How to Keep Your Ward Accountable | An Interview with Michael Timms

0:00All right, here's our goal folks. Leading Saints is no longer a podcast. Well, obviously we are a podcast. We will continue to podcast, but we're really shifting our focus over to Zion Lab, which is an online community, put on and developed by Leading Saints. And this is where we wanna go and gather the masses and share ideas about leadership, share ideas about different calling, share ideas about building Zion. And this is the place that we wanna make online where all things are discussed. Great ideas are shared. And then we can help one another in whatever calling we're in or what calling we're not in to feel like, you know, I've got purpose here. I can really make a difference in shifting culture in a better way or developing Zion in my own corner of the kingdom. So join us over at ZionLab at leadingsaints.org slash Zion. And there you can just jump in. It's free to join and create a profile and jump in and look around and answer some questions, leave a comment, pose a question. And I think you'll benefit from the things we're doing over at ZionLab.

1:00So join us. Hey, if your newbie to leadingsaints is important that you know, what is this leadingsaints thing? Well, leadingsaints is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping later day saints be better prepared to lead. And the way we do that is through content creation. So we have this phenomenal podcast, we have a newsletter, we have virtual conferences, so much more articles on our website. I mean, I could go on and on, right? And we encourage you to jump in, check out leadingsaints, go to the search bar at leadingsaints.org and type in some topics and see what pops up. We're just glad you're here to join us. All right, big question I get in the leading saints email is Kirk listen great content, but how do you motivate people? How do I get people to do something that I need them to do, right? This is a pressure and attention that we often feel as church leaders and the other side of that coin is accountability, right? How do you hold somebody accountable, especially in a church context,

2:02maybe in the, you know, secular world, you have bonuses and, or I can fire you, but what about in the church context? And luckily we have the expert in the ladder to saint community. His name is Michael Tim's and he's written books and TED talks, he goes around and consults with companies all about this concept of accountability. So I was more than excited to invite him into Zion Lab, where we did a live stream in front of a live remote audience. We talked all things, accountability and holding people accountable. And how do you do it in a church context? And what are the principles there? And what are good ways to do it? What are bad ways to do it? You're going to love it. Here's my interview with Michael Tim's. Michael, maybe just give us a little background of who you are, where you live and people ask what you do for a living, what are you telling? Yeah, sure. So my name is Michael Tim's. Now I live in Vernon, British Columbia, Canada. So for those of you who know that the world

3:03does not end above Washington State, so that's where I am is above Washington State, probably closer to above Spokane, I think. Couple of our drive above North of Spokane. So when people ask me what I do, I say that I teach executive teams how to create high performance teams. And step one is really about improving their leadership. Yeah. And you have a book that's called How Leaders Can Inspire Accountability? Three habits that make or break leaders and elevate organizational performance. And this accountability is, can turn into a buzzword a little bit, maybe in the more professional world, but it has an interesting relationship with a faith experience, especially our faith experience. We believe in accountability, we believe in a judgment day. We believe in owning up to covenants that we've made and so forth. Do you see any differently in the faith context? I think that my background in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has really helped me understand

4:05accountability in a way that is not really, I think it's given me an advantage to being a thought leader around accountability. And I think it was the young women's, one of the young women's values is as a faith in accountability or no choice in accountability. I think that's a lot of times the people don't understand that there's two sides to that coin and that we have to be accountable for our actions. And anyways, I think that's helped me. But in a faith context, it was kind of interesting. So shortly, so I have a TED talk that was published about a year and a half ago that became quite popular called how to claim your leadership power. And shortly after that was published, I was sitting on the stand with the state president and he leaned over and he's like, so Michael, so, how can I hold people accountable in the Church to completing their assignments? I said, well, the problem is with a group of volunteers,

5:10like you can't enforce any consequences, so you really can't hold people accountable. And sort of before I finish, he kind of threw up his hands kind of jokingly. He's like, all right, well, Michael Tim says that you can't hold people in the Church accountable. So I guess there's no hope. And I think that what we're going to be exploring today is we'll be talking about not how to hold people accountable, but there are a number of things that you can do to support people to be accountable and support people to get the right results without going to consequences because really there are no consequences. In fact, the only consequence that you could enforce is to be released, which I think most people be like, sweet, if that's all you got to do to get a release, right? Yeah. And so we're launching off point to understanding this because it does seem like I need a lever to hold someone accountable, right, a consequence that I can sort of dangle over their head like, hey, you know, we're even a guilt trip. Like, I don't have you considered the attorneys of your soul and if you don't, you know,

6:10fulfill this ministering assignment, you know, I'm just saying, maybe it won't end well for you, but where's a good launching off point for that? Well, I think you're, I think you're initial question around, you know, what is accountability and, you know, how does it work in a faith context? I think we have to first understand what accountability is and the way that I define accountability is accountability is taking ownership of results and focusing on what you can do to achieve the right results. And so there's kind of two parts there. One is owning results and the other part is focusing on what you can do to achieve the right results. And I think that one of the, so that's the way I define accountability. I think the problem is is that I think a lot of, society has really sort of misused that word and created something out of that word that it is not. Accountability is where it results. Accountability. Okay. And I think a lot of people use the term accountability is like, okay, we got to hold this person accountable

7:10or, you know, you'll read in the newspaper or nobody reads the newspaper. You'll see it in the news, you know, that CEO must be held accountable. When really what they're talking about is that, you know, that CEO is to blame and they need to be punished. And so I think society has misused that word accountability and used it as a euphemism for blame and punishment, which is typically what they're really talking about. But that's not what accountability is about. It's about owning results. It's about something that you do, right? It's me, I'm gonna take ownership results. And in fact, blaming other people for problems is the exact opposite of accountability, right? So when we're trying to, you know, say, trying to hold people accountable when things aren't going well, typically that's us not owning our part of the problem, right? So I think the key thing is to understand that accountability, yeah, so consequences are a small part of accountability. But really it's about how can we support other people to own their results good or bad?

8:11We all need help to remain accountable. I need help. I think most people need help. And so I think as our job and as leaders in the church are to support people to want to get the right results. And I think most people want to feel like they're, you know, that they're, first of all, in a work context that they're coming to work, I think most people want to feel successful in a work context. I think the same is true in a church context. I think most people want to feel that they are fulfilling the responsibilities at church. And people will feel bad if they're not. And so our job is to support people and help them to be accountable. Yeah. And I guess the other, you know, in your definition that that other word of results kind of jumps out at me in a faith context where I'm like, hmm, like are we going to church to produce results? Like obviously in a boardroom that makes sense or, you know, when you're watching the bottom line of your balance sheet or whatever. But in the context of church, that's where it's like where a leader can feel more pressure of getting results because it's sort of attached to his ego, right?

9:12He was asked to serve in this role. And if those numbers, you know, the key indicators don't take up or that may be a problem. And so is there more to consider just around that concept of results when we think about accountability? Yeah, for sure. And I think that I think people have, when they think about results, they think of some sort of numeric quantifiable thing. And I think ideally, you can quantify results, but a lot of times you can't. And I think in a faith context, you know, the results ideally that the key result that we're after is bringing people closer to Christ, right? That is the number one key result that we're after. Now that's kind of hard to quantify. And so we'll want to think about that in a youth context, right? If I'm a youth leader, are they building their testimonies? So one of the key results is, are we preparing our youth for missions? Are we preparing them with life skills? Are we preparing them with vocational skills? You know, are we preparing them to lead in the church? And so I think, and some of the results are, how do I feel about coming to church, right? Do I feel like coming to church is bringing me closer to Christ?

10:13To be honest, I think you could actually, and I don't know that a lot of people do this, but heck, you could do this in a survey, right? I think that that a religious society class, I think an elders quorum, I think you can do it a survey and say, you know, what we're going to do a quarterly survey and say, how do you feel? Like, or do you feel like your testimonies being strengthened over the last quarter, you think you're coming closer to Christ? You know, what would you like to do to come closer to Christ to strengthen your testimony, whatever those key results are? But I guess that's a long way of saying that results are not necessarily those narrowly to find things that are easily quantifiable. Well, there's a lot of things that are not quantifiable. And I think it's, we just need to get some feedback on those things. Yeah. So when you walk into a typical organization, maybe you hire, do you like, is there a place to start? Because I mean, accountability, I feel like you have to sort of build up to, you can't just say we're now an accountable organization and we'll be holding everybody accountable. Or, you know, like what do you see when you typically walk into an organization? Well, when I walk into an organization, fortunately, I have the advantage of, honestly, I don't have any crappy clients.

11:13I like the only people that call me up to help, to look for help are people who are already, sort of on the leadership journey themselves and they want to make their organization even better. And so, I have that advantage, but so there are no broken organizations, I typically do not have any clients that are like, totally broken, right? I just want to be better. Where we start is, I think where you and I started, which is defining accountability and look, accountability is not a bad word, the way that society has been using it. And look, if we want people to be more accountable, we better make sure that they don't fear that word. And so it's getting on the same page as far as, you know, what accountability is. And then, really building it, building an organization, and again, what accountability is, it pretty much boils down to getting the right results. And if we don't get the right results, it's working towards, how do we get the right results next time, that's really what accountability boils down to. And the key factor in any organization, whether it be a for-profit organization and non-for-profit organization, a faith organization,

12:16the key driver of accountability in the organization is the behavior of its leader or leader's plural. And if they're not owning problems, then nobody else will. A long time ago, I was in a award council where we had a pretty intense bishop. And he, you know, that he called out, actually it was the young men's president, in the award council for not, you know, doing something. And the young man's leader, he said, you know what, we can do better. You know what, there are things for sure that we can do better. And just totally responded in such an accountable way that everybody in that room, first of all, was a little shocked at the way the bishop handled that. And our respect for that individual really shot up, who totally owned it and said, yeah, you know what, we can do better. And I think, you know what, what should be happening is the other way around. And, you know, we're a council, if we're not getting the right results, if we're not getting people to the temple,

13:17if we're not achieving our baptisms, if, you know, whatever. I think the accountability starts with the bishop saying, hey, I need your thoughts on this. I need your perspective, I need your advice. What can I do differently to make it easier for all of us to get the results that we need to get? And so that is the first step when I work with organizations is ensuring that leaders are taking those first steps in and modeling accountability. And that's really what my TED talk is all about is there's kind of three key behaviors to model accountability. And I'm going to assume that I think members of the church already have, leaders of the church already have an advantage. And hopefully they already are modeling accountability. Hopefully they are not blaming. Hopefully they are looking in the mirror and owning problems. So the things that I wanted to share with you today are probably some more tactical things that whether it's a bishop, whether it's an elders co-president, release society president, anybody in leadership position can do to support their teams to get the right results.

14:21Yeah. And I appreciate that just for a leader to take the steps to own or be self-aware enough to say, what am I missing? Like how can I help you help the organization as a whole? Is there anything I'm doing that's standing in your way and being reflective on that? Is there any other like approaches that you'd recommend as far as for a leader to just own up to the problem or to being more accountable? I think a lot of times, you know, it's kind of interesting, one of the first things we do when we start working with an organization is we do a 360 degree assessment. And so we have a database full of responses to our 360 assessment tool. And it doesn't matter what the organization does, you know, what field they're in, but almost always as an organization, their lowest score is around requesting feedback. And I would say the same is true in the church. I think that we just don't ask for feedback enough. And if you do ask people how you can do better,

15:23they'll tell you, right? You know, and if you sincerely ask, you know, what can I do to make it easier for you to get the right results? How can I support you better to achieve the results that were after they'll tell you, right? If you give them some time to think about it, then that's why it's so powerful. It's also really powerful because you're also signaling that this is a feedback. This is a culture of feedback that we want. This is a highly accountable culture. And no is ego is above getting the results that we as an organization as award council have said that we want to achieve. So yeah, that's a key behavior that drives accountability in the organization is number one, requesting feedback and requesting feedback in the right way. Yeah, that's really powerful. And you mentioned there like, you know, coming, you know, no egos, you know, too big for the results that the award council organization is determined or that they want to go towards it. I guess my question is sometimes how to imagine the award council or even the bishopric has certain results

16:25or goals in mind. And the tough part of holding people accountable is that maybe the rest of the award never felt like they voted in with those results or one of those results. And so they never bought into them. And so then they're being held accountable for something that they never ultimately agreed to other than sort of those general cultural norms of like, these are the things we do. And if you don't do them, then we're not getting our result type things. So I'm just curious like, how important is that result dynamic of like agreeing on the result so that you can even, or the expectation, right? So that you can hold people accountable to the expectation. So that's exactly right. Yeah, and that's, that is the first step in getting your right results is being clear on what those results are and getting feedback and agreeing on those results together. And so to your audience, Kurt and I did not rehearse this. This is, he just intuitively knows. And I think a lot of people intuitively know that if we want to get the right results, we got to agree on what those are. And I think, so that's my point. That's the first step. So I'd say there's two things.

17:26There's two components that you need to agree on right off the bat, whether you're a bishop or a release society president and a women's president. When you're meeting either with the award council or with your presidency or with your class or form whatever it is, the first things you got to agree on are, what's the purpose of our organization? What are we striving to achieve? What are the key outcomes that we're looking for? And to get their feedback on that and to agree on that. So that's step one. Step two is also. So maybe they're like, I'm just guessing like, if we had the time and space to ask 100 words, what's our purpose here as award? I think all of us are going to default to bringing people into Christ, right? And it's sort of like, it's almost become this overused latitude that it's like, what does that even mean? Like, how do we know when we arrive there, right? So is there an importance of, I've not only agreeing on it, but actually, you know, articulating what it looks like at the end of it or? Yeah, exactly. And I think, obviously, we got a dig deeper. And I think maybe that's our overarching goal. Maybe we have a goal statement. And every organization we have the same goal statement

18:27which is bringing people under Christ, right? But each organization is going to have different things, right? The other's quorum is going to have, you know, different goals than a young women's class, to any young women's organization. And I think the thing is is, you know, for the young women's leaders, like, hey, what do we want? You know, and maybe a health exercise is to say, you know, a year from now, two years from now, what do we want the girls to be able to do? And what do we want the girls to be feeling differently than they feel now? And I think that's, so it's, what skills can we give the young women, what do we want them to feel? And what do we want them to have? What kind of relationships do we want them to have with their class members, right? So I think those are the results that we're after. Overarching theme brings us to Christ. But under that, each class, each quorum should have different key results. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't have a laundry list. I think pretty much you're looking for three or four key things that you want to be able to achieve in the lives of the people that you have stewardship for.

19:28Yeah, yeah, it's really helpful. And I think, I mean, three fourths of the battle is even just having that conversation. I think a lot of organizations in the church, they don't even, they make a lot of assumptions of like, well, of course, we're on the same page. You haven't taken that time to say, all right, what are we doing here? Like, what is the result we're aiming for? Does it look different in our area? You know, what does the handbook say? Well, how would we adapt that to our word specifically? Or, you know, is it all about ordinances? Or is that maybe a secondary thing? Or I don't know, you know, but just having the conversation, which I think a lot of the words or organizations don't even take that step, right? No, exactly. As a matter of fact, I was in a bishopric and it was a brand new bishopric and I was a counselor in the bishopric and we were our first war council. The bishop isn't, I mean, he's an awesome guy. He's a love the guy. He has a leader, you know, professionally, he's a leader and then kind of an administrative role. But we sat down and the first things, like he just like got right down to business. Okay, and let's just talk about,

20:29there is even no acknowledgement that, hey, we are a new bishopric. This is a, you know, on a lot of the word council members were the same, but there's no acknowledgement that, hey, this is something new. Maybe we should talk about what is our purpose together and how we want to work together. As a matter of fact, that's actually kind of, the other thing that I wanted to mention is that as an organization, if you're a leader in the church, the first thing you do need to do is Kirk pointed out is talk about what are the key results that were after, right? Drill down as we talked about, but the next thing you wanna talk about is our expectations of one another. And that's my second tip for your listeners, is what are we expecting from each other? Just a, some research for you. There's some research done around, what's the difference between the best performing teams and the worst performing teams? And the researchers found that pretty much, the most important factor was that the best performing teams, the first thing they did is set out general guidelines of how we're gonna work together. The worst performing teams got right into just doing the work.

21:32And that's a key advantage and that's something that I would excited to share with your listeners is that talk about how you're gonna work together. For example, what is our preferred communication medium, are we talking, do we prefer text, do we prefer chat or whatever, do we prefer email? So let's agree on that. Now let's agree on what are some norms around communication, what is an acceptable, like when do we agree to respond to, if we said email is our preferred communication method, can we all agree that we will respond to emails within 24 hours? Is that reasonable? Can we agree to that? How often are we going to meet as a group, right? Whether that's a ward council or a corn presence to you or whatever it is. When you complete an assignment, what is my expectation? It was interesting. I actually just experienced yesterday, my counselor in a elders' corn, and the elders' corn president during our meeting in the morning gave me three assignments. I think I've told them in the past, if you give me an assignment, just assume it's done,

22:33unless I tell you otherwise. And so if you followed up with me by text, he's like, hey, I didn't hear anything from you. Did you do it? And I was like, oh yeah, yeah. No, I completed those assignments. Do you want me to report back to you every time I complete an assignment? He said, no, that's fine. But I mean, what I'm saying is, maybe we should talk about that right off the bat. How am I going to assume that once a giving me an assignment is done or what I prefer as a leader, what I prefer than my counselors report back to me as soon as they have completed that, right? So these are the things that we should talk about as a leadership group before we set out doing the work. And I think so there's key results. Step one, step two is expectations and the advantage of talking about expectations, especially in a faith-based organization or an organization full of volunteers, is that it becomes way easier to address problems when they happen and trust me. I mean, we all know, we've all had that experience. We will have friction points

23:33with the people that we work with in the church. They're not doing what we ask them to do. But if we've already talked about it, if we've already said, hey, you know what, we agreed that we would respond to our emails within 24 hours or we agreed that if you can't do an assignment that you'd give me a heads up, it's way easier to address that with people. But if you don't set those expectations at the outset, if you try, number one, you're not gonna feel as comfortable addressing that with the person, but number two, they're gonna feel attacked, right? If you address it with them, but you hadn't previously agreed to any of these standards, any of these expectations, they're gonna feel attacked. And that's why it's critical to make sure that we're on the same page as far as, you know, how are we going to work together? What is my expectation? What do you need from me? And what do I need from you? And can we agree to those things? Does that make sense? Yeah, it's really good. And I think that's maybe a, if a leader of somebody's experiencing, you know, expectations or a disappointment or something's like,

24:34ah, that didn't work out. So maybe going back to, have we, did the structure break down, right? Like was it the actual task or maybe, you know, maybe there's an activity that just kind of fell flat and like, oh, actually, we need to build it into our system that three days out or that Sunday prior to the activity, we just run through the agenda, the plans and everything with the entire word council. Or, you know, whatever it is, but I think it's important to not be like, ah, this person just dropped a ball rather than actually maybe our system is broken, right? Correct. Did you watch my TED Talk? Yeah, I was sitting here thinking, I should have watched your TED Talk, but I didn't. Because you're basically repeating exactly, oh, yeah. One of those habits are on personal accountability. And that's actually how I would respond. It's really, you're just like, we are on the same wavelength, man. You should be partners. I should, I should be as part of my team here. But no, that's exactly one of the things that I, I counsel people when you have a breakdown, an accountability. That's the first thing that I would go to is not, because our brains, believe it or not,

25:35we are actually, you know how we all say, oh, well, we should give people the benefit of the doubt. I mean, we all know that, right? In fact, our brains are programmed the opposite way. We are programmed not to give others the benefit of the doubt or program to assume that people dropped the ball. When, in fact, it could very well have been a communication breakdown, or maybe I didn't, I wasn't clear about my expectations, or maybe I wasn't clear about the timeline, or, right? Or maybe you did send that to me, and it went to my jump mail, or right? So there's a whole bunch of things. And so one of the things that I suggest is the way that we address problems is, hey, where did the process break down there? And when you address problems in that way, it gets people thinking, yeah, okay, I don't know, where did the process break down? And people are far, you know, get far less defensive when you're talking about, you know, where did the ball get dropped here? Not who dropped the ball, but where did the ball get dropped? And maybe I'm one of the, maybe I dropped the ball, right? It is way easier to address, you know, accountability gaps in that way when you're talking about systems. Yeah, that's really good.

26:37All right, so maybe, how do you phrase each one of these habits? There's three habits, right? Maybe just go through how you phrase them. Yeah, sure. So when we're demonstrating personal accountability, it would be, it's really round three things. Number one, don't blame. Because in fact, we are programmed to blame. And blame only, I actually haven't found one positive outcome from blame and just spawns a whole bunch of negative behaviors in the people that we blame and in ourselves, right? When we're blaming other people as I mentioned earlier, we are not taking ownership for the problem, right? So number one, don't blame. Number two, look in the mirror. And say, hey, you know, ask yourself, how may I have contributed to this problem? I'm not saying, fall on your sword for every problem. Oh, it's totally my fault, it's totally my fault. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, hey, look, was I not clear in my expectations? Was the outcome not clear? You know, where did the process break down, right? Is really, let me back up. It's more like, what part did I play in that? Is looking in the mirror? And then habit three is engineering the solution,

27:37which is around taking a look at our processes and saying, our processes set up to help us get the right results. In a church setting, I and in a for-profit setting, I strongly believe in standard operating procedures. We should have standard operating procedures like a standard template for meeting agendas, a sacrament agenda. We should have a standard template for baptisms, for funerals, and that should be saved in standard operating procedure folder somewhere. But that would be an example of engineering the solution. So those are the three steps around personal accountability. And I, like I was saying, I assume I'm coming into this assuming that I think a lot of your listeners and hopefully a lot of your listeners are already kind of in that mindset. I think it's kind of tough, like I think thing. Most people in a church setting try not to default to blame. Maybe they're thinking it, but they don't typically, because they know that they're dealing with volunteers, right? They're not going to be, you totally dropped the ball, right? Typically, we're not doing that at church. And so I'm assuming that a lot of times church members

28:39have applied those three habits, and there are some other things that you can do that such as clarifying results, and clarifying expectations of each other that kind of take it even beyond that. Yeah. By far, one of the top three questions that we receive at Leading Saints when it comes to leading people in specific callings or any type of situation is, how do I motivate my people, right? And I think a lot of people could default to, well, you just, you got to hold them accountable, which we're talking about here, but how would you respond to that? People wouldn't, you know, especially in a volunteer organization, and they're like, ah, like this will work so much better if people weren't involved, because I have to motivate them somehow, right? Whether it's the family history person, the temple person, or the ministering, you know, elder corps, at least society. So how would you respond to that? How can we motivate people? Guilt. It does work. I'm just kidding. It does work. Shame. I'm totally kidding. Yeah, guilt and shame. No. It doesn't mean what they're, you know, and I think that's, I don't know,

29:40maybe that might be some people's go to. No, the best way to motivate people, you've already, there's a number of ways to motivate people in the church. The first thing that you keyed in on is, do they have a say? Do they have a say in what those key outcomes are? And when it comes to expectations about how we're gonna work together, like if I am the bishop and I'm saying, hey, you know, I expect you to do this and that, the bishop also needs to say, what do you need from me? In order for you to be successful, right? And to get their feedback on that when you're setting expectations and goals. So I would say number one is you want their input on what are the outcomes that we're trying to achieve and what are the, how are we gonna work together? Another, I'll give you three principles. One is, you know, clarifying that at the outset and giving them choice, right? Choice and accountability. The next thing is positive feedback. Most of us are terrible at giving positive feedback and it is incredibly powerful.

30:41And what we should be doing is praising people even when they simply do their job or even get close to achieving the results that we want or, you know, praising people for their effort. But there's really strong research and I know people, you know, we've heard this for decades and decades, always should praise people, but we still do not do it well enough. What happens is when the elders corn president says to one of his counselors, hey, man, I really appreciate you following up and doing your ministering interviews without me asking and just reporting that. I really, really appreciate that. What's the council are gonna do? The council are almost for sure that's going to increase the chances that that counselor is going to do that next month. And that's what the research tells us is that, you know, when you praise somebody, it releases dopamine. Dopamine is addictive and we want more of it and we will do the behavior that got us that dopamine hit in the first place.

31:43So again, we do not praise enough and sometimes we reserve praise for heroic things, but my suggestion to your audience is if you want to motivate people to do the right thing, praise them when they do the right thing or even get close to doing that right thing and just watch, you will see them do it more often. But my third tip around how to motivate people is around giving them ownership, not just choice in the key results, but giving them ownership in making decisions. I think a lot of people in leadership positions think that they need to be the one making decisions and I will say in the church, there are some people with this old mindset that the bishop, the one with the keys, has to make the decision, right? Has to be the one to make the final decision. I would say that that's the case in very few, very few instances where, you know, the one with the keys or the release of society president

32:44needs to be the one to make the decision. Justice Smith organized councils right off the get-go, right? And the church runs on councils. And if we're getting feedback from the councils and as a council, we can agree on a course of action. And we pray about it and we feel good about it. Boom, that's our, you know, I remember one time I was a counselor in the Bishop Rick and a release of society president came up to me and she said, Michael, how do you want the gym set up for this award activity that was gonna be a, maybe it was a, it was a dinner or some sort of award activity. And I looked at her and I said, sister, this is totally, you are the best person to make that decision, right? And she was kind of like, oh, wow, you know, she was an older person and she's like, well, you know, when I asked her when in the Bishop Rick, what to do, they always tell me what to do. And then she was like, oh, and once I gave her that, you should have seen her eyes light up. She's like, because she knew that she knew what the right thing to do was and the best way to set it up.

33:44And so I think we, you know, if we want to motivate people, and if we want to help them to take accountability, we need to give them ownership. And the way we give them ownership is by asking, this question a lot, what do you think we should do, right? Let them make decisions and resist the urge to jump in and either make decisions for people or solve their problems. Just ask that question, what do you think we should do? Yeah, those are my tips. And I love the power of a simple question of, well, what do you think we should do? You know, and then again, it gives them a feeling of ownership like, oh, I suggested that. And the beauty of it, it's almost like this psychological thing. Like the answer to the next step may be completely obvious, but when you give them the opportunity to formulate and speak it, that creates a sense of ownership in their own mind. Like, yeah, that was my idea and now we're seeing it through. And they're actually going to be, they'll follow through more likely because it came from their own brain, right? Bingo. And that's the key.

34:44And I think that's really important for you, listen to to understand is that, you know, this whole time we're talking about how do we hold people accountable, how do we ensure that people do the right thing? To be accountable, we got to give them ownership, right? And giving them ownership is letting them run with it. And the reason why, you know, most of us end up in leadership positions in the church out of the church is because we're really good at solving problems. People know that they can put us in charge because we'll solve problems. But the problem is, is that when we get into a leadership position, nobody tells us that our job changes from solving problems to teaching problem solving skills. But in fact, that is our job. As a leader, we are no longer supposed to be solving problems. We are supposed to be empowering other people to solve those problems. And because we are so good at solving problems ourselves, that's what God has, you know, typically called or promoted in a work context. When somebody asks us, what should we do? You know, hey, Michael, hey, Kurt, what should we do here? You want to give the answer because you know the answer.

35:46But that's not your job. If you're in a leadership position, you need to recognize your job is no longer to give the answers. Your job is to teach other people leadership skills and problem solving skills. Yeah, it's powerful. Really good stuff. All right, let me just throw a few scenarios at it because I think it's so, and you've given some great principles to contemplate and put into practice. I'm just gonna give you a few scenarios and we may repeat a lot of the principles you already said or, you know, double down on them, which is good, it'll help with retention. But a scenario of, you just had award activity and it just fell flat. I mean, there was a bit of chaos. People were showing up late or people who were participating were showing up late and we were just a mess. And you as maybe in the bishopric, there's this feeling of, okay, well, how do I hold that person accountable? Whether it's an activities committee or a specific person, where do we begin in that scenario? Yeah, well, I think it starts with the expectation of feedback and again, when we're talking about, and that's something I should have mentioned at the beginning

36:46is when I was talking about agreeing on how we're gonna work together, which I call expectations, one thing that should always be in your expectations with anybody that you work with is feedback. Hey, will you do me a favor? Will you please give me advice and feedback on how well I'm doing here in areas that I can do better? And would you be open to me doing the same for you, right? So that's something that should be in the expectations. Another thing that I would put in the expectations, to give people a heads up about, is what I call lessons learned deep race. So any time that we have award activity or a major young women's activity or a release society activity, we as a release society presidency or a award council, whatever, we're gonna meet together to debrief how that activity went. And it's gonna be a lessons learned exercise. That's an amazing vehicle for giving and receiving feedback. Because we start off when we say, even if the award activity was such a disaster, we start off and say, what went well?

37:48Let's focus on what went well. And how do we make sure that that continues to happen again? How do we make sure that these things that we're good continue on? Do we need to come up with some sort of template, some sort of agenda, some sort of itinerary to make sure that we continue to do these good things? So we get that, we record it, and we make sure that we're gonna do that next time. All right, what could have been better? Now, we'll get a whole bunch of, you don't get some different feedback, this and that. All right, where did the process break down? So they identify that the food was late, right? That was one of the things people were waiting for ever for the food. Okay, so where did the process break down? Well, you know, and that takes it off of people. Well, you know, that person's an idiot, they were just late, they're lazy. Now, where did the process break down? So we can talk about why did the food arrive late? And if it was, likely it's a combination of, you know, systems of problem and maybe human error, right?

38:49Or I forgot or I was late or whatever. What we do next time to make sure that the food isn't late, right? Are the things that we can do, you know, reminders or whatever to, you know, can we make sure that we're getting the food 45 minutes ahead of time or whatever it is, right? But focus on the process and we take it off the person. So that would be, that's my suggestion is, you know, and making sure that things go better next time is implementing those lessons during the debriefs and setting the expectation of feedback. Yeah, so I'm curious, you bring up another interesting dynamic there of like, it's important like you said that, you know, principle one is don't blame. But what happens if you're attempting to hold somebody accountable and they begin to blame, right? Oh, the caterer like, they're a mess. I got there on time, they didn't have the food ready. I had to wait in their lobby for, you know, 60 minutes and that made me, made me late, right? Like they're blaming others. Is there anything that we could do to defuse that blame or not let it just be the thing that is now being held accountable is the caterer instead of the individual?

39:50Yeah, and I think, you know, going back to the leader being the one to model the way, I think, you know, where did the process break down? You could also say, hey, is there anything that I could have done differently to make it easier for somebody to get the food here on time? Is there anything that I could have done differently? And you're the one that's modeling accountability. And then when you have people who are saying, wow, is the caterer or is this or is that? It's like, okay, is there anything you could do differently next time to ensure that the food gets you on time? Couple of things. Number one, we're not saying, and there's a couple of principles in here. One is I'm not talking about, as a leader, I'm not blaming you because I know you're not taking ownership of this. I'm not blaming you for the food being late. I'm asking you about next time. And this is something really interesting. When you're talking about the past, any feedback tends to sound like criticism. But when you're talking about the future, it tends to sound like advice. And advice is way easier to receive than criticism.

40:50So that's something to keep in mind as a leader, talk about the future. Hey, what can we do next time to make sure that this doesn't happen? But another thing you can do is say, you know, when you say, when you have gone first, when you have modeled accountability first and you said, hey, is there anything I could do differently? You earn the moral authority to say, and what could you do differently? After they've gone through their list of all these things, the people and circumstances that they're blaming, I hear you, and that's unfortunate. Is there anything you could do differently? Well, they can't really get upset at that because you've just gone first, right? You've just modeled the way. And I think it's an okay thing. And I think people will receive that okay. Say, yeah, I could probably do this differently, right? And I think that's how you're, somebody who's not going to take ownership, I think that's an easy way to test. And what could you do differently next time to make sure that we get better results? Yeah. Is there any advice you have as far as, like, when that next activity comes around? Because the last thing anybody wants to be as a micromanager, where you're thinking, you know, in your brain, you're thinking, I don't know, are they going to show up early to get the food?

41:51Because, you know, we talked about that, but did they remember? Maybe I'll call them and text them and, you know, call them again and make sure that, hey, do you remember? Like, we talked about you picking up the food earlier, whatever it was, right? Is there any advice on not causing the accountability to turn you into a micromanager the next time around? Yeah, I mean, in an activity setting, what I'm a big believer in checklists, you know, if we have had a disaster award activity, our lessons learned debrief better be coming up with a checklist for next time. What are the things that we need to make sure that we've considered as we plan the next activity and as we carry out the next activity? So that is a standard operand procedure, and I'm a huge believer that doing that will reduce human error. It'll reduce the amount of bad things that will happen. And if you look at any high risk industry, whether that's the medical industry, whether that's the military, you will find a lot of checklists that are used all the time. It's not sitting up on a shelf somewhere.

42:53And so that's my first suggestion to make sure that you don't come off as a micromanagers, that you have come up with a checklist, and that you're talking to the leaders about, hey, are you following a checklist? And are we hitting those milestones? But on your regular responsibilities, like for example, when, let's say a counselor is one counselor in the bishop brick is overseeing their supporting Sunday school, okay? So one member of the bishop brick counselor, they are supporting Sunday school, they're kind of the key liaison there. As the bishop, what I want to know is, hey, let's say you're the counselor in the bishop brick on the bishop. Hey, Kurt, do you have a meeting schedule with the Sunday school president? How often are you meeting with the Sunday school president to make sure that we follow the schedule? It's that regular meeting schedule, that's one of the greatest accountability mechanisms is a regular meeting schedule to make sure that we're on top of things. And I got to tell you, as a bishop or counselor,

43:53I've never been a bishop, I've been a bishop counselor and three different bishop ricks. And I got to tell you anytime that I knew that if I was overseeing primary or music or award mission or whatever it was, if I was dropping the ball on overseeing that, it was because I was not meeting with them regularly. And that's a way to keep you as a leader accountable, it's a way to keep them accountable. But actually there is, I just read just the other day, a huge meta analysis, which it was a study of studies. It's the gold standard of research. There's 138 separate pieces of research. And I found that you have about a 90 to 95% probability of achieving your goals if you have established a regular cadence of check-in meetings. That's an insane statistic. Yeah, that's awesome. It's like you're pretty much guaranteed to get the right results if you have established a cadence of a meeting schedule.

44:53And we all know that we have that cadence as typically as an Ellerscombe president, and we society president, and Bishopric. But in other responsibilities, as counselors, are your counselors, do they have a regular cadence with the people that they are responsible for or seeing? Yeah, that's really good. I love that. All right, next scenario. And those that are listening, feel free to use the question box. If you have certain questions that are coming to mind or scenarios that you'd like to help 100-round accountability, the next scenario I want to present is you're in a presidency, let's say a relief society presidency. And the first counselor seems engaged, comes to all the meetings, and maybe he tasks for that counselor to do, but it seems like the minute she leaves and walks out of the room, she doesn't think about being in the relief society presidency until the next meeting. And then you show up here that she's like, oh yeah, yeah, I wasn't gonna do that, but I didn't, how do we hold her accountable? Yeah. And that goes, again, it goes back to expectations. It goes back to, how do I want to, what support do you need for you to get the right results

45:56to, for you to follow through with your assignments? And what do I need from you? One of the things, as a Religious Society President, that I would want is, like I said, like I would say, we have to have some sort of a reporting schedule. Do I want you to report back next week? And maybe we did agree to that. Maybe we said, okay, we'll just report back at the next relief society meeting, okay? And if the counselor keeps saying, no, I didn't follow through with responsibilities. I'd say, I would just say, you know, individually, one-on-one, not as a Religious Society Presidency, but one-on-one with that individual, say, hey, look, is there anything that I could, because I've noticed a pattern here. You know, when I give you responsibility, you know, we follow up a week later and it isn't, it isn't being fulfilled. Is there anything that I'm doing or not doing that's making it harder for you to fulfill your responsibilities? Oh, no, no, no, no, you're fine, sister, whatever, now you're doing fine. All right, what can we do to make it easier for you to follow through in your responsibilities and for you to, you know,

46:56achieve those assignments? Because again, I'm sure that counselor's feeling like a failure, right? I know, and they don't want to feel that way. And I think it'd be easier for them to just release me, but no, no, no, no, we're going to work with you. So what can I do as a Religious Society Presidency to make it easier to, you know, to fill those responsibilities? Do you need a check-in? Do you need me to check in with you midweek? And actually, that's another thing that I would suggest is that presidents and bishops meet individually with their counselors. It's kind of tough, it's really tough to have that conversation in front of other people in front of another counselor and secretary, right? It's way easier to have that conversation one-on-one. And so I would suggest that you, in addition to setting up regular bishop or meeting's regular, Religious Society meetings, that you also have a cadence of regular one-on-ones. So did you can talk, have those tough conversations, right? And say, what kind of support, what kind of individual support do you need to fulfill these responsibilities? And I think a lot of people feel stuck in that situation

47:58because they're trying to address this as a group. And nobody wants to call out somebody else in the middle of a group. So don't make sure to have individual one-on-one meetings with people to make to check in and make sure that how are you doing? How are things at home? How are you enjoying your calling? You know, how are you, you know, and then we can talk about business as far as like, what kind of do you to support you better to get those right results? And I think that one-on-one cadence also really makes it easier for people. If you're meeting with, you know, as a presidency on a Sunday, and you have a one-on-one checking with somebody on a Thursday, that's a great reminder for the person to be like, oh shoot, I haven't done anything. All right, so what are you gonna do in the next couple of days before we meet again on Sunday to talk about that, right? Yeah. So that one-on-one meeting is really kind of that, you know, just a super accountability mechanism. Yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned that because it seems like there's like phases of accountability like on a sort of a primary level, it's like, you know, sure, there's ways to hold people accountable in a group setting,

48:59but then there's like, oh, it looks like this person or that person when you sort of take to the next level of like, in our next meeting that we're having, we're gonna talk about this to address it one-on-one rather than, you know, scolding them in front of the group or shaming them in front of the group, right? Yeah, exactly like that. Like I was telling you about that one bishop who, you know, called that young men's president on the carpet in front of the whole war council. I was, I was not good. Yeah. Yeah, that's very demotivating kind of to get the opposite result of things. So awesome. Next scenario I want to throw out you is, is ministering, you know, the Elder's Corn Presidents doing his ministering interviews and, you know, they have this one, two, three families that they're, they're assigned to on their ministering and they're not doing it. How do I hold them accountable? Yeah, the question is is, how often are you checking in as an Elder's Corn Presidency and how often are you doing those ministering interviews? It would be the same conversation that the Relief Society president would have with her counselor. Are you meeting, you know, if you're as an Elder's Corn Presidency you only kind of like checking in, you know, half every six months.

49:59Yeah, like myself included, I can go a long time and forget to do my ministering, right? But if I'm meeting with them on a fairly regular basis and having a quick check in with my Elder's Corn on a regular basis to make sure they're doing, you know, just checking in on those families, that in and of itself is going to motivate me. Well, Flip, I know I know Kurt's going to come and talk to me like every month, he's going to be talking to me, asking me about my family's or every other month or whatever it is, right? I'm far more likely to do it. But the conversation would sound a lot like that conversation, the Relief Society president had, which is, hey, you know what, I've seen that you've missed a number of months in a row, you know, checking in with your ministering families, is there anything I can do to support you better? Like what can I do to help you? You know, what do you need? Is there anything getting in your way? And let's make it a systems problem, like are there any obstacles? And maybe one of the obstacles is, I don't have anything uncommon with it, right? Well, let's talk about that. That's a legitimate challenge that the Elder's Corn president seems to know. And then they can either say,

51:00hey, you could either do this or we could kind of change it, right? But as a leader, it's your responsibility to be meeting regularly, you know, one-on-one with people or as a companionship. And, you know, to ensure that they're fulfilling those responsibilities. And it's your responsibility to support them and say, what can I do to support you, right? That's really good. Another curt asks this question here, spotlight it. Do you approach this differently with young leaders than older, more experienced leaders? I have some thoughts and assumptions, but I'd like to hear you address this more upfront or reminders about assignments, et cetera. Yeah, for sure. Like when I've worked with youth, yeah, and I'm sure this curto is his name is Kurt. Yeah, Kurt. Yeah. I'm sure he's assuming what I'm going to say is that, yeah, there has to be a little bit more handholding with youth. And for example, this one youth, he was every time it was his turn to bring the bread for sacrament, he would forget. So step one is I would have some extra bread

52:02as a calcester in the bishop regatta, have some extra bread, you know, just in case, right? And then I'd follow up with him and I'd be like, hey, was there any, you know, how did it go with your assignment, the bread assignment, like I didn't know? And he's like, oh, yeah, you know, I forgot, I forgot again. His or anything I can do. Oh, no, I don't know. Would you like me to text you on Saturday night? Yeah, actually, that would be great. Yeah, sure. So we all need reminders. The differences between, you know, kids and adults in their ability to be accountable is we have learned to use tools like calendar reminders and the reminders tool on our phone and things like that. Like believe me, if I did not have my phone, I would be very, very flaky. I would miss everything. Yeah. Because I'm, I'm used to using these tools. Kids are not, and young leaders are not yet used to using those tools. So yeah, that's what I would do. I mean, that's one example of how I have helped young leaders with their responsibilities. But another thing is, again, I think lessons on debriefs are a great thing to do with, as a quorum

53:03as a young men's presidency, as a quorum. And, you know, whether it's a period of time, likes to go over the quarter, hey, what's gone well with our activities over the last quarter? What's gone well with our assignments over the last quarter? What hasn't gone well? And what can we do to, as I say, engineer the solution to make it easier for all of us to fulfill our responsibilities? Any thoughts on that, Kurt? I love it. That's really good. And I'm just thinking, like, especially even in the world of like working with YSAs, right? Where young single adults, where maybe a different generation, it's like, oh, yeah, you know, maybe the six-year-old bishop gets out as a cubby planner, and he's like, oh, what you do is you got to write it down and carry this planner around. Maybe you just have different tools or skill sets as far as remembering things, right? And so it's maybe it's a conversation of, you know, what works for you to remember that. You know, I put mine in my phone, but what do you do, you know? Yeah, because maybe the skill set isn't developed. There's not necessarily that they're lazy or irresponsible. They just don't know how to do that.

54:03Would we maybe have 20, 30 years on them with remembering things, right? Exactly. And I think that it's not just remembering things. I think a lot of times we will ask, you know, kind of young people to conduct a meeting. And this young person, you know, like we would expect that, you know, somebody in their 20s would know how to do that. A lot of times they don't, right? Give them an agenda. Don't assume these people know how to do things. And so I'd say, and I'm sure, I'm sure we all know this generally that younger people need a little bit more and or rather less experienced people in the church need a little bit more training, more tools, a little more hand holding and a heck of a lot more patience. Yeah. And this brings me to the, I think this is getting or airtime then in the past, but this concept of, you know, the youth, you know, allowing the youth to lead. And just this is just necessary question in the youth context, but this concept of let them fail, right? What's your opinion on that approach that, you know, maybe they do need to kind of fall on their face

55:04for the activity one, because that'll make activity too a little bit better. That's a tough one because if they're failing, they're also giving a bad experience for all of the other boys, right? Maybe that could be learning experience for the other boys. I think it's easy to say as a youth leader, to say let them fail, you know, I'm just going to tell them what to do and if they don't do it, then no, they'll fail. And they'll learn from that. Or it'll just totally kill their confidence, right? I would make sure that you're doing everything that you can to help them succeed. And I think there's a great way of training, training people. And it's a four step method of training people. It goes, I do, you watch, okay? So in a youth context, that means when I am planning the youth activity, I'm going to invite the young man over or the young man's presidency over to watch how do I actually plan this activity, right?

56:08Am I making assignments? How am I going to make sure that the building is booked? I'm going to make sure that, you know, how am I going to get the materials that we're going to be using, right? How am I going to coordinate that? So they watch me plan it. They watch me execute it. And so I do, you watch, okay? And then you do, I watch. Oh shoot, I'm forgetting the four steps. But it's a, it's a group. Is there a we do in there? That's the one. That's the one, thank you. Well, yes, there's the we do. And then it's you do an I watch and then it's just you do. So shoot, I should have had that memorized off the top of my head, but there's a, my point is, is let's gradually bring them into that. And the step one is really we need to let them watch how we do it before we assist them doing it. And then before we let them do it totally on their own. Yeah, that's powerful. Really good stuff. Let's see how to show this question as well.

57:10Same Kurt, not this Kurt, different Kurt. Oh, so let's see, there he goes. Do you adjust any of these recommendations when you're working with young adults? I think I'm talking about that. They're often on the left side of the learning curve unless they had handbook associated leadership experiences that taught them in the Young Men's Young Women's organization. Demo or teach them one principle at a time. Bottle these principles in your meeting with them. I don't know. Anything else seems like you covered a lot of that. And he was probably typing that as I was, as I was sharing my, you know, it's been it's been in the queue every bit. But yeah, but yeah, for sure model. Yeah, you need to give people some time to model and actually model in debrief. So I'll actually give you a business example. There was actually, I think it was the head, I think I read this was the story from the head of HR at Google. And he said one of the best learning experiences of his life was he right out of university. He was hired at McKinsey, which is this consulting firm. It's the premier consulting firm, right? Or regarded as the premier consulting firm. And before they went out to a client site,

58:12he would, the senior consulting partner, would talk to him and say, okay, what do we hope to achieve at this? You know, when we go to the client site, what are we, you know, what are we hoping to achieve? What do you think the clients, you know, how are you going to propose that? What do you think the client's objections are going to be? How are you going to respond to those objections, right? And to, and just kind of pepper this young consultants with a lot of questions to prepare them about going into that. And then on the drive home, the senior consultant would be, okay, did we accomplish what we set out to accomplish? Did the objections come up that you thought would come up? Did you handle those objections the way that you wanted to? Was there anything that kind of came out of you at a left field that you want to know how to do better next time? He said, was the most intense learning experience of his life. And I think we can model that as youth leaders or just kind of any leaders when we're going into a situation with somebody is to ask them, what do you want to learn out of this, this experience?

59:13And, you know, what do you need to prepare to do this well? And to let you know that we're going to debrief afterwards and say, okay, how did that go? What can we do better next time? What went well? What can we do better next time? So it's taking that lesson from debrief on a sort of a smaller individual level. Yeah. Really helpful, love it. Awesome. Well, if there's any other questions, that was the time to put them in the question box. But in the meantime, Michael, I mean, obviously people can grab your book off of Amazon or if there's, if people want to learn more about your information, your research, your writing, is there any place you'd send them? Yeah, I think the first place to look is the TED Talk. It's 11 minutes and it's, really, it's an 11 minute summary of the book. Yeah. I have been, and it's all you need to do is just Google Michael Timz, T-I-M-M-S, TED. And it'll be the first thing that'll pop up. Cool. And I'm just going to post it in the, in the general discussion and sign lab so that I think it'll start a great discussion outside of this interview as well. Cool. Yeah, so that'll probably be the first place to look. Like I said, it's 11 minutes.

1:00:14And if you find that that's interesting, I think the next place would be YouTube channel, you can go to, you can just go MichaelTimz.com and you can find a lot of articles that I've published. And then as well, the book, How Leaders Can Inspire Accountability. Awesome. Really good. Well, last question I have for you, Michael, is as you reflect on your research and leadership or is it in your personal leadership journey, how is being a leader helped you become a better disciple or follower of Jesus Christ? Yeah, you know, it's interesting that the principles of leadership, becoming a better leader really helps you become a better human being. It has for sure, like I know a lot of times people say, oh, well, you know, a key leadership attribute is humility. Okay, well, what are the exact behaviors? Like what are you sure? Like everybody thinks they're humble, right? But yeah, I know I am. Yeah, exactly. I could teach a class on humility. Let me tell you. So, no, but so I think learning to be a better leader take the attribute of humility. What are the behaviors? Let's drill down there of humility.

1:01:15And I think one of the key aspects of humility is looking in the mirror and saying, you know, how am I causing or how have I contributed to my own problems? That has helped me be a better human being. It's helped me to be and get better results not just at work, but in life. Because there are so many people who walk around thinking that, you know, all of the bad things that happen to them are because of other people or bad circumstances. And if you have that mindset, you know, you're gonna have, you're gonna be, if you are taking on that kind of victim mentality mindset and you're never gonna figure out how to make your future better than your past. But also getting back to that theme of humility, sincerely asking for feedback, hey, how can I do better at leading meetings? How can I do better at this? That's a behavior that demonstrates, you know, asking somebody for advice. That is demonstrating humility, right? And it's made me, like I said, a better leader. That's made me a better human being. And we know that that's, that's a key attribute

1:02:18of being a disciple of Jesus Christ is to be meek and humble. Hey, you made it to the end of the episode. Wasn't that so good? You know, I tend to pinch myself that this is what I get to do. I get to sit down with some remarkable people across the world, experts, everyday leaders, PhDs, therapists, whatever it be and have such an impactful conversation. I hope you'll share it, drop it into text message and email and share it to someone who maybe came to mind during this episode. And if you go to the show notes and scroll to the bottom, there's actually a list of some of our most popular episodes. So don't stop with this episode. I mean, you're not done with the dishes or mowing the lawn or working out so you might as well keep it going. At the bottom of those show notes and make sure you listen to each one maybe a couple times on a few of them. It came as a result of the position of leadership, which was imposed upon us by the God of heaven who brought forth a restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

1:03:21And when the declaration was made concerning the only true and living church upon the face of the earth, it came as a result of the position of leadership, which was imposed upon us by the God of heaven who brought forth. We were immediately put in a position of loneliness, a loneliness of leadership from which we cannot shrink nor run away and to which we must face up with boldness and courage and ability.