Has the “loneliness of leadership” gotten you down? Do you feel inadequate or unmotivated in your calling? In this episode brother Mark Grandstaff Ph.D reads and article that he wrote on the struggles that sometimes beset us as leaders. He provides us with wonderful examples of prophets who have felt the crushing weight of their stewardships as well. He also discusses with us his own version of a faith crisis in his life.
Brother Grandstaff was born in Detroit Michigan. He was raised Catholic and served in two different branches of the military, the Navy and the Air Force. It was during this period of his life when he was introduced to the Restored Gospel. He received a Ph.D in American history and was a professor at Brigham Young University for 17 years. Listen in as Brother Grandstaff also shares with us how he had the opportunity to team up with Bronco Mendenhall and mentor some of the BYU football players.
Wendy Ulrich, Ph.D., M.B.A., was a psychologist in private practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan for almost fifteen years before moving with her husband to Montreal (where he presided over the Canada Montreal Mission), then Alpine, Utah. She founded Sixteen Stones Center for Growth, which offers seminar-retreats for LDS women (sixteenstones.net). She is a mother and grandmother, a columnist for Deseret News, a former president of the Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapist, and a business consultant with The RBL Group. Her books include Forgiving Ourselves, Weakness Is Not Sin, and national best seller The Why of Work, co-authored with her husband, Dave Ulrich.
I live in a very transient ward. Some month we get up to 30 new members moving in and roughly the same amount moving out; most of these we never see in church. It’s the nature of our ward and it has its pros and cons. This results in the fact that we have a significant number of members on our rolls that we don’t know. They are just a name with few facts.
About a year ago I went through the ward roster and marked each name that I didn’t know. With roughly 500 members on the roles, 190 names were unfamiliar to me. This was concerning. I stewed over this problem for weeks and knew I needed to find a solution. Reactivating these 190 names was a long shot; however, I felt it was our duty to at least know who these people were and understand their basic life situation even if they didn’t want to attend church with us.
Christine Shaw is no doubt an individual on a mission of service. Though she has completed a formal mission with her late husband in Malaysia, she has been on a mission all her life. In this episode she tells of her experience as a Relief Society president and Primary president in a branch that was started with the help of herself and her husband. She tells interesting stories of helping invite Australian aborigines to church and some of the stories of faith that they showed in joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Like any Mormon boy who was raised going to a church with an indoor gymnasium, I love playing basketball. It was one of the focuses of my teenage years and it taught me many life lessons. One of the great things about basketball is you can learn so much about the character and personality of individuals that are on the court. A manager would have an easier decision about whom to hire by watching them play a pick-up basketball game compared to a sit-down interview. The only problem is, this would require each person you interview to have fundamental basketball skills. Many would look like confused rodeo clowns if you pushed them onto the hardwood.
Sesily Lee is an inspiring Relief Society president in Las Vegas, Nevada. If you are an avid listener to this podcast you might remember her husband, Trent Lee, when I interview him prior. It was a fantastic episode and this one might be a little better. 🙂
In this interview we hear Sesily’s engaging story of conversion as she grew up in a less-active home and had many influential people in her life that guided her to the gospel. She married in the temple and currently has a beautiful family as she serves as Relief Society president.
Links:
Her husband’s How I Lead interview
Elder Holland’s talk, “An High Priest of Good Things to Come”
I had the opportunity to attend the Utah Coalition Against Pornography Conference in February where I met the owners of Router Limits, a hardware company looking to help families control content coming into their home. Their stuff is cutting edge and they are experts in the field. I set up a time to visit their Layton, Utah office and interview their CEO, Skylar Walker.
In this interview Skylar gives bishops and families a few tips to do a tech audit on their home at no expense. I’ve posted some screen shots below that give you a visual of how to protect devices from negative content.
Neylan McBaine was born and raised in New York, New York. She is the founder of the Mormon Women Project and the author of the book Women at Church: Magnifying LDS Women’s Local Impact.
In this episode we discuss the ways local leaders in the Church can consider ways to bring more purpose to women in their wards and branches. It’s a fascinating discussion and it will bless the lives of all leaders that listen.
In this interview I sit down again with Liz Wiseman who has been such a wonderful resource for Leading Saints and I truly consider her a great friend and mentor.
Liz recently spoke at a BYU Forum and spoke wonderfully about the power of rookie smarts and how what one knows can be a disadvantage to a growing leader. She discusses how learning how to learn is more important than the content of what one is learning.
She also shares some rich stories of what she learned from Lee Perry (Dean of BYU School of Business, and son of L. Tom Perry), when she was a student at BYU, why her husband was recently called to a bishopric, and how to focus on being a hungry, and humble leader.
There’s a lot of information here and it is definitely worth a thorough listen.
In this episodes we continue the conversation with leaders from North Star as we focus on Brigit Pack’s story of finding peace and faith in her home and in her Church. Her spouse was born Ryan, but now prefer the name Ann. Ann is a transgender Mormon and Brigit tells her story of how leaders are working on finding a place for Ann in their LDS ward.
It’s an inspiring discussion that will definitely help other leaders understand available resources and where to start in loving transgender members of their ward.
