Leadership Lesson -- Misuse of Power President Rex Lee:
I would like to recount for you what I learned 20 years ago from one of my great heroes and role models, Harold B. Lee. On Sept. 11, 1973, following the last devotional address he ever gave at this university and about 3 months before his untimely death, President Lee gathered together a group of BYU administrators and talked to us for about an hour regarding some of the principles of leadership he had learned over the course of his life. He did this by telling us about a dozen stories. The stories fascinated me, as did the conclusions he drew from them. ...Let me tell you the one example I remember best.
As many of you may know, President Lee was a great admirer of President J. Reuben Clark. Prior to being called as a General Authority, Brother Lee served as managing director of the Church welfare program. He told us how frustrated he had become while serving in his welfare position because of a lack of cooperation by employees in another Church office. Shortly after his call as a member of the Council of the Twelve, he said to his mentor, President Clark, “Now that I am one of the Twelve, do you suppose I can get some response from those people in such and such an office?”
President Clark’s response, as President Lee reported it that day, was, “Yes, my boy, now that you hold the whip hand, there is a great temptation to use it. But you must never do that.”
For me that story bore a powerful message about respect for the use of power and the mistakes that can be made in its misuse.