Development of Leaders and Leadership

Development of Leaders and Leadership

BY DR. GEORGE H. BRIMHALL, OF THE GENERAL BOARD, Y. M. M. I. A.

Having done what I can, I still need your help and the help

of my Father.

A leader is one who can lead. Such is the born leader. He

is one who will lead when opportunity offers. He is one who

does lead. He is a specialist in getting others to do what he de-

sires done. He is one who acts his own part so admirably that

he has no need to act the part of others. His part is to have others

act their part. He is an individual of aptitude, industry and in-

tegrity. He is the holder of at least two talents, possibility and

push, and he keeps them both out at interest, and is ready for

an accounting at any moment. He is an optimist. He believes

in his cause, in his fellows, and in himself. He is a good help-

hunter, and a good help-helper. H> is a discoverer of aptitude

in his fellows, and a skilful distriL-tor of repsonsibility. The

M. I. A. leader is one who believes that Mutual Improvement

Asociation work is not transitory, that it has come to stay, and

to grow. He is one who will use mutual improvement machinery.

He is one who will be constantly initiative, judiciously innovative,

and loyally persistent, in holding to the essence and carrying out,

without fear or favor, mutual improvement policies.

Leadership consists in keeping everybody at his best nature

and at his best work. Few persons ever invest one hundred per

cent of themselves without some external stimulant. Leadership

consists in knowing when enough has been done, and what to do

next. It includes the courage to correct as well as the wisdom

to direct. It has the ability to demand without driving, to inspire

without unduly exciting, to command without causing relaxation,

and to condemn wrong without crushing the wrong-doer. Lead-

ershio expects difficulties, and determines to overcome them. It

anticipates obstacles, and plans to remove, plow around, or ride

over them. Leadership uses temporary defeat as a guard against

permanent failure. Leadership is a combination of loyalty to

superiors, and an expressive appreciation of the efforts of subor-

dinates.

PREPARATION FOR LEADERSHIP

From the community side, select the right man, or person,

*Delivered before the joint officers' meeting, Y. M. and Y. L. M. I.

A., Sunday morning, June 14, 1914, at the Salt Lake Tabernacle.

968 IMPROVEMENT ERA

who will be the most nearly the right man available. This selec-

tion should be the result of a joint official search made by investi-

gation, supplemented by inspiration. Having found the best,

make use of him as a prominent character in the councils that

choose his help. With your support, hold him responsible for

results. And by support is meant, looking after him with a help-

ful consideration, —

feeling after him. The Lord never called a

willing man to a work and then left him severely alone.

INTELLECTUAL PREPARATION

The leader must be luminous he must see ahead. It is ex-

;

pected that he will see farther and better than any or all of those

whose activities he is expected to direct. The very suspicion

that a leader is behind the times is to be dreaded. Agreat gen-

eral once said, "If I am to direct this army, I must know the way

better than any soldier."

Preparation for leader; :p must be progressive. The leader

must be a student as well as an executive. He must study books

as well as men, — intellectual preparation, demonstrating by a kind

of knowledge wider and deeper than the demands of routine

work. There must be a reserve with which to meet the unex-

pected. Intellectual preparation for mutual improvement leader-

ship demands a specialist in each special line of leadership. Each

l°ader may know but little of everything, but he must know every-

thing of something, and that particular something is that in which

he is called to lead.

The wise leader must be a specialist on the manual, his

knowledge of it must be more than the combined knowledge of

the class. And so with other departments. Preparation for in-

tellectual leadership demands obedience to the command : "Seek

ye out of the best books words of wisdom."

The best books on M. I. A. activities are the Hand-book, the

Manual, and the Era. If the leader lead by the light of these

books, he will give evidence of progressive, intellectual leadership.

Another source of intellectual preparation for leadership is the

council meeting. Exchange of ideas always increases intellectual

illumination. Preparation for leadership demands that the labor

hall be decisive and decision, to be respected, must be based upon

;

information.

SPIRITUAL PREPARATION

The exercise of faith strengthens the spiritual man, and it

does more. It brings about a re-enforcement of the soul from

without. An inspired man is all of himself plus the inspiration of

God. The scripture which says. "Seek ye learning by study and

also by faith," is an invitation to draw upon the fountains of

'

DEVELOPMENT OF LEADERS AND LEADERSHIP 969

divine intelligence. Spiritual preparation for leadership requires

that a man should be possessed of the assurance that "the Lord

giveth no commandment to the children of men save he shall

prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing

which he commandeth them." And that preparation, too, must

be progressive. The mutual improvement work must be flavored

with spirituality. To this end, every activity should give some

evidence of the reverential, if not in the workman, then in the

atmosphere. Our meetings, our recreation, should be so planned

and conducted, that though "Mormonism" be neither heard or

seen, it can be distinctly felt.

Keeping up official as well as private correspondence with

the Lord is a source of development of spiritual leadership, and

our correspondence is wireless. We call it prayer. It is not only

a privilege but a duty. To call upon the Lord, in preparation

for leadership, doing the very best we can, like one who plants in

season with faith, cutlivates with care, and leaves to the Lord

the increase, is progressive preparation for leadership. Believing

as did the boy prophet: "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask

of God," is good preparation for leadership. Recognizing, also,

one's inability to not do his best alone, as did Joseph in Egypt,

when he said to Pharaoh, "It is not in me," and then exerting the

faith within, as did Joseph

— "God shall give Pharaoh an answer

of peace."

MORAL PREPARATION

The attitudes expressed in the following make good moral

preparation "I will be what I would have my followers be-

:

come." "I will be more exacting of myself than I will be of my

followers." A

great leader in his life adopted this motto, a dan-

gerous one, too: "No man shall be more exacting of me than I

am of myself." That was my beloved teacher, Brother Maeser.

But mark you how he succeeded ! Only last night, on a train,

a president of a stake was speaking to me of the influence of men,

and he said: "Do you remember So-and-so?" I said, "Yes."

"Well." he said, "do you remember what trouble he caused?

After he had quit school, Brother Maeser, in traveling through

the country, met him. He came up to him one day, and he said:

'How do you do? what are you doing?' He said, T am keeping

a saloon, Brother Maeser.' Brother Maeser held his hand in his,

and he said: 'Sell it, my boy, sell it; you cannot afford to keep

a saloon.' He went home that night, and the words he remem-

bered but the spirit with which those words were uttered haunted

;

him, and the next day the saloon and all the appurtenances were

for sale. He said to his wife 'That man is not of my faith, but

:

saying to me what he did, with the feeling that I had, I cannot

escape taking his counsel.'

970 IMPROVEMENT ERA

"It shall be my highest aim to be worthy of the approval of

those I follow, and the confidence of those who follow me." That

is expressive of an inward preparation for leadership.

Finally, "be prepared." We do not know how long the

Lord was in preparing Joseph Smith for his great mission of

leadership ; but we do know that, thousands of years ago, he

spoke concerning the preparation of that seer, the seer of this

dispensation. We know that he prepared parents to prepare him.

We know that the Father came to earth with his Son, to prepare

the boy for his leadership. We know that the Son sent an angel

to prepare the young man. We know that the angel put Joseph

under a three years' course of preparation for the one act of

receiving the plates containing the Book of Mormon. So, "be

prepared." An hour of prepared leadership is worth more to the

world than an age of aspiration for unprepared leadership. It

does not take long to prepare a baby mosquito for the business of

life, his life; but how long it takes to prepare a baby boy, or a

baby girl, for their business in life! The time and effort put

forth in the getting-readiness is the measure of the intelligence.

Getting-readiness and working-togetherness are the processes for

the development of leaders and leadership.

I want to bear a little testimony to you concerning the value

of holding valiantly to the doing of our duty. I am conscious

of having been a secretary, of having been a ward president, of

having worked in the stake board, of having the experience of

being a member of the general board, but I am not conscious of

ever having aspired to any one of these positions. I am conscious

of desiring, and struggling to feel, to keep, and honorably to hold,

those positions.

I was struck by an experience that happened in regard to

this work. On one occasion, when Elder Joseph F. Smith, Jr.,

was visiting one of the outlying counties as an aide in the Mutual

Improvement work, he spoke. There was a young woman, a

girl in her teens, in the audience, who heard him, and her great

wish was to have her brothers hear him. And that night she

dreamed that there was another meeting, and Elder Smith sat

on the stand, and her brother sat in the audience. Each man had

his chair, and her brother's chair began to hitch and move, and

as she noticed, her brother kept his eye on the leaders, and the

chair moved and moved and moved, and it moved up until she

saw her brother sitting with the group on the stand. She died

in the bloom of her womanhood. She told that dream to her

mother. Her mother kept it in her heart, until after this brother

of hers had been called to an activity in the general board, and

then the mother told the brother of the dream of his dead sister.

I believe with all my soul that with preparation and applica-

tion, and without aspiration for office, that our office and our