Week 61 - Advice on Being a Zone Leader

Sent to Eric Maxfield

You make a really good comparison to my first couple weeks in the
mission. I feel absolutely CLUELESS. I made phone calls to the
district leaders this morning and they were expecting me to give the
advice and counsel that I always asked from my very experienced
leaders. And to make it even weirder, two of the district leaders are
from my MTC group! You sent me a talk a while ago by Elder Bednar, "a
conversation on leadership" which has really helped, because he says
that a leader needs to be humble and "yeah, I got this" is the
opposite of humility. So I feel ok in the sense that in the Lord's
work, cluelessness for the first little while makes you teachable.
Some things are different - For the first district meeting in 23 weeks
I wasn't the one giving the meeting! I had to resist the urge to do it
all - I had to let the very young and inexperienced district leader
who is also my companion lead and direct and teach. (See also from
that Bednar conversation, the lawn trimming theory of management). And
now I give a monthly meeting instead (first one is on Thursday.. I
could use a prayer or two). Our zone is everyone from on the Far East
in Castilla La Mancha, Guadalajara to Coslada which has the end stops
of one of Madrid's metro lines - about 45 minutes from end to end on
train. We also have the APs and secretaries in Alcobendas/San
Sebastian. Interesting job. And tomorrow we'll be in Mission
Leadership Council all day, which will be interesting as we talk about
how to improve the mission. My job really is just to teach the
District Leaders how to do their jobs and help them magnify their
assignments, because I can't have nearly as much influence as them.
Think the way a Stake President works with the Bishops or the way a
Seventy represents the prophet to the people. Different sort of
assignment than what I've done, but the same things apply.

Some thoughts.

Elder Stew