Hank Smith: 00:02 Hello, welcome to followHIM Favorites. This is where John and I share a single story to go with each week’s Come, Follow Me lesson. John, we’re in Ether 1-5. You’ve told me you have a story that fits with this lesson.

John Bytheway: 00:16 It’s such a fun story. It’s so interesting, the way the Lord talks to the brother of Jared. He says, I’ve heard you say it this way. “We can’t see, we can’t breathe, we can’t steer.”

Hank Smith: 00:28 Those aren’t the best boats.

John Bytheway: 00:29 Yeah. This design isn’t working for us. We have these needs, like oxygen. When the Lord, asks him what to do for air, Lord tells him exactly. When the brother of Jared says, what I would do for light, the Lord says, “What do you recommend? What would ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels?” Ether 2:23. Well, this reminds me of a story. When I was a missionary in the Philippines, I was with Elder Phil Broderick from Orem, Utah. Great guy. I at that time was in a mission office and I wanted to tell my beloved mission president, President Menlo Smith, “Hey, something just happened here, here, here.” He just looked at me and said, “By the way, never come to your boss with a problem. Always come with a recommendation.” And then he said, “Go get Elder Broderick.” So I got Elder Broderick and he sat us down and he said, “I want to teach you something.”

  01:17 President Smith was all about a real leader trains leaders when he leads, he would say. He said, “I want to show you something. I call it the five levels of delegation. Level one, seek problems, solve it, keep it to yourself.” He said, “You’re not there yet. Level two, seek problems, solve them, report back. You’re not there yet. I don’t want you to do that.” He said, “I want you at level three, seek problems, study it out in your mind, recommend a solution. What you just did was level four, come and tell me about the problem and say, ‘What do we do?'” And he said, “Well, maybe there’s a fifth level where I find out about the problem and come to you. I want you never to come in here with a problem, always to come with a recommendation.”

  01:59 And that was life-changing for me. I used that when I was a bishop at the Ward Council. Don’t dump the problem on the bishop. Dump the recommendation on the bishop. Tell me what you thought about and wrestled with and everything else. I used that when I was in continuing education at BYU. The thing that was amazing about that, Hank, is something happened after President Smith went to Singapore. You go way back in your mind, Hank, before cell phones. Can you do that for me?

Hank Smith: 02:26 Yeah. The phone was attached to the house. I remember.

John Bytheway: 02:28 Yeah. We didn’t have a way to get in touch with President Smith, and something came up in the mission. My memory was, it was the Manila MTC wanted to change the date they were sending up missionaries. The way communication was there, we communicated with, it was almost like telegraph. They called it RCPI, Radio Communication of the Philippine Islands. It was these little guys on scooters would bring around little notes.

Hank Smith: 02:53 Really? Okay.

John Bytheway: 02:54 Yeah. It would’ve been terrible. We couldn’t change the date. I remember sitting at my desk like this, Hank, going, “What would president do? What would president do? What would president do?” He had trained us to think, what would president do? I came up with something. I called the Manila MTC, convinced the mission president there, and I was so grateful for that experience. Now, the best part of the story, Hank, is one night, President Smith was telling us that he was not a member. He married a less active member. She had a Book of Mormon. He read the Book of Mormon, and the story that touched him was the way that God dealt with the brother of Jared because it matched the way he worked with people. And 10 years later, he was my mission president. I think this really stood out to him, what that I should do that you may have light in your vessels? Because that was one of his levels of delegation. I’ve used it ever since.

Hank Smith: 03:54 Wow. That’s awesome. This was a while ago.

John Bytheway: 03:57 This is the ’80s. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 03:59 This is the ’80s, and you still remember in that kind of detail.

John Bytheway: 04:03 Because I used it as a bishop all the time because if everybody, instead of just handing problems to someone, how does the Lord do it? And how does Section 9 tell us? You go study it out in your mind and you wrestle with it because that’s how you’ll grow.

Hank Smith: 04:16 That’s fantastic. Fantastic, John. We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. We’re with a couple of doctors this week. We’re with Dr. Krystal Pierce and Dr. George Pierce. We have a really fun time in these chapters, so we hope you’ll join us there. Then come back next week, we’ll do another followHIM Favorites.