Servant Leadership

This week in the leadership lecture Brother Neil Cox taught a great lesson on servant leadership accompanied by examples from the Church and business leaders. He quoted Stephen Covey's quote and it's stayed with me since: "You'll find that as you care less about what others think of you, you will care more about what others think of themselves." In other words, focus on the feelings, needs, and desires of others and less on your own. It's funny because I think that many times I don't say hi or start a conversation or make a comment because I'm scared about what others will think of me. It's like this barrier that we build between people and it's built on this self-interested motive about wanting others to like us. I want others to be happy and so I can focus my attention on making others happy. In teaching the Gospel Doctrine lessons I find that it is easy to worry and get nervous about what others are thinking of me as I teach. Do they like my teaching style? Do they think that I'm too serious or that I should be more like (fill in name)? But all that does is make me an insecure teacher and it reflects in my teaching. Instead my focus should be how the students feel about the Gospel and about their desire to live the Gospel. My job is not to make them love me, but to make them love the Savior and the scriptures. The miracle is that in doing this, I mean coming unto Christ through studying His word, we come to love each other as well. So the next time I teach, I am going to try to stop worrying about what the class is thinking of me and start focusing on how the class feels about the aspect of the Gospel that we are learning that day. Ultimately, I need to focus on the Spirit and whether or not He is present. Whether or not I'm the most effective teacher, if the Spirit is there it was an effective lesson. Upward and onward!