I have been privileged to exercise leadership responsibilities in family and Church and in business, education, military, and charitable organizations. By watching leaders, by experiencing their leadership, and by exercising leadership responsibilities myself, I have learned some basic principles that have value in each of these areas.
\n\t\t\t\tMy interest in leadership began with my teenage reading of the biographies of World War II military leaders. In college and law school my interest expanded to the biographies of public leaders. Throughout my life I have observed effective (and less effective) leadership by various parents and grandparents. As a university president I enjoyed reading the counsel and experiences of educational leaders. Best of all, for more than forty years I have been a close observer of the great men and women who are leaders in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have sought to learn how to get men and women to do an assigned job, to do it well, and to enjoy the process.
\n\t\t\t\tFollowing are seven important leadership principles I have learned from my life’s experiences:
\n\t\t\t\t1. Love is the first principle. Its effect magnifies the effects of every other principle. Leaders who are loved and who love those they lead enhance the impact of their leadership and the duration of their influence.
\n\t\t\t\t2. Good leaders are not overly concerned with popularity, knowing that popularity follows good leadership—it does not produce it.
\n\t\t\t\t3. Good leaders make decisions that can be relied upon because they stick with them.
\n\t\t\t\t4. Good leaders are positive. Optimism is infectious. People have confidence in and work best for leaders who view adversity as a challenging opportunity and who are positively and thoughtfully confident in the assigned task and the desired outcome.
\n\t\t\t\t5. Good leaders are clear in defining what is expected, able to express it in simple terms, and effective in communicating with those they lead. These three qualities are so interrelated that I cannot give examples that do not, in some measure, include all of them.
\n\t\t\t\tPresident Gordon B. Hinckley was a genius at stating a principle or giving a challenge in such clear, simple terms that it drew all of us into increased understanding and more effective efforts. A few years ago he told the Church that we should raise the bar for missionary service.1 He gave no complicated explanation. He just used that vivid metaphor to give a clear, simple challenge that expressed an ideal most of us understood and shared. The impact of that challenge has been felt by Latter-day Saint teenagers, parents, teachers, and leaders everywhere. That is leadership through simplicity, clarity, and communication.
\n\t\t\t\tIn August 2005 President Hinckley asked every member of the Church to read the Book of Mormon again before the end of the year.2 That simple, clear challenge has probably changed as many lives as any comparable teaching by any president of the Church within my memory. What he asked was easy to understand, and he gave a specific deadline. In doing so he directed each of us into an activity where we could benefit from the power of the scriptures and the witness of the Holy Ghost. Remarkably wise leadership!
\n\t\t\t\tMy first lesson on the importance of a leader’s communicating in clear, simple terms was by watching my Chicago stake president, John K. Edmunds. From his consistent paramount emphasis of tithing and priesthood leadership (D&C 121:34–36), I learned that if Church leaders single out a small number of key principles and emphasize them again and again, these few fundamentals have the capacity to raise individual performance on a multitude of other subjects rarely mentioned. That kind of leadership is more effective than trying to push everything equally, like the proverbial river a mile wide and an inch deep that never achieves the concentration necessary to erode a mark on the landscape. Effective leadership requires selective concentration.
\n\t\t\t\t6. A good leader will be calm and unflappable under the pressure that leaders cannot escape. Such poise steadies followers, whereas a leader’s panic or anxiety scatters and disables them. Sports fans see this poise in the demeanor of most successful coaches of team sports.
\n\t\t\t\tThe need for poise or calmness applies to another kind of combat. I recall what a soldier told me about the effect of his captain’s reaction to an early morning message that the enemy had broken through the lines and was rapidly approaching their position. While some soldiers panicked and began throwing things in trucks to hasten their retreat, the captain calmly sat down in a visible location and buttoned his shirt and laced up his boots. His calm was catching, the panic ceased, and the troops were ready for the orders that allowed them to maintain their position. The importance of calmness and poise is pervasive in every area of leadership.
\n\t\t\t\t7. Finally, no single principle of leadership is more powerful in its effect on followers than a leader’s setting the right example. It pervades all the foregoing principles. President Thomas S. Monson, throughout his life and ministry, has exemplified this principle by reaching out to rescue individuals in need and to minister to them. Like our Savior, he has gone about “doing good” (Acts 10:38). His example reaches and influences us all.3
\nGood leaders set a proper example and have love, optimism, clarity, simplicity in communication, and calmness under pressure.
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[^1.]. Gordon B. Hinckley, “Missionary Service,” First Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2003), 17.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t[^2.]. Gordon B. Hinckley, “A Testimony Vibrant and True,” Ensign, August 2005, 6.
\n[^3.]. See Heidi S. Swinton, To the Rescue: The Biography of Thomas S. Monson (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2010).
\n\tI have been privileged to exercise leadership responsibilities in family and Church and in business, education, military, and charitable...
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I have been greatly influenced by the histories of my pioneer ancestors, feeling strongly the duty to emulate their great qualities. Here I share...