Becoming a Disciple-Leader

My dear brothers and sisters, I am grateful for this opportunity to speak to you today about becoming disciples of Jesus Christ and leaders in your families, in the Church, in your professions, and in your communities. In other words, I speak to you today about becoming disciple-leaders, about becoming Christlike leaders.

We live in a remarkable time. It is a time with much darkness in the world but also a time of great light. It is a time in which the Lord Jesus Christ, through His living prophets, has called us to rise up and do better and become better than we have ever done or been.¹ Listen to the blessing President Russell M. Nelson gave to the young adults of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints just a few years ago:

I bless you to learn God’s laws and live by them. I bless you to be a good example, in word and deed, of a true disciple of Jesus Christ. I bless you to be free from sin, to radiate goodness and light in a way that will attract others to want to know and feel the source of your light. . . . And I bless you each to be a righteous leader in your family, community, country, and in the Church.²

This blessing is a charge that applies to all of us: be true disciples of Jesus Christ, radiate goodness and light, and be righteous leaders wherever we are—at home, at work, and at Church.

In the last few years, we have seen an increased emphasis on the connection between discipleship and leadership within the Church and here at BYU. We see it in the mission of the Church Educational System “to develop disciples of Jesus Christ who are leaders in their homes, the Church, and their communities.”³ We see it in the founding of the BYU Sorensen Center for Moral and Ethical Leadership and in its model of the Christ-centered leader.⁴ And in the BYU Marriott School of Business, where I teach, we see it in the school’s vision “to transform the world through Christlike leadership” by developing “leaders of faith, intellect, and character.”⁵

This connection between discipleship and leadership has been an important part of my life for more than thirty years. I have taught about it and have tried to live it in my many leadership responsibilities. And over the last five years at BYU, I have had the privilege to develop and teach a course on becoming a disciple-leader and to write a book on leadership called Leading Through with my son Jonathan and my daughter Erin.⁶

Today I want to share with you a framework for becoming disciple-leaders that is grounded in the doctrine of Christ and in the Leading Through paradigm of leadership. It is a framework that applies not just to leadership in the Church or to leadership here at BYU but to leaders and their leadership wherever they serve. I pray that the Holy Ghost will be with us today so that we may learn how to become the disciple-leaders the Lord wants and needs us to be.

Discipleship

I begin with discipleship. A disciple-leader must become first and foremost a true disciple of Jesus Christ. I have found the following four images to be a powerful way to understand the deep connections to Jesus Christ that define true discipleship. Consider what each one teaches us about our relationship to the Savior.

1. The trunk and the branches. In John 15:5, Jesus taught, “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in Him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.” The relationship between the branch and the trunk is organic. Life-giving nutrients flow from the trunk to the branches through channels that connect them. When we keep the Lord’s commandments and give our hearts to Him, His life-giving light, power, and love flow into our lives.

2. The yoke. In Matthew 11:29, Jesus gave this invitation to all: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” When we are yoked with Christ through our covenants, we are bound to Him and He to us. We are aligned with Him in every aspect of our lives.

3. The house on the rock. In Luke 6:48, Jesus likened those who hear and obey Him to “a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock.” I love this image of digging deep. The covenants that bind us and our lives to the Savior must be written in our hearts. They must define our deepest desires and our most cherished commitments. They must be the foundation upon which we build our lives.

4. The baby. In Mosiah 5:7, King Benjamin taught, “And now, because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you.” Through our covenants and the redeeming power of Jesus Christ, we are spiritually born of Him. He activates the spiritual DNA in us that helps us become more and more like Him.

Leadership

I now turn to leadership. The Lord Jesus Christ has called all of us to “come, follow me”⁷ as both disciples and leaders. He is our great exemplar and the source of the principles and blessings that guide and strengthen us in becoming disciple-leaders.

In August 1979, the Ensign published a talk given by President Spencer W. Kimball that was titled “Jesus: The Perfect Leader.” This is a wonderful discourse on Christlike leadership; I invite you to study it carefully and to refer to it often. In this talk, President Kimball identified several important principles in the Savior’s leadership during His mortal ministry:

• Lead with true principles.
• Set the example: your message is “do what I do.”
• Love people, engage with them, and support them with high standards.
• Trust, engage, and motivate people with real work and real responsibility.
• Be discerning without control; value agency, autonomy, and freedom.
• See people for what they can become; lift them with a vision of their potential.⁸

I want to explore with you how the principles of the gospel inform and empower leadership, how the Savior’s patterns in His leadership can help and guide us, and how His redeeming and strengthening power can bless us as we seek to become disciple-leaders.

In that spirit, I have found the following definition of leadership to be a useful framework for understanding what it means to be a disciple-leader in any organization:

Leadership is the work that mobilizes people in a process of action, learning, and change to improve the long-term viability and vitality of organizations in three ways:

• People experience increased personal growth and meaning in their work and lives,
• Purpose is realized more effectively,
• Productivity is strengthened.⁹

Note that leadership is work. It is great work, but it is work.¹⁰ Leadership is also comprehensive. In order to accomplish its objectives, leadership must permeate the organization so that it touches everything and everyone. And yet leadership is very personal. In fact, much of the work of leadership is done one by one.

It is this personal dimension of leadership I wish to focus on today. I will use three metaphors to capture the personal nature of leadership: the soul, the heart, and the mind.

First, the soul: Leadership is a moral work—leadership seeks to do good and to make things better for people long-term. This is the soul of leadership—seeking to do good.¹¹

Second, the heart: People are the way leadership work gets done; they also are its first-order objective. Therefore, creating an environment in which people thrive is crucial. This is the heart of leadership—promoting human thriving.¹²

Third, the mind: The work of leadership mobilizes people in a process of action, learning, and change. This involves defining strategy, making plans, setting goals, allocating resources, and solving problems. This is the mind of leadership—advancing action, learning, and change.¹³

In the discussion that follows, I will examine each of these metaphors separately and pair each one with a companion principle of the gospel. However, keep in mind that the soul, heart, and mind of leadership are not independent of one another but are complementary—they work together.

The Redeeming Power of Jesus Christ and the Soul of Leadership

I begin with the soul of leadership and the impact of the redeeming power of Jesus Christ on our capacity to do it well. Leadership is always and everywhere a moral work. When you as a leader interact with another person or with a group of people, you hold their lives in your hands. What you say and what you do will influence them for good or for ill. Leaders always seek to make things better and to do good. This is the soul of leadership.¹⁴

The Atonement of Jesus Christ enables disciple-leaders to do the moral work of leadership with great power. When we exercise faith in Jesus Christ to repent and seek His redeeming power in our lives, He changes our hearts. We see and treat others as children of God. We value them and build strong relationships with them. Christ’s love and divine light are in us, and people feel cared for, trusted, and valued. We have moral credibility because we seek to do what is right even though it may be hard.

That work is not easy. The plain fact is that the soul of leadership is done by and with real human beings in whom there is an ongoing struggle between the lure of wrongdoing and the value of doing good. Those real human beings need help; they need a moral context.¹⁵

Imad Telhami, an Arab Israeli entrepreneur, created a moral context and pursued the soul of leadership in a remarkable way. Telhami had experienced discrimination and marginalization firsthand in his life, and he had a burning desire to overcome those barriers and help people of all backgrounds grow and progress. In 2008 he started Babcom—Arabic for “your door”—an Israeli company that provides business process outsourcing services for customers in Israel and around the world. He sought to create a company that would employ men and women from every religious and ethnic group in Israel—Muslims, Druze, Christians, Arabs, and secular, religious, and ultrareligious Jews.

Telhami believed he could create effective teams with talented people while helping them work together to overcome barriers rooted in deep-seated cultural, religious, and historical differences. He believed strongly that these people could grow personally and would provide superior service to their customers.¹⁶

At the heart of Telhami’s strategy were four values:

• Love to serve
• Commitment to excellence
• See the good in everything
• Improving together as a team¹⁷

Telhami learned that embedding these values into the hearts of his employees required sustained effort in assessing, hiring, training, coaching, mentoring, and building relationships of trust at Babcom.

The evidence over many years proved Telhami correct. At Babcom, people of diverse backgrounds worked well together, grew and progressed beyond their expectations, and provided higher-quality service at a lower cost than their competitors, all while working in a social environment in which anger, resentment, and conflict were prevalent and sometimes dangerous. Indeed, Babcom has lived through five wars since its founding. Babcom’s resilient culture was captured by one employee who said, “Babcom is the safe place.”¹⁸

This is an example of the essential role of a moral context in the soul of leadership. I saw the power of a moral context when we established three community values at Harvard Business School: respect for others, integrity, and personal accountability.¹⁹ These are universal values that have served for twenty-six years as the strong foundation for the school’s mission “to educate leaders who make a difference in the world.”²⁰

One of the most important things disciple-leaders do is to establish a moral context by generating organizational light and driving out organizational darkness. Let me explain what I mean by organizational light and organizational darkness.

Organizational darkness results from actions and attitudes that damage people, destroy value, and weaken organizations. The actions of darkness may range from petty theft (such as padding an expense account) to large-scale corruption or from contempt of a coworker to abuse and assault.

These actions have real effects. They harm people, reduce motivation, and breed distrust, cynicism, fear, discouragement, and resentment. People who work where darkness prevails face an environment that is unfair, confusing, capricious, and cruel. Darkness is like a punitive tax on an organization. It drains the organization of energy and its sense of meaning and purpose. It is an immoral context in which the soul of leadership simply does not and cannot operate.

Darkness does not strike all at once. It is not always easy to recognize, nor is it self-contained, leaving most of the organization untouched. Darkness seeps into an organization like a mist or a fog in actions that deviate from light in small ways. Those small amounts of darkness cause real—even if initially minor—damage. If leaders simply choose to ignore it, darkness will persist. It will weaken the moral context of the organization and lead to more and more darkness and much more damage.

Organizational light is the opposite. Actions that generate organizational light—such as encouragement, accountability, love, trust, high standards, and productive use of talent and capital—flow from a supporting base of moral beliefs, values, and attitudes. These actions also have real effects. They illuminate, clarify, and expand vision. They enhance value, lift people, and give encouragement and hope. In short, they energize. They reinforce a moral context in which the soul of leadership flourishes.

Generating light and driving out darkness is done by people—leaders—who choose to make light a central part of their life and their identity. They consistently strive to do what is right because it is right, even when it is hard. The soul of leadership is therefore rooted in the soul of the leader, and it has an important spiritual dimension. Leaders with spiritual strength have moral courage and moral credibility. They do the moral work of leadership, and they inspire and motivate others to do the same.²¹

The source of light is our Savior Jesus Christ, who said, “I am the light of the world.”²² Disciples of Jesus Christ who keep their covenants do the moral work of leadership with more and more of His love, power, and light. To be a disciple-leader is to make His light a central part of your life.

The Two Great Commandments and the Heart of Leadership

Let’s look now at the heart of leadership in the context of the two great commandments: to love God and to love others as Jesus loves us.²³ Love is at the core of the heart of leadership and the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Giving love and receiving love are essential to human thriving and, therefore, to effective disciple-leadership.

The Lord Jesus Christ has provided us with a beautiful pattern for establishing relationships of love with the people we lead. As a disciple-leader, you will do most of your important work one by one with people who are children of God with hopes and dreams, a yearning to belong, a desire for meaning and purpose, and tremendous potential. You will build relationships of mutual commitment—of care, respect, trust, value, candor, and support—that bind people together. You will seek to lift and strengthen people, helping them to learn and grow, to find meaning in their work, and to make progress toward realizing their divine potential. You will help people thrive. This is the heart of leadership.²⁴

Helping people thrive is both challenging and rewarding. A simple framework that captures the heart of leadership is LIVE. This acronym stands for four important things people need to thrive in their lives and in their work: love, inspiration, vitality, and expression.

Love. People need to experience being loved and giving love. They need a deep sense of connection to self, to others, and to God. Disciple-leaders love others and demonstrate that love by getting to know them as individuals, setting high but reasonable standards for their performance, helping them feel and be accountable, providing support and encouragement, expressing appreciation, and giving appropriate correction.

Inspiration. People need to feel inspired in their work, inspired by their work, inspired to do their work, and inspired to grow and develop through their work. Disciple-leaders help people see the connection between their daily work and the organization’s higher purpose, and they give people a vision of who they can become and the path to get there.

Vitality. People need to feel positive personal energy in order to take meaningful action; that energy comes from physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health and from helping others feel loved and inspired. Disciple-leaders set the example by loving and inspiring others, by investing in their own physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health, and by supporting others in establishing energy-creating balance in their lives.

Expression. People need to feel empowered to create, to produce, to share their ideas, and to use their talents and abilities to accomplish good work and to add value. Disciple-leaders give people real work with real responsibility and the freedom to innovate, they encourage initiative, they give people opportunities to express their opinions and be heard, and they recognize the many ways in which people make positive contributions to an organization.²⁵

Hubert Joly, former CEO of consumer electronics firm Best Buy, managed to turn the company around by applying the principles of the LIVE framework in his organization. When Joly became Best Buy’s CEO in 2012, the company was in deep trouble—operating performance had been in sharp decline and analysts and reporters were convinced the company’s days were numbered. Almost everyone thought Joly was crazy to take the job.

From his own shopping experience, Joly knew that Best Buy’s stores were places with few caring people, many unhelpful rules, and frustrating customer service. Joly set out to change that and much more with an approach to leadership grounded in connecting people’s search for meaning to their work at Best Buy.²⁶

Best Buy’s purpose became “to enrich customers’ lives through technology.”²⁷ Joly established three principles to guide the organization in achieving that purpose:

1. The ideal Blue Shirt (frontline worker) is an “inspiring friend”²⁸ who engages and connects with customers.
2. People are a source of creativity, initiative, ideas, and energy who can do great things.
3. Treat people as individuals and help them flourish.

Joly believed that establishing genuine human connections was critical to unlocking the potential in people. He was fond of telling the story of a store manager in Boston who helped an hourly worker grow in skill and confidence to achieve her dream of financial independence: with hard work, she became a department manager.

Joly succeeded in getting the three principles to permeate the entire organization, all the way to store managers and frontline people. But at the core of the turnaround of Best Buy—the company went from being on life support to five consecutive years of sales growth and profitability—was the commitment to help people find meaning at work, to see people as sources of initiative and creativity, to treat people as individuals to help them flourish, and to forge genuine human connections of respect, value, and care.

The LIVE framework has power because it is based on true principles. Jesus is our perfect example of leadership. In His mortal ministry, the Savior helped people feel His love, inspired them, healed them physically and spiritually, and gave them real responsibility and the freedom to innovate. Disciple-leaders who keep their covenants are blessed with the Savior’s redeeming and strengthening power so that, like Him, they can help people thrive.

I experienced the heart of leadership in a very personal way when I became president of BYU–Idaho. I was blessed by the Lord with an overwhelming love for the students and for the employees of the university. That love grew in my heart and has had a profound effect on my life and my leadership ever since.

Priesthood Power and the Mind of Leadership

I now come to the mind of leadership. This is the work of mobilizing people in a process of action, learning, and change. It involves engaging people and teams in establishing direction, analyzing opportunities, setting priorities, allocating resources, and solving problems. And it is precisely in this leadership process that the soul, heart, and mind of leadership work together with real power.

The leadership process has three phases:

1. Initiate: size up opportunities, make choices, and connect with others.
2. Mobilize: build a team and work with team members to set a direction and develop a plan.
3. Empower: activate the power in the team to solve problems and execute the plan.²⁹

Power is central to the mind of leadership, but leaders in positions of authority very often misuse power to control, coerce, or compel people to comply with rules, directives, or orders. This is one of the most prevalent power dynamics in organizations of all kinds—families, schools, small businesses, large corporations, hospitals, government agencies, and nonprofits. I will call this dynamic “power over”; it is a dynamic of executive dominion, and it creates organizational darkness.³⁰ There is simply no place for the soul and heart of leadership under a power over dynamic, and, thus, the performance of the organization suffers.³¹

There is a second power dynamic I will call “power through”; this is a dynamic of lifting and strengthening people by activating the power that is in them and their teams. Power through creates organizational light and is essential to disciple-leadership.³²

The principles that the Lord Jesus Christ taught the Prophet Joseph Smith about priesthood power in Doctrine and Covenants 121 provide a beautiful pattern for disciple-leaders.³³ The Lord warned the Prophet against power over and gave him wonderful principles for applying power through. Two seem particularly valuable.

First, use of power creates responsibility and accountability. The Lord taught Joseph that leaders who use priesthood power have a responsibility to do so “upon the principles of righteousness”³⁴ with the Spirit of the Lord and Christlike attributes such as persuasion and meekness.³⁵ They are to avoid “control or dominion or compulsion.”³⁶ Rather, they are accountable to honor agency, set high standards, and help people use their agency effectively.

Second, use of power is based on covenant relationships. The Lord made it clear that we receive and use priesthood power through making and keeping covenants. It is through ordinances and covenants that “the power of godliness is manifest.”³⁷ Use of priesthood power by the leader of a Church organization occurs within a community of covenant relationships with people who also have access to priesthood power.

Thus, power through is expressed on the basis of accountability and in honoring agency in covenant relationships of mutual love, commitment, trust, and support. In this way, leaders, acting under the direction of the Lord, activate the potential power in the people to do the Lord’s work.³⁸

Kathy Giusti’s work at the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) illustrates how using these principles of power through help people and their organizations grow and prosper. In 1996, Giusti was diagnosed with multiple myeloma (MM), a cancer of blood plasma cells. All the available evidence suggested she had three to four years to live. In researching her illness, Giusti found that MM received relatively little research funding, few scientists were doing research on the disease, and there was little communication among the scientists who were. No new medicines had been approved in many years.

Giusti and her identical twin sister, Karen Andrews, created the MMRF to fund research and create communication networks to accelerate the development of new therapies. Giusti became a quintessential power-through leader at MMRF. She built a core team of experts in the disease and in clinical trials, and she created a network of partners—donors, doctors, and scientists.³⁹ All these people were inspired by Giusti, herself an MM patient, and were committed to her vision of what MMRF could do: “accelerate a cure for each and every multiple myeloma patient.”⁴⁰

Over time, Giusti and her team provided funding for research, established connections between patients and doctors, and built a tissue bank and a longitudinal database with genetic information and clinical data about patients at different stages of the disease. Giusti activated the power that was in her core team and in the scientists and doctors in the network with remarkable results. By 2024, MMRF had raised more than $600 million for research, helped fifteen new drugs through clinical trials to FDA approval, and increased the five-year survival rate for MM patients from 20 percent to 60 percent.⁴¹ And Kathy Giusti? She survived MM and breast cancer and continues to pursue her dream of curing MM and other cancers.

When disciple-leaders in the Church use power through according to the principles of accountability and covenant relationships, they create organizations in which people are consecrated, unified, and aligned: They consecrate everything to the Lord, His Church, and His work, and they are committed to the work and are accountable for what they do. They are unified in Christ, share covenant experiences, and love and serve one another. And their values, desires, and actions are aligned with the Lord and His living prophets.

Because these are true principles, abiding by them opens a conduit of revelation and power that flows into those organizations. We see that in Kathy Giusti’s work at the MMRF, and I have experienced that power in the work of leadership in the Church and also in secular organizations. In a secular setting you may use a word such as committed instead of consecrated, and the actions associated with unity and alignment may be somewhat different, but the principles are the same.

As disciple-leaders, you can, with the Lord’s help, apply the mind of leadership with soul and heart to bring consecration, unity, and alignment as well as light and power into any organization you lead.

Conclusion

Brothers and sisters, I conclude where we started—with the call to you to become a disciple-leader. No matter where you are in your journey, Jesus Christ will help you to become a disciple-leader through a developmental process of deep learning. That process is to

• know in your mind the doctrine of Jesus Christ and His true principles of leadership;
• understand and feel in your heart the power of His doctrine so that your deepest desire and your strongest commitment are to keep your covenants and live and lead as a disciple of Jesus Christ;
• take effective, righteous action as you more purposefully live the principles of the gospel and act with the power and authority of God to do His will in your life and in your leadership; and
• become more like Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ as you develop Christlike attributes and come to realize your true, eternal identity as a disciple of Jesus Christ and a leader in your family, in the Church, in your profession, and in your community.

Now let me share a concluding word about all of us at BYU. No matter what your role is, you can and should pursue the soul, heart, and mind of leadership in your work and studies here at BYU. You may have many people under your stewardship or just a few, or you may be a member of a work group, a team, or a class. It is, of course, important to do the work that is your responsibility, but you are not called to be a disciple-student or a disciple-administrator or a disciple-worker. You are called to be a disciple-leader.

If you act with faith in Jesus Christ to become more and more like Him, to be His true disciple, He will bless you to do the work of leadership in your sphere of responsibility in His way and with His power. You will pursue the soul of leadership with spiritual strength and moral courage; you will know and live true principles that drive out darkness and bring light and power to the work of leadership. You will pursue the heart of leadership with the pure love of Christ and with Christlike attributes that create trust and connection and help people thrive. And you will pursue the mind of leadership, creating organizations built on a foundation of consecration, unity, and alignment and using revelation and discernment to teach, motivate, and inspire others and to activate the power that is in them to act, learn, and change.

I know through my own experience and through the witness of the Holy Ghost that the better disciple of Jesus Christ you become, the better leader you will be. I leave you my witness that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Living Son of the Living God, our Savior and Redeemer, and our Perfect Leader. If you take your witness of Jesus Christ with you wherever you go every day and act with faith in Him to keep your covenants every day, you will become His true disciples and His leaders, first and foremost in your eternal families, in His true and living Church, and in your work among God’s children in these the latter days. I know that is true, and I leave you with that witness and my love in the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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