Excellence in Sacrament Meeting Dan Duckworth Author of the Power Equation, Leading Saints Board Member

Kurt: Welcome back to another session of Meetings with Saints Virtual Summit. Today we invite into the world of this summit, whatever we're calling it, Dan Duckworth. How are you, Dan? Dan: I'm great. Thanks, Kurt. ​ Kurt: Good. Well, most people that listen to Leading Saints may be familiar with your voice, but you're also the author of the "Power Equation," which I'm excited to get my advanced copy. I'm sure I'll get it. Dan: Absolutely. ​ Kurt: But also it's worth mentioning that you in the last few months, you're officially a member of our board of directors for Leading Saints. So it's awesome to have you there. Dan: I'm happy to be on board. I totally support the mission, and I'm excited to see where it's going from here. Kurt: Cool. Well, the best way for you to support this mission is for us to learn from you and that's why we're doing this here. Obviously, you write books about leadership, you talk about leadership. Anything else that will put you in a context that people aren't as familiar with Dan Duckworth?

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Dan: Well, I've been teaching leadership for about six years. For the 15 years before that, I was leading change as a totally unauthorized change agent within organizations. And I say that because I started out with no authority whatsoever. I ended up serving as an interim CEO for a year. But the type of changes that I was making, even as an executive, were changes that nobody had authorized. They were deep changes. They were hard changes. And so when I transitioned to teaching change, I've really been exploring the past six years, how do I teach people the mindset about how to get other people to get things done? And so we'll talk about that today in the context of these meetings. Because when you reached out to me and said, "Hey, would you consider doing a spot about meetings in the church?" my first thought was leadership meetings, Ward Council, right? Kurt: Yeah, yeah. ​ Dan: Most of your listeners sit on Ward Councils or they will or have or whatever. And I've had my own experiences, and so I thought, "Okay, this is a great chance to take what I do with executives and their meetings and really think through the church setting." But as I was thinking about that and really pondering through that, I just kept coming back to the sacrament meeting. In my mind, I kept hearing, "It's the most important meeting in the church. It's the most important meeting in the church." And so I wanted to think more deeply about how to bring what I teach in the leadership setting to leaders who are thinking about sacrament meeting. Kurt: Love it. And I love the fact that you always say you didn't start out that you were authorized or someone didn't endow you with a title of some type. Because there's going to be people listening to this session and others think like, "Oh, wow, these are great ideas, but I'm not the bishop or I'm not the Relief Society president, what difference can I really make?" But I think that's a great example of just showing that you don't have to be authorized to create influence in whatever organization that you're in. Dan: Yeah. Some of the things we'll talk about today with sacrament meetings, that's a little bit more difficult because there is a bishopric and they are authorized to plan and execute and oversee the meeting. And so if you decide you want to change the way it works, and you stand up in the middle of it and say, "Hey, let's do something different," it's probably not going to go over that well. At the same time, if you wanted to have influence over the decisions that those people are making, that is completely plausible and possible. It's totally within the scope of your influence to go influence a bishopric if you want to pay the price. And we can talk about that a little bit in the context of the discussion today. Kurt: Cool. All right. I think we're starting with that you're going to articulate what the problem is or where do we begin to understand the problem so we can actually talk about fixing it? Dan: To give you a sense of where I feel the problem is, and this is just me, if you look at sacrament meetings in the church, the statistic that most people will throw around is the activity rate: what percentage of our members show up to sacrament meetings? And the statistics that I've seen over the course of the last few years, depending on where you live, it's somewhere between

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20% and 40%. I think in the United States, it's a little higher. I think in some of the more developing areas of the church, it's lower like 20% to 25%. So you look at that instantly and you think, "Wow, how do we get more people to come to sacrament meetings?" That's not the problem I'm going to talk about today. Instead, what we're going to talk about is the people who are already there, what kind of experience are they having while they're in sacrament meeting? So if you look at the church handbook and the revised handbook - and I double-checked that once that came out to make sure that this language hadn't changed, what the purpose of sacrament meetings is the same - it says, "The purpose of the meeting is to deepen conversion in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ." So if that's the purpose, that's the goal, we want our members to have an experience [00:05:00] with Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father. But I'll just say Jesus Christ, for brevity's sake. We want them to have this experience, are they having that experience? Here's where my sort of data points come in. I spent a year in an RV trailer with my family. We drove around the US, we went to a different Ward pretty much every week. And so in addition to my business travels and work travels and international travels, I've seen a lot of different wards and a lot of different environments, a lot of different socio-economic contexts within the United States. And what I can tell you is that the church congregations that I attended are pretty much all the same in terms of the level of engagement and the way the members are engaging. There's a little bit of a spread, few positive deviance, a few negative deviance, but for the most part, we're normal. So if I were to tell you, just looking at engagement, when we think about Gallup, they do the engagement surveys for the workplace for the employees and they say that 70% of the workforce is disengaged. And their definition or the way they describe disengaged is sleepwalking. That 70% of the workforce is either sleepwalking through their workday or they're actively disengaged, which means they're sabotaging the organization. And most members of the church who feel negatively towards the church, they're not going to sabotage, they're just going to not come to church. The ones who are there, we're talking about this disengaged population. If I were to ask you, Kurt, what percentage you would say are disengaged in an average sacrament meeting, meaning they're there but they're sleepwalking through the meeting? What percent would you guess? Kurt: I would say, and I want to make sure I don't use hyperbole here, but, man, if you were to push me on that, I would say 90% on average are disengaged in a sacrament meeting. Am I being too extreme? Dan: Here's just the data set for you. Okay? ​ Kurt: All right. ​ Dan: I was traveling with my wife last month thinking about this webinar that we were going to do, and so I found myself in an island community where the church is strong enough, strong community there. And so there's a really well-organized sacrament meetings. And as I'm sitting

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there, I do what I've done for the last two or three years, which is the little sociologists to me starts to kick in, and I start to look for patterns and what's going on and why is this happening? Kurt: I'm glad I'm not alone, Dan. I thought I was alone. ​ Dan: You do the same thing, right? As I'm sitting there, I looked down my row and I noticed that on my row there wasn't very many people paying attention. Kurt: And you mean for visual cues, right? ​ Dan: Exactly. They're on their phone, they're talking to their neighbor - different things like that. So I watched for a while until I was sure that this was the state. That this wasn't like one blip, no one was looking. So I'm watching, "Okay, I can tell who's engaged, who's not engaged." Out of the 7 people across the entire, you know, whatever row we were in - we were in the fourth row - only 3 of them were engaged with the speaker. Kurt: Did you count yourself, Dan, because you're disengaged? ​ Dan: I was disengaged at that point. Then I looked up the next row, I said, "Well, this is interesting. I wonder about the next row, 2 out of 10 people were engaged. I looked up to the second row, and 0 out of four people were engaged. And in the very front row, 0 out of 7 were engaged. So if you look at that, 5 out of 28 people. And I don't know, the math on that, but 5 out of 28 people, about 1 in 6 were engaged. Now, what is engagement? You could be looking at the speaker and smiling because you've trained yourself to do that and you might be daydreaming about paying the bills tomorrow or what you're going to teach in Sunday school class next and you're not actually engaged. Now, somebody could be looking down at their phone or their lap or whatever, and they could still be totally engaged. So that's not a great way, that's not a great measurement tool. But just looking at that, and I said, "Oh, so even here in paradise - because I was in a place that you would think is paradise - even here in paradise, it's hard to pay attention in sacrament meetings." So if you think about the goal of getting members to have an experience with Jesus Christ, and then you think about what's happening as a result - this was during the talks - what's happening as a result of the talks, there's a disconnect. Because they're not engaged, can they be having that experience that we want them to have? Now, here's the irony. The stake president happened to be in attendance that day. And as I'm thinking through this and having these thoughts, you know, these are just my thoughts, not the right thoughts, but the stake president stands up at the end of the meeting and he says, "I really enjoyed the sacrament meeting. [00:10:00] They were wonderful talks full of the Spirit." Now, instantly, again, the sociologists in me is going, "Hold on a second, 5 out of 28 people were engaged - and I watched them for 15 minutes and the numbers didn't change - and a stake president stands up and he says, "this meeting was full of the Spirit. It was a wonderful meeting." Now, there's a couple of ways to interpret that. And I don't know what the truth is, but I'm just going to speculate. The first interpretation is the stake president was really feeling the Spirit and

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the Spirit was really president, and so he stood up and he voiced the experience that he was having. That's totally legit. It could be the case, right? Kurt: Yeah. ​ Dan: The other interpretation is that the stake president could feel in the room the malaise in the room. And as a leader, you don't like that tension. You're responsible for a meeting, you don't like knowing that the meeting isn't accomplishing its purposes. So it's very common for leaders and organizations of every stripe to try to put a spin on what's been the experience so that people think there's been an experience here. Kurt: You want them to come back next time. ​ Dan: Exactly. Because our metric that we care the most about is whether or not we've got people sitting in the pews. And we haven't gotten to that next level of "were they really having an experience?" And I can't say what the truth was from that stake president's perspective, but what I can say is that the cultural prescription in most organizations including most wards in the church is that we want to make the people have the experience. And if they didn't have the experience, we're going to tell them they did have the experience. And if you didn't have it, we're going to tell you that you must have done something wrong. We're going to imply that. Because I had it, and if you didn't have it, that means you must have been a disconnect on your part. And so it kind of put that blame or that responsibility on that person. Then what happens is because this is a global problem, we give talks about it and we write inside articles about it, and what we say is, it doesn't matter how terrible the talks are, if you're not having an experience in sacrament meetings, you've got a problem or you are the problem. Kurt: It's what you make of it, right? ​ Dan: Exactly. Now, if I'm talking to an individual sitting in that pew and they want some coaching to say, "How do I get more at a sacrament meeting," first of all, they probably shouldn't be talking to me. But if they were, I would be saying to them, "This is on you. You can change this experience. It doesn't matter what the talks are. You can come prepared, you can engage differently, and every individual can have their own experience." But if I'm talking to a leader in the church who's in a bishopric or a stake presidency or a Ward Council, who's trying to influence the general effectiveness of their sacrament meetings, I'm going to say the complete opposite. It is fully and wholly your responsibility as the leader to design a meeting that gives the people the kind of experience that you want them to have. Kurt: I love that we use this term as far as who's presiding in the meeting. I'm currently reading a book that you recommended to me the "Art of Gathering" and she talks about this concept of that it's the host's job to protect individuals from a bad meeting. To me, that's the perfect definition of someone who presides, his job or her job is to protect everybody in the room from a bad meeting.

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Dan: And I love what she says in that book. She says, "If you can't hold a meeting that's worth their time, it's a moral obligation to cancel the meeting." Can you imagine a bishop coming and saying, "You know what, we haven't got the meeting that we need for you guys? We're going to cancel sacrament because we're not prepared or we're going to take the sacrament and then we're going to just send y'all home." But we don't think like that because culturally, policy-wise, we're not allowed to think like that. The reverse of that isn't "Well, we're going to cancel the meeting if we didn't prepare it well." The reverse of that is, "What do we need to do differently so that we create meetings that routinely give people a fresh experience with Jesus Christ Kurt: I love that. Because you really never lose that power until the meeting is done, right? Even if you didn't have enough time to prepare, and maybe it isn't culturally acceptable to just cancel the meeting, but you still have a meeting in front of you. So you can still engage with that meeting and ask yourself, "Instead of just plowing through this meeting getting it over with, what can we do to refocus people on the purpose?" Dan: And it's not always like an immediate "I can just do this today in this meeting." But if you find yourself as a person of influence or a person who wants to make change, sitting in a bad meeting, whether it's a sacrament meeting or a board meeting at work, or whatever it is, you're sitting in a bad meeting, that's an opportunity for you to learn and to start to pay attention as a sociologist to say, what's really going on here? [00:15:00] When the people's heads down, what are the people talking about? When the people's eyes are up, when they're having an experience and I can feel from the pulpit or from next door that this person's having experience, what's going on in the meeting? And if you start to pay attention to that, over time, you'll start to notice trends and that's going to give you clues as far as how you can make change. Kurt: Absolutely. Even just thinking back to meetings that stand out that maybe that you still remember, and then sitting with those and dissecting, what was it about those meetings that made a difference? And you'll find some indicators. Dan: Now, I'm going to pull these slides up. I wasn't sure I was going to do this. So if I share this. Do you see that? Kurt: Yes. ​ Dan: Okay. Z represents the ultimate objective of what you want to accomplish as a leader. So I'm going to just talk sort of theoretically for a minute. We'll come back to sacrament meetings. I want to get Z. Actually, we'll talk about in the context. Z is I want deeper conversion. I want my people to experience something with Jesus Christ while they're sitting in this meeting. If that's what I want, there's some Y that can get me what I want. Now it's cause and effect. If my son wants a little bit of ice cream, he's 3-years-old, what he does now is he goes to the fridge, he opens it up and he gets himself ice cream. This is the problem with having a freezer on the bottom. Ice cream is at his eye level. So it's not uncommon for us to walk in and see the 3-year-old sitting at the island eating ice cream. Whoa, okay.

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So he's figured out how to get what he wants, which is Z. However, sometimes what we want is dependent upon another person's choice. Let's say that now he's at the ice cream shop and he wants ice cream. He can't just walk up and get himself some ice cream at the ice cream store. He's dependent on somebody else doing something in order for him to get what he wants. And in this case, he's got to get mom to be willing to buy ice cream for him. So he's dependent on mom's choice. Now in the sacrament meetings context, we want people to have this deeper conversion but we're dependent upon them engaging in the meeting. So whatever we do is X, what they do is Y and that's ultimately going to determine whether Z happens. The problem comes when they won't do it. When mom refuses to buy the ice cream, my son is effectively cut off from the ice cream. He's reached an impasse. There is no possible way to get ice cream unless mom yields and agrees to buy ice cream. Similarly, if we want deeper conversion, and the people refused to be engaged in the meeting, we can't get it. We're totally cut off. We're at the impasse. And in organizations of all stripes, what this looks like is the leader throws up her hands and she says, "I've tried everything. I've tried everything to get the people to change, and they just won't do it." And that's what I call the leader's impasse when you say "I've tried everything." And then the question is, how do I get him to do what I want him to do? How do I get the people to do what I want them to do? It's trying to get them to do what they won't naturally do. Because if they won't do that, then you're not going to get this. Now, your Z might be totally selfish. "I want ice cream, and I just need you to buy it." Or your Z might be altruistic. "I want you to have a genuine experience with Jesus Christ because it's going to change your life forever but I'm still dependent on you choosing to be engaged." So when we reach this leader's impasse, the temptation is to hyper-focus on the behavior of the other person - the person sitting in the pews. How do I get him to do what he won't do, which is to be engaged? And I'm focused on the fact that he won't do it. But the people who get stuff done, the people who move people to action and who make change in organizations, they hyper-focus on what they can control and on what they can influence. And they focus on how do I learn to get him to do what he won't do. And there's an implicit assumption in this mindset, which is there is always some X that will yield Y. Now, whether or not Y will yield Z, I can't say for sure. That's also a hypothesis. I think if you're engaged, you'll have this experience with the Savior. But I first got to get you engaged to prove whether or not that's true. So now I'm going to hyper-focus on what I can control to see if I can get you engaged. Now, when we look closer at X, what we realize is there's actually six different types of variables. And this is where when you read the literature on leadership, authors like to focus in on one aspect of leadership and say this is the golden ticket. But the [00:20:00] truth is the golden ticket is when you figure out how to balance what I call the power play with the power effect. So if your desire is to get the target to react, that's the person sitting in the pew, so that

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she'll have an experience with the Savior, you have two sets of variables: what you do and how you do it, and how the target experiences it. You're in complete control of what you do and how you do it. You only influence how the target experiences that. But you've got to know how they're experiencing it in order for you to adjust what you're doing so that you can balance the equation and get the reaction that you want. It's like chemistry, right? You got to have the right amount of the chemicals mixed in the right way in the right container. And when they are mixed properly, the reaction happens by law. This is a provocative way to think. It's saying that there is some X that will always yield Y. And if you haven't gotten Y, behavior, out of the people, it's because you haven't balanced the equation, you haven't found the right combination of the X variables. Kurt: Let me interject with a question here. As far as how the target experiences it, especially if you're sitting in a sacrament meeting with 200 people, it's safe to say that each one of those people, because they're individuals, whatever you're doing, and how you're doing it, they're going to experience it in different ways. And so you may not get the target reaction for all of them. But I guess the point is like figuring out how to get the majority to experience what you're wanting them to experience, right? Dan: Yeah. You can think about it like that. It's an important question because when we talk to leaders and they start to learn about leadership and becoming more in tune with the different power levers that they have, one of the first things they always say is, "Yeah, but I've got 300 people or I've got 5,000 people. How do I do this for all of them?" There's answers to that. But for the most part, for simplicity's sake, let's just say, when you balance the power equation, people are more similar than they are different. And so it will work with people more often than it won't. Kurt: And I would guess that sort of the trap that leaders fall into is that they say, "Well, in my personal experience, I do this activity, whatever it is, or I come five minutes early before sacrament meeting and ponder for five minutes. And when I do that, I get a specific experience that leads me to the main goal of connecting with Christ." So then we default our personal experience and sort of projected on everybody else. Would you say that's like a trap that we may fall into or really a trap? Dan: Yeah, it's totally a trap. And we ignore this part of the variables, how the target experiences it and we plug ourselves... Kurt: We just assume that they're going to experience it like us, right? ​ Dan: Exactly. And then where in the transformational leadership research they talk about individualized consideration, where you bring leadership to the individual. When you've got a group of 200 people sitting in a room, how do you do that? There are strategies. I'm not going to go into all of these but I just want to introduce this very briefly to set up the conversation as we keep going.

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The variables about how the target experiences it, how much does that person trust you. As a speaker or a teacher, if they don't trust you, the bar to convince them to change their behavior is extremely high versus if they implicitly trust you because of past experience, or because of what your title is, or because of, you know, they're just a high trust individual, they walk in and they go, "Whatever you say, I will trust and you have to prove yourself untrustworthy." And then that's an advantage to you; you don't have to work as hard on this other side. But if there's low trust there, you got to work hard. Which means if your people are standing up there to give a talk and there's not a good relationship between the individuals of the ward, you're in a low trust environment. It's going to require more effort on this side of the equation to get the experience that you want them to have. Culture just refers to everybody sitting in that room perceives a certain way to behave as the right way to behave. So what's acceptable, what's right, what's best. And they feel that in reaction to the way you're responding to them. So if a Dry Council talk is happening, there's a cultural response which is considered acceptable or right or best. And every person is going to interpret that differently, but on the whole, it's going to all look the same. By the way, it was High Council talks at sacrament meetings that I referenced earlier. The target state: what state of mind and state of emotions are they in? This could be affected by what they ate for breakfast, by whether they had an argument their [00:25:00] kid right before they showed up for church, by whether they're stressed out with their work project that's due tomorrow. That that all affects you. In a sacrament meeting type setting, you can't really influence that directly. So we're going to take that as given, but you have to be respectful and understanding of where the people might be at. Kurt: So you're saying on the right side of that circle, those slices of the pie, in the moment, you can't influence them. Obviously, over time and through... Dan: You can't take them as given, as fixed, but you need to understand and appreciate and account for them. Take targets, for example. Whenever anybody asks me for advice on giving a talk, the first thing I tell them to do is make sure you look people in the eyes. Now, that's opposite of most of the public speaking feedback that you get or advice that you get because public speaking is number one fear, and the advice you generally get is look at an object in the back corner of the room and just give your talk to the back corner of the room or look in the very back of the people whose facial expressions, you can't see. What that does though, as it erases the people as people. When I'm looking people in the eye, I'm having an individual experience with them and I can read their state. If they're getting bored with what I'm saying, I can feel that because I'm looking them in the eye. If they're responding and resonating with the line of thinking or a different talking point that I've got, I can feel that. This is how you relate to an audience of 200 people. The people feel you having an experience with other people, even if it's not with them, and it becomes human. And all of a sudden, you're no longer a talking head. You're a human.

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Kurt: So you're not changing that target state but you're recognizing it's there and then engaging it. Dan: We are interacting with it, yes. And you're changing your state based off of what their state is, right? Kurt: Okay. Got you. ​ Dan: Strategy refers to how and when you implement the power elements. This is the core of what we're going to think a little bit through today. Because when we want to change people's behavior, we default to two common strategies. The first is we're going to tell them to change, which is persuasive power. The second is we're going to coerce them to change, which we're going to compel them. We're going to try to limit their choices or move their choices in a certain way. And then there's these other five which we call the superpowers are the positively charged powers. If you want to learn more about this, you can go to thepowerequation.net, and you can learn more. The book will be out this month on this. But suffice it to say the key distinction between the negatively charged powers and the positively charged powers is how you engage the agency of the other person. If you limit the agency of the other person in your strategy, it has a net negative influence on your power effect. If you respect and honor and amplify the agency of the other person, it has a net positive effect on your strategy. Let's think about that. Go ahead. Kurt: Just to give an example of this, sometimes, and I've seen different wards handle this issue different ways, but with the technological age we're in with smartphones in abundance, a lot of leaders will look out in sacrament meetings and think, "Ah, everybody's on their phone." Regardless if there may be looking at a quote, the speaker just said or engaging with the scripture they reference or on Facebook. And so they then begin to try and persuade and coerce this cultural habit of everybody's on smartphones. So they may say, "We're going to make an invitation to remove smartphones." Maybe they'll even require it. I don't know. I mean, maybe some get more tyrannical like that. "You know, put your smartphones in a basket at the back of the chapel." I've never heard of that. But nonetheless, that's like an example of... Dan: Well, it happens. ​ Kurt: It does happen? ​ Dan: Yeah. I have never seen it happen in church but I've watched it happen in business meetings where I walk in as a consultant from the outside, and as people stroll in, the leader of the meeting reminds them, "Hey, the basket's by the door. Put your phones in the basket." So the persuasive power, in that case, is you assume that people don't know that they shouldn't be on their phones during the meeting. And so you make an announcement. "Everybody you shouldn't be on your phones during the meeting. Proper etiquette is to leave your phones in your pocket." Well, if there's anybody out there that doesn't know that that's rude or that's not acceptable or

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whatever, they're going to hear you say that and they're going to go, "Oh, I didn't know. Okay." And they're going to take their phone or put in their pocket and go, "Okay, I didn't know." But everybody else who knew and was doing it anyway, one of two things can happen. Number one, they're just going to ignore you because they knew that anyway. If they wanted to put their phone in their pocket, they would have put it in their pocket. Number two is they're going to feel guilty and they're going to feel [00:30:00] shame. And that's going to limit what's called their self-determination. Okay? And they'll still comply probably because culturally that's the expectation of them. "Somebody just told me to put my phone away, I better put it away." Kurt: Or the bishop, you know, the one that presides over the ward told me to do it." ​ Dan: So they'll comply, but you've limited their sense of self-determination, and they're much less likely to have a positive experience with the real behavior that you want them to do, which is to have an experience with Jesus Christ - be engaged. Moral power just really quickly, that's when you live your values or you love someone so much that they want to change simply because of your example. Mentor power, that's when you help somebody realize their full potential, not because you're forcing them to but because they need support. They need a Dumbledore in their life and you can help them find their way forward and they'll change just because you're helping them. Community is people want to be connected and related in community. And so if you can build relationships and help connect people. That will motivate them to act in ways that you're asking them to act. Vision is setting a positive vision for the future. "Here's where we're trying to go. I think that you would like to go here too. If you do Y, this is going to help all of us move to where we're trying to go." "Okay, I'll do Y." And disruptive power is we're all stuck in patterns and we all relate to each other in patterns. And so I can simply change how I behave in a pattern and it's going to force other people to change how they behave, not because I manipulated them, but just by a consequence. So if the bishop doesn't show up for sacrament meeting, everybody's going to have to change the way they relate. In that moment, they're going to have to have different behaviors. Their normal behaviors just aren't applicable anymore. Let me give you just a very, very simple example of this so you can appreciate it because this happened today. So I'm writing this book right now. I've been heads down for many weeks, and so this is a topic of conversation in our family. Of course, we're always experimenting with it and thinking through it. So today I'm talking to my wife, and we're at the countertop, where the kitchen island is and my 9 year old son and my 3 year old son are over in the living room reading books together. And I looked down and I noticed that my 3 year old son has left his bowl and his cup and his spoon on the countertop. And so I look over to the living room and I say, "Hey, Tate, your dishes are still on the countertop." And 3 year old Tate looks back up to me and he says, "I know." And I looked at him as though like, "Okay, I'm expecting you to do Y, which is to come

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clean up the dishes." And he said, "I don't want to." So like, "Okay." So what's your first reaction when your 3 year old very articulately expresses his self-determination? "I don't want to." Kurt: I turned on my dad voice then. ​ Dan: Well, my first thought was to laugh. Then my second thought was, "Well, if I laugh, you'll think it's okay." So then the third thing is to turn on the authoritative voice and to say, "No, no, no. I said, come pick up your dishes." But we were writing a conversation about all this so I stopped. And then my wife and I started to kind of tick through some of these things - what would it mean to persuade him. "Hey, this is the right thing to do. This is in your best interest." What would it mean to coerce him? "If you don't do this, I will take your toys away or whatever." And then she said, "Well, what would moral power be in this case?" Well, it might be, "Hey, I'm going to do your dishes for you because I love you." And I wasn't in the mood to do that. I didn't think that was going to get me what I wanted anyway. Then we said, "Well, what would mentor power be?" "I'm not sure. I'm thinking through it." "What would community power be?" "Mm hmm, I'm thinking through it?" So then I got this idea. And I said to my 9-year-old, I said, "Hey, Michael. Tate looks up to you and he's learning how to be a good boy by the things that you do. Will you come teach him how to put the dishes away?" Of course, Michael looks at me and goes, "Do I have to." My first reaction is, "No, you don't have to?" Because the second I say, "Yes, you have to," I've limited his self-determination and it's going to be a net negative influence on our relationship and also on what I'm trying to get him to do. So I said, "No, you don't have to." But then I went back to mentor power on Michael and I said, "But if you do, it's going to help you become the kind of brother that you've told me that you want to be. And this is an opportunity for you to do something for your brother that he's still learning and you can be that role model." Well, Michael looks at me, he doesn't want to get up, but he turns to Tate and he says, "Hey, Tate, your big brother Ben who's 15," he says, "Ben and me, we like to clean up our dishes. [00:35:00] That's what we do. It helps our house stay clean. And I think you should clean up your dishes too." As he's talking, Tate gets that starry-eyed look in his eyes. He's soaking up every word that Michael is saying. Now, if I had said this, it wouldn't have meant a thing. But it's coming from Michael and all of a sudden, it means the world to him. Tate gives a little smile, he stands up, he walks to the kitchen, he picks up his dishes, he goes to the sink, puts him in the sink, and he goes and he sits down. Now, my wife and I talked about this for half an hour afterwards. That doesn't mean that that's the strategy that's going to work every time because I have a certain relationship with my sons, with Michael and with Tate, and there's a certain culture in our family and they were in a certain frame of mind at the time. And so I could balance that power equation. Sometimes I might really need those dishes cleaned up, and I need them done now and I do not have the time or the energy or the space to use some of the super powers. And I might go dad voice and I might say, "Tate, get your hiney up here and pick those dishes up and put them away because we have to go right

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now or so and sos coming over or whatever it is." But why use that negative approach if I don't have to? So the Y is suddenly changemakers. They save those for when they're absolutely necessary. And when they're not necessary, they focus on what builds trust and what builds culture and what improves the target state, which is these five superpowers. Kurt: Got you. I love that because, again, the ones on the right, you're saying you can't influence them right now, but the ways that you handle this situation that you know, of those, the superpowers are not, that's going to impact them in the future, which then makes getting to Z a whole lot easier over time because you've established trust and stimulated good culture and changed their target state because of those things. Right? Dan: Exactly. ​ Kurt: I just want to make sure people are...their heads not spin by this because I think this is so powerful. Let me just throw out another scenario and you tell us how you'd approach it with this. Is that okay? Dan: Yeah, that's great. ​ Kurt: Cool. So let's imagine you're in a stake presidency and you're looking to the numbers and none of the Elders Quorum presidencies in the stake are administering interviews. Like it's not even getting close to 100%, let alone 10%. And you think like, "This has got to change." So how would we use this equation to approach that? Dan: Normally what we do in the church is we hold a meeting and we tell people they need to change. And that's persuasive power. And then when they don't do it, we say, "Well, we're going to compel you to change. We're going to course you. We're going to require that everybody reports in a certain way or does a certain thing. And if you don't do it on this day, by this time, or whatever some strategy will come up." It's putting pressure on the people to see if we can get them to conform. Kurt: I would say one of the most overused and common persuasive phrases and sometimes coercive phrases is "we've been asked by the prophet to do this." Even though that's true - we all respect the prophet and we all want to do what he says - but that's a very coercive tactic. Right? Dan: That's right. For sure. And to be clear, the scriptures are full of persuasion and coercion. So it's not that these are wicked or never called for. It's just that there's a time and a place. And by the way, there's more enlightened ways to do this than others. The degree to which you restrict someone's self-determination is going to be negative effect. If it's just a little bit of pressure, not a huge negative effect. But if you're basically breathing down their neck, saying, "Do this or else," it's a huge net negative effect. Off the cuff. Let's just think out loud. What would moral authority be or moral power be in this situation? Well, moral power is when you love someone or you love a cause so much that you're willing to sacrifice for it. It inspires other people to want to sacrifice for it too. But here's where

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strategy comes into play. Because Gandhi gets all the credit as being the signature moral power leader, right? But moral power absent strategy is power less. Gandhi didn't just fast. Gandhi fast and in a way that got lots of public attention. Gandhi didn't just silently disregard certain laws that he didn't like, he got mass protests to happen where they were all going to disobey those laws or walk out together. So the moral power here is, how do I love the people or love the cause in a way that gets their attention? And I don't know what that means. It could be [00:40:00] you deciding to go do one on ones with people where you're going to go ministering side by side with them or you're going to sit with them in their ministering interviews. Well, that's not going to affect the whole population. But can you tell the story afterwards? What's the strategy of how you get the people to understand and appreciate that you love the cause. Now, moral power, I put it next to coercive because it's dangerous. We oftentimes think we're acting in terms of the other person's best interest or for the cause's best interest, when we're just using it as sheep's clothing to mask the fact that we're really trying to twist their arm into doing something. So mentor power, I kind of already went there and go side by side with people sit down with them. If you're having a meeting, could you have more of a honest discussion about where the people are at and help them decide what their best selves are. It's not you telling them, "This is how you should be because the prophet said this is how you should be." It's saying, "This is what a disciple of Jesus Christ is like, generally?" How would you interpret that in terms of the kind of ministering and the kind of reporting and the kind of interviews that you would have? And you're getting them to think through. Mentor power is helping them to identify their best self and where they want to go and then providing them the support that they need to get there. Community power, likewise, there's things you could do in terms of creating relationships. Helping people feel connected in a way that says, "Well, I really want to do my ministry." Think about this: if you were bonded as brothers, speaking just as the Elders Quorum, if you were bonded as brothers with the people in your Elders Quorum, you would want to minister to them. You would want to talk to the people in charge about what's going on. They wouldn't be coerced. They wouldn't be compelled because it's natural and spontaneous. So instead of telling the people we have this kind of community, go create that kind of community and see what changes in terms of the ministering. Kurt: And that fits in perfectly with vision. I mean, what a beautiful vision to build. ​ Dan: Exactly. And disruptive. Here's the other thing about these elements. They're never separate. You don't just do one. It's always an integration of these powers. And the variable is what is the power mix that you're bringing in to what we call the power play. Kurt: But it's definitely an obvious mindset shift, right? That you're suddenly approaching every situation, every meeting differently because you're considering these variables that are there. You

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can't just ignore them and then they go away. I mean, they're always there whether you like it or not. Dan: Exactly. They're always there. They're always in play. And you might try to get your son to move the dishes, but there's low trust. And everything else is in place but because there's not enough trust there, he doesn't respond to you. Or you might try to get an Elders Quorum to do a certain kind of ministering or certain kind of interview, you can get everything right, but you didn't quite balance it for where they're at culturally and the way they perceive the culture. And that's why these changes that we've had over the last couple years. You cannot ever dismiss the role of the culture in mediating or influencing different power plays that we're making. Let's shift and let's talk about sacrament meetings because I want to make sure we have time for this. Let me take you back. I want to just tell a couple stories. I live in Utah now. I used to live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I lived there for about 10 years. As I lived there, I had several dynamic stake leaders, and I learned a lot about leadership and leadership in the church as I just watched these people. One of them was fond of saying...he would remind us of the story of when the Detroit temple was dedicated. And he would say, "We went to this temple and it's one of the smaller temples, but it's just packed. There's chairs everywhere, and there's monitors everywhere and there's people outside. That practically standing remoteness, there's nowhere to be except for in the chair." And so he's talking about this experience that he has. And he says, "I was overwhelmed by this meeting. And I was so grateful to have been at a temple dedication with I think President Hinckley was there, and it just moved me and I had this experience with Jesus Christ to deepen my conversion. And I was so grateful for this exception to the rule." And as he thought about that, something shifted in his mind and he said, "Shouldn't that be the rule? Shouldn't our sacrament meetings be like temple dedications? Shouldn't the people come to sacrament and have a moving experience with Jesus Christ?" Well, guess what? That's the purpose of the sacrament meeting from the handbook. And so that imagery has been in that Ann Arbor stake but it's also been with me ever since he shared that with me. "What does it mean for a sacrament meeting to be so powerful it feels like a temple dedication?" Now, that same stake presidency, one of [00:45:00] the stake president members set this expectation that when we had meetings, we had to come prepared. And this is probably typical in a lot of areas where you send an article out, and you say, "Hey, will you read this General Conference talk? We're going to come, we're going to discuss this." But there was a difference in what he meant with be prepared. So I showed up for my first council meeting and I wasn't prepared. I had read, but I hadn't acted on anything I had read recently. And what I realized was that every other person in the room had gone out and created a new experience with the principal that they were asked to come prepared to read about, and they were discussing their new experiences with this principle. And the meeting was powerful. It was like that template dedication. And I walked away, I said, "Wow, when I get an assignment, I have to go create a new experience with this principle."

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Shortly after that, I got called to serve as a counselor, and now I'm traveling around the stake giving talks regularly, almost once a month. And that same concept sits with me. I've been asked to speak on faith or on tithing, or on the restoration, or whatever it is, how do I go and create a new experience with this topic or with this principle and come and teach from my fresh experiences? That changed the nature of my talks dramatically. And as I look people in the eye, I could tell it was changing dramatically the nature of the experiences that they were having as I was speaking. Elder Scott said, "The worst form of instruction is to have a talking head in the front of the room." But by default, sacrament meetings are talking heads up in the front of the room. Kurt: We can't move the lectern, Dan. I mean, it's nailed in. ​ Dan: You can't. And we can go down with a microphone and we can't turn it into a Q&A or something like that. But what we can do is we can speak our fresh experiences with the Savior Jesus Christ in a way that the people have their own experience with the Savior sitting in the pews. Now they're no longer listening. They're no longer being acted upon. They're having their own experience and all are being edified of all. So keep going. Towards the end of my time at the High Council, there was a training. New stake president, he really wanted to listen to the brethren council about changing sacrament meeting and the Sabbath day and improving all of this, and he said, "Where are we going to start? Strategy." His strategy was, we're going to start with the High Council, and I'm going to teach you how to give really great talks that enable people to stay engaged and have an experience with the Savior. Now, ironically, the Dry Council has a reputation for doing the opposite. He said, "We're going to attack the Dry Council and we're going to make it an energizing council." As we did this, Bob Quinn, who I'm a partner with in consulting firm is a leadership professor, very expert, world-renowned professor of leadership. And he's a great teacher. He's won a top 1% rated teachers in all the business leadership world. He's our stake's Sunday School president. So he comes to the High Council on the stake president's request, and he teaches us and he engages us in a discussion about great sacrament meeting talks. And he leveraged his heavily article that Bruce R. McConkie wrote I think in 76 or 77, in which Elder McConkie basically says, "The best pattern is to cite a story from ancient scripture that illustrates a principle, then cite a story from your own experience or somebody close to you that illustrates the principle and better if it's recent. And then third to testify of the principle that was woven in between those two stories." So that's an interesting pattern. He calls it to create a living witness. So I heard that and I was like, "Oh, yeah, create new experiences. You're becoming a living witness." I'm not a dead witness. I didn't witness this 20 years ago, I witness this two days ago. Jesus Christ changed my life two days ago, or two weeks ago or two months ago, and I'm telling you the fresh story of how he changed my life." Now, a little bit later, I get asked to give a talk in stake conference. I'm one of like eight stake officers that get asked to give a talk. And I was given a topic that was very curious to me. And

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the topic was what I am learning about loving my enemies. It wasn't love your enemies. It was what I am learning about loving my enemies. So create new [00:50:00] experiences, become a living witness, what am I learning? And so I felt the burden of this. And luckily, I had two months to prepare, to go create an experience. So I'm thinking I'm pondering, "Who are my enemies?" And this has really bothering me because I can't name any enemies. But I believe the stake president and the stake counselors and the Sunday School president, I think they're all inspired - the people that asked me to give this talk. There must be some reason why I've been asked to give this. I need to have a new experience with this principle, with this doctrine. And so as I'm in the scriptures, and I'm in conference talks, and I'm racking my brain, and I'm in prayer, and I'm pondering who are my enemies and what is this all about, the Holy Ghost starts to fill me and to teach me. "Your enemy is the natural man," Mosiah 3:19. Is that right? Your enemy is the natural man. And other people are quote-unquote, "your enemies" only insofar as they trigger your natural man. Oh, okay, I got lots of enemies because there's lots of people in my life that when I see them or interact with them, I feel the old pride starts to go up. Like, "Ooh, yeah, I have to coach myself down. Ooh, take it easy." Whether it's someone in the neighborhood, or someone at work, or someone in the ward, or whatever, we've got these people because we've had bad experiences with them. And so all of a sudden, I realized, "Oh, I can name a number of these people in my life." Now, what does it mean for me to love them, to serve them to do good for them, to pray for them? So I picked one and I spent a month praying and trying to increase in love, and trying to serve, and to do good, and to honor that person. And I experienced a mighty change of heart with respect to that individual. And I was able to get up in stake conference without sharing tons of details and share my learning experience. "Here's the story, here's the ancient principle. The Savior told us to do this." And I was asked, what am I learning? And I prayed, and I told a very light version of what I just told this audience. "I've had this experience, and I can testify to you that when the Savior says that you should do this, there's power in it. And it will change your heart if you do it. And I sat down. My five minutes were up. I didn't need to recite every scripture that's ever been given on the topic. I didn't need to pull in five or six different General Conference quotes. I could just speak very simply and plainly from the scriptures, from my own experience, right? And here's the key. Priests craft is when you set yourself up for an example to get gained or to get praise of the world. What's the difference between this model and priest's craft? Look, I'm flawed, I'm broken. I'm telling you that I had stuck to learn and I didn't know it. And so when you talk about your learning journey, you're talking from a position of humility and you're in a position of giving all the praise and all the glory to Jesus Christ because He's the one and His gospel is what changed me. I didn't do this on my own.

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Kurt: The opposite of the priest's craft is you're not setting yourself up to get gain or glory for man, but you're setting yourself up to show your weakness so that they can be comfortable with their weakness, so we all turn to Christ. Dan: Yeah. In this respect is no different than Nephi writing his stories, right? No. If Nephi is perfect, we can't relate to him. We need to know that Nephi struggled. We need to know that he was working through things. We need to know that he was on his knees. Because if it's that easy for Nephi and then I don't get a chance, right? But as I sit in that audience, I'm broken. I've had a hard week. I'm thinking through how I can be better. And if you stand up there and say, "I've got it all figured out. Here's the answers - persuasive power," I instantly psychologically shut down because you're about ready to tell me something I already know and it ain't that easy, buddy. Trust me because I live my life and it's not that easy. When you stand up and you say, "Guess what, I'm broken too but I had an experience where Jesus Christ changed me. And that means he can change you too because it happened anciently and it happened today to me. He can change you too." Kurt: And I appreciate that perspective because there's this cultural dynamic - I should probably give it a name just to better reference it - but it's very common for you to go to a church meeting especially sacrament meetings and hear some great talks, and they're not like bad talks, they're not like shaming talks, per se, but they sort of have this undertone of you should be doing better. You should be doing better. Well, people would say things like, "When was the last time [00:55:00] you really prayed? And I mean really prayed? Or what could you do to read your scriptures more? And how are you missing out on the Spirit when you're not reading your scriptures?" Again, these are not inappropriate things to say but they don't come from a place of "I'm broken but I engaged with God. And let me tell you about it." Right? Dan: Yeah. Let me share another example with you that will help underscore that. Fast forward a couple years later, maybe six weeks ago, and again, I'm thinking about doing this session with you, my son is 15 years old, he gets asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting. Now, just a little bit of background. This kid is very articulate. He always has been. He prepared his own talks when he was 4 years old, didn't tell us he had a primary talk. We got pulled in and he gave like this really neat talk as a 4-year-old. We were like, "Oh, this is super cool." And we had nothing thing to do with it. Now he's 15 years old and he gets asked to give a talk. And like many teenagers, he forgets he's supposed to do it until the day before. So he comes to us on Sunday morning and he says, "Hey, can I practice my talk?" And so he practices his talk in front of me and his 11-year-old sister, Audrey." So Ben is up there, and he gives this talk, and it's three minutes long and it's extremely polished. And he's got 10 sources, five scriptures. I had coached him the day before about sharing his own experience. He didn't have enough time, he wasn't given enough time to create a new experience and he didn't take the time that he was given either to create a new experience in a week.

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So the day before I said, "Well, what recent experiences have you had that you can use to testify of Jesus Christ?" So he referenced that very high level. He said, "I forgot I had a chemistry test on Wednesday and I was debating about whether I should study the Scriptures or study for my chemistry test in the morning once I finally realized I had it. And I decided to study for my chemistry test. Then I switched last second, I had a great experience because I read the scriptures and it was great." But there was like no story there. So he gets up and he gives us his three-minute talk. He reads it and it's really well written and it's really well reasoned. And he's made the case. He's talking about having faith in Jesus Christ, and he's made the case. And he ends, we give him some positive feedback. I said, "Okay, would you like some feedback on the substance of your talk? Church is an hour away." He knows who I am. He knows what I do. So he thinks for a minute, and it's like, "Do I really want to hear this?" Kurt: "Should I put a quarter in dad he'll give me $1.50 back?" ​ Dan: Finally, he looks over, he goes, "Yeah, I would." I said, "Okay, sit down." And I talked to him about some of the principles that we've just talked about today in terms of becoming a living witness. I shared with him the story arc. Now we use the story arc to teach leaders how to tell their story of how they've grown or how they changed. And so I've done a lot with executives and managers, helping them tell their story through the story arc. And so you don't need to think too hard about this but the big words are all that matters. I said to him, "If you really want to create a reaction out of the people, which you do - as a speaker, it's great for you to go out there and have your own experience, but you could do that on your own. The real objective is to help the people, be engaged and have an experience with Jesus Christ. If you want to create that reaction, the research is clear, you got to tell stories. Because when you tell a story, it releases oxytocin, and that is the empathy and cortisol, which is the action. And so when you tell a story, it releases both of these hormones or emotionally speaking, what we say is we have a desire to want to mimic the behavior of someone else or to act in a way that is in accordance with what the story is they've just told us." So I said, "Really quickly, I'm going to give you a five-second reminder, he's at English class, the story begins, there's a beginning - the way you were before the story started. And then there's rising action. All of a sudden, you realize that you have a test and your internal tension rises, what am I going to do? And then you have the climax where you make your ultimate decision, and then the results that come after. And then the resolution in a church talk is your testimony. What I learned, what I can now testify of because of this experience. So we walked through that. I wasn't sure he was going to do anything with it. After we talked, I shared with him some other things about the power of narrative and how using [01:00:00] the vernacular is so much more powerful in terms of relating to people than using your polished speech. And so I encourage them to do away with the paper. And I said, just get up there, find a story..." He'd already referenced Nephi's bow as a faith promoting story. So I said, "You've got that story, tell that story in this arc. Tell your story in this arc, and then testify of the

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principle." And I wasn't sure what he was going to do. As we're leaving for church an hour later, because I told him, I said, "You don't have to. You can just ignore all this and read your paper and you'll do great." Oh, I forgot to share the most important part. As he was giving his talk to me in his little sister, he was rigid. He was stiff. His neck was red, and it was flaring like this. And all the emotions that somebody would have speaking in front of 200 people, he was having them speaking to two of us in the room who are the safest people he could possibly share those things with. As we walk out of the house to go to church, I happen to notice that his talk is laying on the floor. And so I go, "Oh, that's interesting. He just let go of his security blanket." Because there's something powerful in being able to get up and just tell your stories. So people who you might think this is raising the bar for people to have them tell their faith-promoting stories, it actually is lowering the bar significantly. People can tell their witness through their stories. Now instantly, there's some people out there that are saying to themselves, "Well, we have the people tell stories, they're going to get up there and ramble on and there's going to be no teaching and it won't be doctrinal based." Yeah, fear of negative deviance always stops you from pursuing positive deviance. So if that's what you're fixated on, that's what you're afraid of, just stop listening right now because it's going to go nowhere for you. Because you're going to have to work really hard to make the positive deviant example the most likely outcome. And if you're not willing to put that time energy into that kind of leadership, then you're better off with just the culture and the norm of what you typically get. But back to the story. So then we get to sacrament meeting, Ben stands up. And I know he doesn't have his talk at this point. He stands up and he's noticeably less nervous than he was in our own living room, but he's still nervous. And he starts to tell his story. And he begins like this: "Brothers and sisters, I had an experience this week..." And he starts to tell the story. And instead of just saying, "I had this tension," he says, "I felt the Holy Ghost." Because I told him, I instructed him, I said, "You need to bring the Holy Ghost into this story because it's an important part of the story - your interactions." He says, "The Holy Ghost told me, "You need to study your scriptures before you study for this test, even though I only have 45 minutes before school started and I hadn't studied at all. And I ignored it, and I studied my chemistry. And then the Spirit kept coming back to me and saying, "You need to study the Scriptures." And I ignored it and I kept studying." As he went back and forth, he goes, "Finally with 10 minutes left, the Spirit was so strong, I couldn't deny it. I pushed my chemistry book to the side, I opened up my scriptures, I flipped to the idea of study because that was what was on my mind, opened up to D&C where it says, 'You should learn by study and by faith. And all of a sudden, the Spirit testified to me: 'I can help you in this test if you have faith in me.'" And the kid goes to school first hour and he takes a very hard chemistry test without having studied it, and he walks away - and it isn't about the grade - it's that he walks away and he says, "I experienced the Holy Ghost while I was taking that test."

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Now he tells Nephi bow story, and he tells it the way Elder Holland would tell a story." The dramatic story arc. And he says, "Can you imagine if you were Nephi and your brother's bows are broken and your bow is the last one to break and they start blaming you. And why is it my fault? Your bows are broken too. Why am I the guy that always has to bail this family out? Now we don't know if that's the way Nephi was feeling, but that's real. That's the way everybody in that congregation would have been feeling if they were Nephi." And then he says, But Nephi made a choice to go to the Lord and to go to the prophet. And then here are the results." And then he looks at the congregation, he says, "Nephi's results are the same results..." These are my words, not his. "They're the same results as the results I got this week." And again, in my words, he turns the congregation and he says. "Brothers and sisters," I know that if you turn to the Lord, He will help you through your challenges." Now how can a 15-year-old boy who knows nothing about the challenges of life that these people in this congregation are going through? [01:05:00] How can he say that? Because he's had his own witness. So we get back to the house, and were all gathered around, of course, you do what you do. Everyone's talking to your family member, they did a good job, and we're debriefing it and all that stuff. And as we're talking, I have this epiphany. And the Epiphany is most of the time when we give talks, we think our job is to make the case for Jesus Christ or for the principle of the gospel that we've been asked to talk about. And so we come like a prosecutor and we bring lots of witnesses to make the argument. And those witnesses are in the form of lots of scriptures and lots of conference talks, and people are now citing memes on YouTube and other things like that as data and evidence for why you should take me seriously and why you should act on this principle. But that's not what we've been asked to do. We've been asked to be a witness, not a prosecutor. The bishop's job is to call the witnesses. I choose these four people or these six people on this day to come make the case for Christ as a witness through their own experience. When you stand up to that pulpit, you are standing up to be a witness, which means if you don't have recent fresh experience with Jesus Christ, you cannot be a living witness. You're a stale witness. "Hey, 20 years ago on my mission, or 30 years ago, when I was in high school," those are relevant sometimes, but what's more relevant is what you just experienced last week. So, if you think about it in that context...I'm going to say something that my wife will get nervous about me saying. Kurt: Okay. We won't tell her. ​ Dan: I love President Nelson and I believe in the prophet with all of my heart. But if you're citing President Nelson's words as evidence, as circumstantial evidence, it's not applicable to your witness. That's his witness. Now, here's where his words come into play. If his witness was an instrumental part of your journey in developing a witness, then share them. Share those words and share them in the context of the story that you created. "Hey, this week, I was learning about such and such, and I read this from our President Nelson and the Spirit spoke to me. And I went

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out that day and I did something different because of what the Spirit said to me as I read president Nelson's words. And here's what happened and here's now what I can testify about." That's now part of your living witness. But to just to come and say, "Hey, back in 1987, President Nelson said this and then in 1980 or in 1994, President Oaks said this," that's all just circumstantial. It's not going to make the case. You're not going to fulfill your responsibility to be a witness. Kurt: Powerful. I love it. Just was this concept of story, I mean, again, it really does lower the bar, but it increases the impact. It's so much easier for people to do and it goes straight to the heart because it's so relatable, it's vulnerable. And then these other components just come out of it like community, connection. And then that all leads us to Christ. One thing that came to mind is oftentimes I remember, I mean, it seems to happen more often than I'd like. But when I was a bishop, I'd be up on the stand and you'd be listening to the speaks, there'd be certain indications that, oh, well, they're about to wrap up. He's my final speaker. We have 20 more minutes. What I'd often default to which saved me every time is you can always think, Well, I'll ask three people to stand up and bear their testimony," or "maybe I'll stand up and pontificate about this or that principle." But what I found was most powerful, I would say, "Who in here has a story?" And oftentimes, it's either coming back to the church or conversion story. And so I would stand up and I'd say, "Now, sister Williams, we have a few minutes. I know you have a story of conversion. Would you mind coming up here and just telling us the story." And I have it photographed in my mind at this moment where this sweet sister in the ward stood up and talked about these scenarios and experiences where Christ kept finding her and bringing her back to the gospel. And you could feel it in the room. Like everybody leaned forward, they were engaged. I mean, if there's a way to measure the engagement in that meeting, it was off the charts because it was real, it was relatable, and it talks about her brokenness. And then I can connect that to my brokenness and then suddenly the [01:10:00] Savior shows up and heals it all. So this story is so impactful. Dan: Well, you just gave such an important description of paying attention. As a leader, you were seeing people are sitting forward in their chairs. Listen, if you want to know engagement in a sacrament meeting, listen to the babies in the room. Because when somebody starts to tell an authentic story, oftentimes even the babies and the toddlers will hush. Something changes in the room. Something changes. The Holy Ghost comes into the room and starts to testify and something changes. People sit on their chairs. Even the kid that's been playing his video game in front of you the whole time, you watch, you watch as I do this. When people start to tell stories, authentic stories, not their...we tell all kinds of stories. It has to be an authentic story. Even the kid playing the video games will go, "Mmh." And he'll listen. And a second the story stops and they go back to their persuasive list of evidences, he goes and goes right back. What if the whole meeting was this or 90% of it was this and only 10% of it was this. Kurt: I mean, there's so much to this. You talked about the preparation. When it's nice to have a good amount of time for a speaker to prepare? Because without that, those two months or

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whatever you were preparing for Stake Conference, you may not have been able to have time to really engage with that principle. But even in preparation for a talk, I see people, you know, they just kill themselves over a couple weeks of preparing and then they think, "Okay, I've got 15 minutes," and we always misjudge and they plan enough content for 40 minutes, and then they wonder why they went over and they're not paying...right? And that just messes things up that way. I mean, someone could ask me to stand up and have you say, "You have 15 minutes." And I could just be default to a story. One, it'd be more engaging, but it just feels that time more naturally and it's easy to think through and prepare and bring out those principles. So the preparation of these meetings becomes easier when we focus on narrative of the story. Dan: Exactly. I want to come back and just talk a little bit about why this potential play might be powerful. And I want to just underscore, when we talk about the power equation, and we're focusing on what we can do to change other people's behavior, you have to recognize that these are all hypotheses and that you're experimenting, trying to balance all of the power variables so that you can get the outcome that you're hoping for. And so when I give this as a potential strategy and a mix of powers, I recognize that this isn't going to work in every ward every week. And I am in no way saying this is what you in your ward should go do. What I'm saying is, is I want to illustrate for you an example, a positive deviance of a way that it was done counter-culturally and got a different outcome. I want you to walk away from this session and say, "Oh, maybe there are other ways or other things that we could experiment with, to get a different outcome in our sacrament meetings." How you do that? Bishop focused on how the priests give the prayers, they focused on the kind of music, they focused on the prelude, they focus on being early, they focus on reverence. And we've heard about giving talks, but we really have never been taught or thought deeply about what is a highly effective talk relative to the outcome that we're hoping for, which is deeper conversion. So this I hope everybody will kind of think about it in terms of this is an example, maybe something you can experiment with. Let me give you a few variations. Kurt: Perfect. ​ Dan: When you hear somebody say, "My favorite sacrament meeting of the year is the musical sacrament meeting at Christmas time," the reason why they say that is because they actually had an experience with Jesus Christ. What they're saying about the rest of the sacrament meetings is "I don't come anywhere near that kind of experience." So when you hear that, you need to say to yourself, "What is it about that meeting that enables most people to have a different, more richer experience in sacrament meetings? Is it the music? Is it the fact that nobody's talking? Is it the contemplation that it enables? Is it the way they're participating differently?" So you're asking those things. Here's another thought. My good friend, my best friend from high school all the way through these years is a counselor in the bishopric. And so we were talking about some of these things and he said, "Well, I've spent the last whatever, three or four years inviting people to give talks."

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He said, "You won't believe how many people say no." That's interesting. Why do they say no? This is just speculation. It'd be different for everybody. But in general, they don't want to stand up there and be judged. [01:15:00] Okay, so what are they being judged on? Their intellect and how well they understand and can articulate the gospel. Take that out of the equation. So then my friend says to me, "You know what, without authority, without being authorized, a couple of times I've planned a different kind of sacrament meeting where I have six people speak and they get four or five minutes each. And I come and I asked them to tell a story about how they've lived a certain principle. And I get six stories about the same principle." He said, "You know what, I get so much positive feedback from the congregation, but especially from the people who did the speaking where they loved that experience." Now, I'm online researching for this talk, looking at different things. I'm just curious. You know, there's a bunch of church-related blogs out there, and I find one where they're talking about sacrament meeting. And one of the comments in the blog says, "It's sad for me that so many people struggle with staying engaged in sacrament meeting because our ward has phenomenal sacrament meetings." So instantly, I'm like, "Whoa, positive deviant. What's going on in her ward." So I keep reading and in essence, she says, "A couple years ago, our bishop stopped assigning talks and he started assigning people to come tell their conversion story. Even if they were not baptized as adults in the church, he wanted them to just stand up and tell a moment in their life where their heart turned to Jesus Christ." Whoa, what a phenomenal experience that she is saying is having a huge impact. Kurt: Wow, that's powerful. I love that you highlight this principle. And this is why I appreciate your mentorship so much, Dan is that you always bring me back. I get so caught up in the tactics sometime or the application or "Hey, check out this new strategy." But you to pull back and say, "At the end of the day, we're just asking ourselves, how can we deviate in a positive way from the status quo," right? Dan: Exactly. ​ Kurt: And we talked about this, I don't know if this is the good time to bring it up, but this is another example. That interview we recorded together, you brought up a newsletter I sent out about how I talked about a positively deviant way of calling people to callings. People can go listen to that if they want all the details. But just a few weeks ago, I got an email from I believe he's a bishop in Sacramento area, and he said, "Several of us that are listening to your podcast or reading your newsletter, and one bishop has taken this strategy on a unique approach to call somebody to a calling. And another bishop spoke up and said, "I don't think you can do that." And he said, "Oh, really, why not?" And so it started discussion of why or why not this could happen." In these meetings that we attend and council meetings and bishopric meetings, I think we're on the right track when every once in a while someone says, "Can we do that?" or "Is that legal?" And then obviously go to the handbook. And obviously, there are restrictions and boundaries that

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we follow, but you'll find that the wiggle room is in abundance as far as things we can try as far as being a little bit positively deviant in some of our approaches and how we do things. Dan: So pop quiz, to put you on as well. How many talks does the handbook tell us that we're supposed to have signed in each sacrament meeting? Kurt: I don't think there is a number. ​ Dan: No, there's not. ​ Kurt: On average there's two to three. ​ Dan: How many times is the general handbook reference a talk in sacrament meeting? ​ Kurt: A talk? ​ Dan: Talk. Use the word all "talk." ​ Kurt: I would say it probably doesn't, right. ​ Dan: Zero. ​ Kurt: But we do it, Dan. We do it. ​ Dan: If you go, "I've read it all in preparation for this," if you look at what's in the handbook or what's on the church website, or what's in the different talks that have been given over the last 5 or 10 years by the brethren, they spend 90% of their time talking about the sacrament ordinance. And if they even reference the talks in sacrament meeting, they say one or two very simple things about them. What the handbook says is, there are gospel messages. What's the gospel message? If I'm willing to stop and think about that, what does it mean to have a gospel message? Because when you hear of a bishop saying, "I just have people get up and give their conversion stories," the first flag that goes up for a lot of people is "Oh, no, I thought you were supposed to assign a General Conference talk and everybody's supposed to repeat the General Conference talk in their own words." [01:20:00] But He says, "Just do a conversion story." And why is that acceptable? That's a gospel message. What is the gospel message? Gospel is the good news. What's the good news? That Jesus Christ changes lives. So any message that points people to Jesus Christ and says he changed my life, he changed Nephi's life, He changed [unintelligible 01:20:22] life, he changed whoever's life, and he can change your life is a gospel message. It can come through him. It can come through instrumental. It can come through spoken word. There's a lot of different things you can think about if you really just go back to the handbook and say, "What are we really supposed to do versus what do we think the culture has informed us we're supposed to do?" Kurt: And that's just a great activity in general. I remember when I was called to the stake presidency and we started doing the Ward Conference circuit, right? And it's so easy to just do what the last guy did. And so I suggested - I don't want to take all the credit. I don't know who

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suggested - but what we did is that we said, "Let's imagine we know zero about Ward Conference and how it's supposed to be done. Let's just sit down with a handbook and understand their boundaries and then create something from there." I mean, just that activity of sort of like wiping the slate clean, going and actually looking what it says and then creating something new, it's a phenomenal experience. Dan: Yeah. I mean, we could go on forever and talk about this in different contexts, but I think we're over. Kurt: We've hit them hard this time. Let's let them heal up and we'll look for the next interview, Dan. Well, this has been great, Dan. I'll ask you one more question. But if people do want to connect with you and the work you do with your book and all that, where would you send? Dan: The book comes out this month. I don't know when you're releasing this but it should be out in March of 2020. They can go to thepowerequation.net if they want to get that. In general, I blog and do different things on website called deepchangeforall.com. So they can also go there. Kurt: Perfect. So last question I have Dan, if you're in a room full of bishoprics, brand new, they're trying to approach the sacrament meeting responsibilities the best they can, what final encouragement would you give them as they try and do that? Dan: Take it upon yourself to own the experience of every single person who walks into the meeting that you preside over. Own their experience and then go on the journey to learn how to deliver to them an experience that will help them stay engaged so much so that they have a deep experience with Jesus Christ in that meeting.

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