over at the COB.
Chino, thanks for the clarification.