In the Life Help section on the website for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are reminded that, “Everyone needs help sometimes. Life is like that. In fact, God planned it to be that way.” For social scientist, New York Times bestselling author and Church member, Joseph Grenny, helping others has become his career and a personal calling.
Through thorough research, a variety of business endeavors and personal experiences, Grenny says he has learned the value of practical and spiritual influences that spark change in even the most dire circumstances. In 2015, he and his colleagues founded The Other Side Academy, a free residential life skills program for those with long histories of crime, addiction and homelessness. And this work has recently expanded to the The Other Side Village project and more. He joins this episode of the Church News podcast to share his hope in the betterment of humanity and testimony of the unmatched, positive influence of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Transcript:
Joseph Grenny: I believe that the most important thing that all of us are asked to do in our lives so that we can be prepared for the missions that Heavenly Father sent us here for is to respond to preparatory promptings. And we all get them, and we just don’t recognize them when they come. You’ll have this little inclination that, “There’s an article you ought to read,” or “That’s a person that you ought to reach out and call,” or “Here’s a class you ought to take, or a person you ought to go to lunch with.” And these are educative opportunities that often prepare us for things 10, 15, 20 years down the road. And I have been far from perfect in my life, but one thing I think I’ve been decent at is recognizing that stirring when it happens, that tap on the shoulder, and honoring it and letting it sort of accumulate in my life shoebox. And then what happens is, when the crisis hits, you can often look back. I think it was Thoreau who said that you have to live your life forward, but you only understand it backward. And in that moment, holding my son, I could start to look backward and see how I had been prepared for that moment and to sort of lay the groundwork for what later became The Other Side Academy.
1:11
Jon Ryan Jensen: This is Jon Ryan Jensen, editor of the Church News. Welcome to the Church News podcast. Today, we are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In the Life Help section on the website for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we’re reminded that everyone needs help sometimes. Life is like that. In fact, God planned it to be that way. And for leading social scientist, New York Times bestselling author and Church member Joseph Grenny, helping others has become his career and a personal calling. Through thorough research, a variety of business endeavors and personal experiences, he has learned the value of practical and spiritual influences that spark change in even the most dire circumstances.
In 2015, Grenny and his colleagues founded The Other Side Academy — a free residential life skills program for those with long histories of crime, addiction and homelessness — and this work has recently expanded to The Other Side Village project and more. He joins this episode of The Church News podcast to share his hope in the betterment of humanity and testimony of the unmatched positive influence of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Joseph Grenny, thank you for joining us on the Church News podcast.
Joseph Grenny: Delighted to be here.
2:24
Jon Ryan Jensen: I am really interested to know how all of this started for you, because I think there are so many people who look around and see needs in the world and say, “I don’t think there’s anything I can do about that,” and yet you seemingly have looked around the world and said, “Oh, I think I’m going to try this.” How did that start?
2:47
Joseph Grenny: Well, it started in two ways. The first is it started with a crisis. And I think much good in the world does, that really our specific problems and the pain in our lives are designed to be specific tutorials for us to try to give us sympathies and capacities that we’re supposed to use in the service of others. Mine happened when I was out golfing one day, and I got a call that told me that my son had just overdosed on heroin. And I spent the next couple of days holding his hand at the hospital as his organs shut down and uncertain about whether he would survive those couple of days. And he ended up weeks in the hospital and permanently disabled but survived.
And through that experience and through many other related kinds of things, my wife and I started to develop a sympathy and an awareness for how many were caught in this same horrific condition. And the tools of my craft, the tools of my profession, give me a unique perspective on looking at behavioral challenges, how people get into self-destructive habits and what keeps them from emerging from those. And it became literally a war for me to say, “How can I think about this? What are my responsibilities to my family?” So that was sort of path No. 1.
Path No. 2, I believe that the most important thing that all of us are asked to do in our lives so that we can be prepared for the missions that Heavenly Father sent us here for is to respond to preparatory promptings. And we all get them, and we just don’t recognize them when they come. You’ll have this little inclination that, “There’s an article you ought to read,” or “That’s a person that you ought to reach out and call,” or “Here’s a class you ought to take, or a person you ought to go to lunch with.” And these are educative opportunities that often prepare us for things 10, 15, 20 years down the road.
And I have been far from perfect in my life, but one thing I think I’ve been decent at is recognizing that stirring when it happens, that tap on the shoulder, and honoring it and letting it sort of accumulate in my life shoebox. And then what happens is, when the crisis hits, you can often look back. I think it was Thoreau who said that you have to live your life forward, but you only understand it backward. And in that moment, holding my son, I could start to look backward and see how I had been prepared for that moment, how so much had happened that had helped me to be aware of, to be conscious of and to sort of lay the groundwork for what later became The Other Side Academy. So, those are two important things.
5:05
Jon Ryan Jensen: As I hear you tell that story, I’m actually thinking about President Russell M. Nelson, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and his emphasis on how is it that we hear and respond to the promptings? It’s not enough just to say, “Oh yeah, I felt that,” but it’s the “What did you do because you felt it” that allows us to continue to feel it and feel what the next thing is.
In those moments when you’re sitting and trying to have hope for your son’s situation, can you — again, reflectively, as you said — look back and talk about how you felt perhaps the love of Heavenly Father and strength through the Atonement of Jesus Christ to help you as a parent to navigate that situation?
5:50
Joseph Grenny: So, Ryan, the scarlet thread that runs throughout my life, the kind of thematic principle of the gospel that I think Heavenly Father has tried to draw my attention to, is that life is about exalting relationships, that the purpose of life is not just to create some state of abstract moral perfection; it’s to give us the capacity to have deep, meaningful, intimate relationships that are mutually exalting with others. It begins with Christ. It begins with our covenant with Him. But that just sets a pattern. That’s not the terminal relationship, that’s just one of the most important, and it helps us to be able to enter marriages and parenthood and brotherhood and sisterhood and familial relationships and neighborhoods and so forth.
And so that night of crisis for me, the first call that came to me, and I don’t even know to this day how he found out, but one of my ministers reached out, and he said, “You’re at the hospital. I’m on my way.” And when he got there, he took me by the hand — and my son was completely incoherent, couldn’t communicate, didn’t know what the prospects were for him — but I’ll never forget the phrase he said. He said, “You have me all night.” And to know that there was somebody that was strong, that was focused, that was selfless and was there for me. He helped me administer to my son, he prayed with me, and he sat with me through one of the darkest nights of my life.
And that relationship is what gave me hope. That was what helped me to feel that Heavenly Father knew I was there. I didn’t know what the outcome would be, but I knew that Heavenly Father would be beside me, because Larry Meitler was beside me through that experience. And that’s true of all of these other preparatory experiences too. It’s always been through people that Heavenly Father ministered to me, taught me and tried to help me to be prepared for what was to come next.
7:37
Jon Ryan Jensen: One of the other things that President Nelson has said is that — and this was in 2008, in general conference — he said, “Salvation is an individual matter; exaltation is a family matter.” It takes that coming together for us to achieve exaltation.
7:55
Joseph Grenny: And for me, that is the entire gospel in one sentence, that you think about all of our ordinances, all of our covenants, and the culminating one is the sealing of a family. And it isn’t just a nuclear family. The concept is that these are extended families. It’s the entire family of Elohim, and that that’s what this is all about. And I think if I’ve learned anything from the social sciences, it’s that family and relationships are where life breaks down, and that’s the only path to healing as well, and that’s what ultimately led to The Other Side Academy and The Other Side Village.
8:26
Jon Ryan Jensen: I love that you tie those together, because it’s not a family, a nuclear family, when we’re talking about the groups who come through a place like The Other Side Academy. But share with us how it is similar to a family, at least in terms of the relationships of the individuals who you work with, and share maybe a little bit about them and their experience.
8:47
Joseph Grenny: You know, we say at The Other Side Academy that this isn’t about rehabilitation, it’s about habilitation, often. Most of our students — our average student at the academy was arrested 25 times prior to coming. Most have been homeless for long stretches. All have had significant problems with addiction, and many times they come saying, “I’m a heroin addict. Help me.” And what we try to help them understand is your problem is not your heroin addiction. If you’ve been using heroin as part of your life for 30 years, then your problem is not that. The problem is that you don’t know how to do life. And the problem began with not knowing how to do life.
So, the typical story of all of our students begins with abuse and abandonment and violence and gang activity. We have one whose first memory was Dad carrying him into Walmart in his arms, using him as a prop for shoplifting. And dad would stuff toys in between him and his little 2-year-old boy. And this boy thought, “I’m going to get toys,” and then he goes out and realizes that’s not what it’s for. Dad’s going to take them in, get cash for them and buy drugs. And so this is the beginning of life, and if life starts that way for you, you don’t accomplish or experience any of the developmental goals that all of us have — learning to trust, learning to connect, learning to feel safe in a home.
So, when people come to The Other Side Academy, that’s what they’re learning to do. They’re learning to be decent, honorable, to solve problems, to trust other people, and that’s years of work. We send people with significant drug challenges to 30- or 60-day rehabs and don’t realize that the drugs aren’t the issue; it’s learning to live life in a different way. So what happens at The Other Side Academy, people come pretty imperfect, they come pretty broken, and we need to be able to let them communicate and talk the way they need to talk to express themselves when they first arrive. But you will never feel more exalting relationships than you do in that setting, the kind of investment, the kind of courage and vulnerability that people show for each other, is something I’ve experienced very few places in my life.
10:42
Jon Ryan Jensen: A week ago, I was with 28 teenage young men up outside of Heber, Utah.
Joseph Grenny: Bless you.
Jon Ryan Jensen: It’s one of my favorite things. I love spending time with them. And I hear you talk about the lack of some of those life experiences that those you are working with didn’t have. And I think to the morning standing up with all of these boisterous teenagers, and we say, “We are going to recite the Aaronic Priesthood theme together.” And they get up, and with all the gusto that a teenager has, them all saying this by memory, and to hear them declare the principles that they are committing to live by was a really emotional moment, because you could see in them, “This is what I believe. This is what I want.”
Long before that theme existed, when I was a young man, my bishop had decided we need to have a kind of theme for our young men. And he had decided that we needed to stand up and recite every week from Alma 53, where we learn about the characteristics of young men who were going to defend their families. And the verses 20 and 21 say: “They were all young men, and they were exceedingly valiant for courage, and also for strength and activity; but behold, this was not all — they were men who were true at all times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted. ... They were men of truth and soberness, for they had been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before him.”
And I don’t think that I’ve ever thought a whole lot about the fact that we used to say that every week, but when that’s not the experience that you have growing up, that really makes a difference.
12:23
Joseph Grenny: It really does. And there’s such a parallel to what we do at The Other Side Academy. People will come for a couple of weeks, and then when they decide, “Yes, I want to make a commitment here,” it all begins with a promise. It begins with a covenant. It’s all about learning to make and keep promises. And our students have not been able to keep a single promise their entire life, much less to themselves, as much as any other. And so they begin in their moral commitments, their relationship commitments.
So when you talk about these young men and them having courage and being truth and sober and so forth, committed to truth and sobriety, and to me, the greatest challenge is not some independent one; it’s an interdependent one. It’s a relational one. It’s “Do I get into the messy work of confronting people that look like they have trouble?” And when I look at what President Nelson has done in the Church in the past few years, with moving us away from home teaching, which sounds like a transactional kind of experience, to ministering and saying, “Don’t let a lesson get in the way of the relationship. Sure, share ideas, share inspiration and so forth, if that’s the right thing to do, but the most important thing for you to do is understand where people are at and what they struggle with.”
The central covenant that people make when they come to The Other Side Academy is that you are going to hold other people accountable. In the last nine years as we’ve been operating, we have adult probation and parole come in every month and drug test all of our students. These are hardcore drug addicts prior to coming. We haven’t had a single dirty drug test in nine years. We haven’t had a single act of violence in nine years, and you’ve got people from rival gangs that are sleeping in bunks one on top of the other. And how do you do that? You do that by people pledging to be there for each other, by people learning to hold each other accountable and get into the messy business of confronting problems with one another.
And it’s one thing, frankly, in the Church that I think that we need to do a lot better at. We love to sit next to each other and look forward at a lesson, at a teacher, but what we’re not really good at is turning sideways and saying, “Hey, I noticed that you were crying in the back of the room today. What’s going on with you?” That’s the real struggle that we’ve got. And us learning to step into that vulnerability and create those kind of intimate relationships is the key to the gathering and is the key to us creating Zion.
14:33
Jon Ryan Jensen: Earlier this year, I was with Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in Mexico City, and he did a question-and-answer session, and somebody asked a question that at the end said, “But don’t I have agency?” And Elder Bednar in a very kind but firm way in giving that feedback said, “You have made a commitment. And when you have made that commitment to Heavenly Father, you have covenanted with Him that you will do certain things and you will not do certain things. In that moment when you made that choice, you have ceded your agency to what He is asking you to do.”
It sounds to me like what you’re doing and what they’re committing to when they come to The Other Side Academy is similar to that, where they’re saying, “From here out, this is the commitment I make.” Is that something that you’re aiming for?
15:19
Joseph Grenny: That’s exactly the case. And we also understand that they have no idea what that commitment means. It’s kind of like when you’re baptized at 8 years old, you have a little bit of an understanding of it, but not much, but that’s OK. You’ll grow into it. People often say, “Well, probably those that come to The Other Side Academy are people who are ready for change.” And my answer is, “No, they’re not. What they’re ready for is that they don’t want what they’ve already got.” So they were on their way to a 15-year prison sentence, or perhaps they just lost everything they own for the fifth time and are going to be homeless again.
So there’s some devastating, awful thing they’re running away from. They’re not running towards something. And our problem often in life is I think repentance is the same way; we repent when pain motivates us to repent, not because the aspiration or the blessing of a greater life is something that’s appealing to us. And all of life is about us learning to keep a covenant because of what’s available to us, not because of what we’re trying to avoid.
The same is true at the academy. And so they’ll come in, and they have to make promises to hold each other accountable and to help each other out, and yak, yak, yak, they’ll make those promises, and then we know within the first couple of days you’re going to lie, you’re going to try to steal something, you’re going to be cheating, you’re going to do something lustful, or whatever else it is. Now, these are all minor offenses, because it gets caught pretty quickly at the academy, but they’re the same deep moral problems that you came with.
The key to our survival, the key to our ability to transform lives, is if all the peers around you who see you do that. So let’s say there’s a guy that lied to us and said he didn’t know any of the women, but it turns out there’s somebody he’d had a relationship with there before, and he’s hoping to hook up with her while he’s there. And so that sets the groundwork. And the way we figure that out is he’s trying to make eye contact with her when she’s in the dining room. Well, three of the guys are going to be noticing this, because they’ve been that guy. You spot it, you got it. And so they’re going to see it. And our survival and the salvation, frankly, of this guy who’s just coming into the academy depends on them stepping forward and correcting him immediately in that moment. If they do, then we live another day. If they don’t, the whole house will break down and disintegrate within a matter of days.
So the fact that we’re able to run world-class businesses to support ourselves, you said in the introduction that it’s free, and that’s important because this isn’t something Mommy and Daddy should have to pay for. It’s your problem, not theirs, and so you taking that responsibility is critical. So they’re running moving companies and storage businesses and construction companies and things like that, and the highest-rated ones in the state. And the reason we’re able to do that is because of this peer commitment, this sense that we are here for each other and we hold each other accountable.
17:55
Jon Ryan Jensen: So, I want to go back to this, because I think there are probably some parents who are listening who might hear some of what you’re saying and wonder how they can apply this. You’ve got some bigger issues that are trying to be overcome that have lasted throughout an individual’s life. And then you have those small moments where, as a group, you notice, “Hey, this is going to be a small wedge for us.” And you said if that doesn’t get resolved within that day, then things start to disintegrate.
And I’m wondering: How do you decide which are the small things that people need to be held accountable for right now, versus those bigger things that you know are going to take more time, a year or two years or longer?
18:31
Joseph Grenny: What I’ve learned, and I wish I could play back the tape of my parenting and with what I know now from The Other Side Academy.
Jon Ryan Jensen: I’m glad we’re not doing that for you or me.
Joseph Grenny: Yeah. But I could do things so much better. And one of them is that the most important accountability is not vertical, it’s not hierarchical accountability, it’s peer accountability. It’s creating a climate, and that’s your job as a parent, is to help create a family where everybody is there for everybody else, not just that you catch everything and that you offer all the correction that you need. And so the most important accountability that happens at the academy is holding people accountable for holding others accountable.
And so if, for example, in this illustration that I just gave, we know that three people saw this guy looking at that woman and said nothing about it, did not offer him correction in that moment, it’s most important in our house that those three get schooled for having let their brother down, letting him get away with something that they shouldn’t let him get away with, than that he did that initial thing. We expected that of him, but if you’ve been here for four or five months — so I’ll give you one illustration.
A woman who was one of our very first students, her name is Tiffany, she was raised under a bridge, so from age 3 until about age 11, she and her mom lived not far from where we are here in this studio, literally outdoors, under a bridge, and then rode trains for years. And she always wished she could go to school like the other kids, but her mom was a drug addict and lived this awful, horrible, vagrant lifestyle. She finally, after a long, violent career herself, ends up at The Other Side Academy. She’s been with us now for about four months. She’s walking downstairs one day, and there’s a door ajar. There’s some light coming out of it. And she has a creepy feeling in her stomach.
And I am absolutely certain that all of us have experienced multiple times what Tiffany is feeling right now, some sense that there’s something wrong that we should do something about, but then a simultaneous fear that it might be uncomfortable or awkward if I do. So I’ve got somebody new that moved in next door that is on the Church records but not attending, and I know I ought to go have a conversation about this, but I’m terrified, and I’m sweating, and my armpits are all moist.
Jon Ryan Jensen: These conflicting feelings that we all deal with, yeah.
Joseph Grenny: So here she is. She sees this light, and she knows she ought to do something. Her past self, the living-under-a-bridge Tiffany, would have just walked away and said, “I’m about me. It’s not my problem. It’s somebody else’s problem.” But she knows there’s somebody in there. Well, it turned out there was, a student by the name of Austin, who’d figured out how to take one of our automobile diagnostic tools and get onto the internet and send an email to his girlfriend to try to have her drop something off at the house.
And so different than the Tiffany who had ever existed before, she pushes the door open, she sees him in there and sees what he’s doing, and she scorches him. She gives it to him hard. And she saved his life, because if she hadn’t intervened in that moment, he would have continued to do that, gotten dirty in the house and probably walked himself out at some point, because he would have felt like he didn’t fit anymore. Those are the moments that transform lives. All the rest of it is just dress rehearsal for these moments when we have to do something vulnerable and uncomfortable to try to contribute to the growth of another human being, and that’s what we focus on at The Other Side Academy.
21:37
Jon Ryan Jensen: Do you find that when they engage in that first moment and are willing to have that courage to do that, that it gives them courage to do things that they might be confronted with later, that are bigger and harder but that they needed that initial strength for from that previous experience to make happen?
21:55
Joseph Grenny: I wish I could give you an easy yes, but I’m going to give you a much more qualified one, because you’ve got to understand: When our students — and please forgive me for saying this bluntly, but this is how we talk to each other at The Other Side Academy — when they come, they’re liars, they’re thieves, they’re manipulators, they’re drug addicts, they’re narcissists. That’s who they are, because they’ve been practicing being that for 30 years. Now, I know who they are in their soul. I know about their spirits, but that’s not how they’re packaged at this particular moment. So no, the first 50 or 100 times that they offer correction to somebody else, they’re only doing it because they know they’ll get in trouble if they don’t.
And we’re OK with that. We have a principle we call “act as if,” that if you’re doing something based on a correct principle and it feels uncomfortable, do it anyway. Just act as if it’s the right thing to do. Act as if you’re a decent human being. Act as if you care about them. I don’t care if you really care about them. Just act as if you do, because I know that the DNA of your soul, that the structure of your Spirit, is such that it will eventually respond to that, and it will create a renewable source of motivation that will keep you in that track. And so for the first six to 12 months, a lot of it is just you’re in a social system that won’t let you not be part of our moral message. And then when you start to adopt that yourself, you start to get the deep satisfaction.
Our students always experience what we call “the Tuesday afternoon moment.” There’s a moment when something happens and they have a feeling that’s different than they’ve ever had before for the first time. One told us it was he went into the bathroom one day, and he noticed there was a wadded-up paper towel sitting next to the trash can, and he finished his duties in the bathroom, and he washed his hands, took a paper towel, dried them off, put it in the trash can, and then he bent down and picked up that one and put it in the trash can.
And about 10 steps outside the door, he starts to cry. He starts to cry because he realizes, “I’m not that kind of person. I’m not the kind of person that picks up somebody else’s paper towel and then puts it into the trash can, but now I am.” And he realized he was proud of that. And so there come these moments when you’ve acted as if long enough that you start to become what you wanted to become, and those principles start to connect with the soul that was always there.
24:00
Jon Ryan Jensen: So, this year in “Come, Follow Me,” we’ve been studying the Book of Mormon. Maybe the better comparison, then, is the seed. We talk about nourishing that seed. The “act as if” might be you don’t really know that that seed’s going to grow, but if you act as if it’s going to grow because you nourish it, maybe, maybe one day it grows. But you didn’t know that in the beginning,
Joseph Grenny: “It beginneth to be delicious to me” (Alma 32:28), yeah. I love that. That’s a perfect citation, because in the beginning, the satisfactions of it might not be as meaningful to you as they are later on, as your spirit matures. That’s a great connection.
24:31
Jon Ryan Jensen: When you talk about the different mistakes, perhaps, that these individuals have made, having robbed, having stolen, having cheated, having lied, can you talk a little bit about maybe the part of that that exists as the natural man in everyone, maybe not just those who you serve and work with?
24:49
Joseph Grenny: Oh my goodness, yeah. Yeah, it’s fascinating watching outsiders come to The Other Side Academy — so people like you and me and others that haven’t lived in this kind of environment — and our moral compromises don’t appear to be as substantial as theirs are, but we compromise on the same principles. We have people come frequently that want to learn how to start something like The Other Side Academy, and we’ll often let them live in the house for a week or so. We had this cute little banker come from Iowa. He’s a good, upstanding, churchgoing guy from his community, and probably seen as a real moral example and things like that. And he is. He’s a decent guy.
But he’s in this house, this is a house where when people arrive, they get moral whiplash, because they are so immediately confronted with this environment that holds each other to such high standards, and that’s what we’re supposed to be able to do in the Church. The speed with which we grow spiritually depends upon the degree to which we’re vulnerable and candid with each other, and that we are honest with each other about how our behavior affects one another. I love that in the early descriptions of the sacrament — in the Restoration and even in the Book of Mormon — it says, “And they did gather together and confess their sins one to another.” It sounds like their communities were a lot more open with each other about what was really going on in their lives.
So anyway, this banker comes, and he’s in our house, and he’s staying at the graduate apartments across the street from the Academy. And so one day he’s coming over to do his duties because he’s trying to be a student for a week, and he doesn’t want to go all the way to the crosswalk, and so he looks around to see if anyone’s looking at him, and he starts to jaywalk. We don’t jaywalk at The Other Side Academy. He knows that. One of the students is in the yard, and because the students do this, there is no power or authority that protects you from being corrected at The Other Side Academy. So this guy yells out across the street, He says, “Hey, we don’t jaywalk here.” Well, the guy flushes red and looks all embarrassed and turns around and goes back. And so, big win for this student, who’s just a freshman at The Other Side Academy, holding this guy accountable, who’s this prestigious banker dude.
Jon Ryan Jensen: And he’s not trying to take it to the man; he’s living the principles that you live.
26:48
Joseph Grenny: Absolutely. That’s why he’s doing it. So, banker dude turns around, walks back across the street and then still doesn’t want to go all the way to the intersection. In the meantime, this student has turned around and started to head for the house, but the student gets this creepy little feeling in his stomach that banker dude’s probably going to do this again. So he cocks his head back, looks across the street, and sure enough, when banker guy thinks the coast is clear, he starts to jaywalk yet again. Well, this time, he drops a slip on him. What that means is that on Tuesday and Friday nights, from 7:30 to 9:30, we get in groups of 20, and we have more extended conversations with each other. We get to talk about the moral compromises we see in each other and give honest feedback to each other in a much more full-throated way.
27:32
Jon Ryan Jensen: Settingwise, going back to something you mentioned earlier, is this one of those where you’re in a circle kind of thing? Not the sit-in rows, not next to each other, but facing each other.
Joseph Grenny: We’re in a circle, looking at each other face to face. So, banker guy is in here, and this guy says, “Hey, the other day, I corrected you about jaywalking.” He says, “Yes, and thank you for doing that.” Well, now the whole house is on notice, because he’s being greasy and manipulative now on top of it all. And he says, “And then afterwards, you walked back across the street, looked to see if I couldn’t see you anymore and then did it again.” And he says, “Well, I’m sorry, but it’s just jaywalking.”
And I’m telling you, 19 people in that room lit him up, because it isn’t about jaywalking; it’s about being dishonest, it’s about being sneaky, it’s about being manipulative, it’s all of that deeper stuff. And I think he walked out with the best Sunday School lesson of his life, because people had told him the truth about where he was. And I’m telling you, I was sitting in that group, and I thought to myself, “I’ve done that five times in the last week,” not jaywalking, but times where I got away with something because nobody else was watching, and probably wouldn’t have been a circumspect if everything had been transparent.
And so, the way we grow spiritually, the way we grow morally, is dependent on the level of vulnerability in our relationships. It is our ability to get into each other’s business and to do so with love. These groups that we’re describing now, I’ve never heard more expressions of sincere love, side by side. And the combination is beautiful, because you’ll see somebody who’s hearing truth and candor, but then there’s this disarming sense of, “I’m here doing this because I love you and I’m trying to save your life.” And they melt into that and are unable to resist the kind of truth that’s being presented to them. And that’s how human beings grow.
29:10
Jon Ryan Jensen: I’m glad you’re getting to that part, because as you’re explaining that, I’m wondering if that banker, like anyone else who’s there, might have that moment where that feedback can have them feel that they’re worthless or that, “I’m never going to overcome this. I’m never going to be good enough.”
And so, can you share maybe how that love part of it is helpful in avoiding them feeling like they should give up on the attempts to make their lives better?
29:39
Joseph Grenny: Yeah, I’ve spent my career studying crucial conversations and how people talk about emotionally and politically risky things with other people. I’ve spent thousands and thousands of hours watching people trying to have these kinds of conversations and occasionally succeeding. And what I’ve found is that the limiting factor in our ability to be honest with each other is not how risky the message is. It’s never about how hard it is. So if you think that I’m an inveterate liar, that you’ve seen time and time and time again the first words out of my mouth are always lies, and you’re trying to bring that to me, I can hear that as long as I believe that I’m safe with you, as long as I believe that your intent in sharing that is to love me and to support me.
And so I think that the two things we’re here on this earth to learn are truth and love. And that’s it. It all comes down to those two basic things, an unvarnished, unqualified commitment to truth, and secondly, an absolute commitment to love, to doing whatever it takes to help our brothers and sisters to grow. And the problem is we think we have to trade those two variables off against each other. We tend to think that the way to be loving sometimes is to not tell the full truth and to sugarcoat it, and that’s not true. That’s selfish. I’m usually doing it for me, but dressing it up is for you.
Jon Ryan Jensen: “I’m going to tell this story and hope that they get that I’m telling them to do something else.”
30:56
Joseph Grenny: “Somebody in this room is being inappropriate,” right? Yeah, we don’t do it. And the beauty at the academy is that we understand that the best way to show love is through truth. And so in these breakthrough groups that we participate in, there are times where somebody is bringing truth, truth, truth, and you’ll see somebody, you’ll see the signs on their body that they’re shutting down, that they’re resisting, that they feel defensive, and so forth. And then what will happen is there will be a little bit of a pause; not an apology, not a correction of anything that I said, because if I see this as the truth, I’m going to leave it out there for you to examine.
But what you will see is somebody then assuring somebody of their intent and why they’re doing this. “This isn’t easy for me, but I live with you, brother, and I see what’s happening here, and I know what your life was like before you got to the academy, and you’re going to go out and kill yourself if you don’t start listening to what people here are saying.” And that message of love, that sharing of intent, dissolves the defensiveness.
And if you look through the scriptures, and one of the best studies that you could ever do to understand how to do Christlike communication is to look at how Christ corrects people. And I’m assuming He’s pretty good at it, and I’m assuming He probably was the best that’s ever lived, and He never apologized for what He had to say. It was truthful. If you look at the relationship that His Apostles had with one another, they were blunt, they were honest, they were in each other’s business. But there was this container of love that kept all of that together so that it wasn’t fractious, and it didn’t end up in ruptured relationships, but instead ended in real intimacy. There is no intimacy without honesty, and so we have to learn to do both truth and love.
32:33
Jon Ryan Jensen: And, again, you see that throughout the Book of Mormon, repeated as missionary brothers and cousins disperse and come back, and their joy is they still love the Lord, they still love each other, and that their service apart has made them feel even more strongly their love for each other, despite the fact that what they had been through previously was destruction together. And now they’ve turned that love into something that unites them and helps them grow.
33:00
Joseph Grenny: Yeah, I love that reference, because when I read the interaction between Ammon and Aaron (see Alma 26:10-11), and Ammon is really exalting about this wonderful missionary experience they’ve had. And of course, Aaron starts to think, “You look like you’re getting a little prideful there, dude.” And the fact that he was so quick to do that and unapologetic about it, that’s brotherhood. That’s what it looks like. And my guess is that Ammon probably self-corrected a little bit in that and then went on with his testimony and the wonderful things that he was sharing. That’s The Other Side Academy. They’d be comfortable there.
33:29
Jon Ryan Jensen: One of the things that I’ve heard you say in the past is, “Lasting happiness in life is determined by our capacity for truth, love and connection.” I think you just hit all three of those. Within the Church, I’ve worked in the Church for more than a decade, and I’ve heard that also expressed as belief acting on belief and having a sense of belonging.
When you see those three as you describe them — truth, love and connection — is there, because we’ve talked about people in the home, but are there examples of people who have successfully transitioned into life and out of this intense situation when they’re right there in the academy?
34:07
Joseph Grenny: Oh, completely. Because, first of all, most of the relationships our students had prior to coming were awful. They were dysfunctional. But there are many of our students who have children.
So, one of our graduates who had been raised in the Church, and in fact went on a mission, married in the temple, had a beautiful family, and then, through a series of bad decisions, became homeless, became a heroin addict, was living on the streets of Salt Lake City for six years with a needle in his arm. And through just an incredible set of miracles that I get to see time and time and time again, his former bishop happened to drive a different way to work one day and saw this bearded, scruffy-looking guy sitting outside the 7-Eleven as he went in to get the drink that he always started his day with. And this guy looks up at him and says, “Bishop.” And as he looked down at this bearded, scruffy guy, he couldn’t remember who he was to save his life. And then he called the bishop by name. And suddenly the two of them melted into tears.
The fact that that moment happened then was by divine design, because while he wasn’t immediately ready to start changing his life, he was close to it. I had just moved into the ward with the same bishop, and I happened to be sitting next to him in a ward council meeting the Sunday after this meeting occurred, and that’s how he learned about The Other Side Academy. That’s how he eventually went there. So he comes, he stays, he changes his life, and he wants to now reconnect with his family. But of course, his children don’t trust him, and they resent him, and they’re angry with him, and they’re not certain that this is going to last for him.
And so that fragile experience of him coming out and him having to learn to be secure enough to be able to let them give him all the feedback that he needs to hear about how he’s affected their lives, and to be able to be understanding about that, rather than expecting them to patronize him and to try to swaddle him and care for his needs and concerns and so forth. That was a challenging, difficult thing, but that’s what people are preparing for when they’re in The Other Side Academy, to learn to deal with truth, to learn to make it about other people, to learn to express love. And he’s done a wonderful job of that so far.
36:12
Jon Ryan Jensen: You’ve mentioned a couple of times that creepy feeling, whatever that butterfly feeling is in the stomach before you make a decision. And I, just for a moment, put myself in that man’s position, sitting on the sidewalk, looking up and seeing the man who he knows is his bishop, and that feeling of, “I could turn away. I could put my head down. He would never know I’m here.” But that feeling to say, “Hey, Bishop,” is that moment of courage that can help both him and the bishop to be able to do the things they need to do.
36:40
Joseph Grenny: Yeah. And let me give proper credit to the bishop, too, because I gave you a real short version of the story, but let me amplify just one little piece. And so, he sees him, and he has no idea what do you do for somebody that’s in this condition. So he says, “Let’s just go into 7-Eleven, and I’ll buy you whatever you want.” So he buys him a bunch of things. I think he gets a big jug of Gatorade, and he gets a big bag of Doritos or something like that, and he goes home. And he tells his wife about having found this guy. And his wife said, “And you left him there?” And so she sends him back and says, “You go find him.”
And this is uncomfortable for him. He’s being asked to do something, he’s going to go into the middle of a homeless encampment. And for most of us, that’s foreign territory, and “I don’t speak the language, and furthermore I feel in danger.” But he went because his wife told him to and because the Spirit prompted him to. And so he went tent to tent to tent, and he couldn’t find him. And he was about to pat himself on the back for being a good Christian and say, “I did my duty, and I made this attempt,” when there was one more tent.
And he didn’t want to go there, because this could be the one that confronts him. This could be the one that, who knows what he’s going to do, goes out of control. But he knows he needs to, and the Spirit urges him on, and he steps into that uncomfortable moment of intimacy. And there are legs hanging out the tent. This particular guy is very tall, so that was a first telltale sign, and then he sees a crumpled up Doritos bag, and he knew that was the tent. If he had not followed that prompting in that moment, if he had not had the courage and the love in his heart to extend himself in that moment, then we wouldn’t have this young man back today.
38:16
Jon Ryan Jensen: Sometimes in the Church, we have a tendency to talk about promptings from the Spirit as the still small voice, and it’s this calm moment and reflective moment. But the wife of the bishop as well, her reaction to him and “You left him there?” That too was potentially a moment of her reacting to “This is what needs to happen.” And the Spirit’s telling her, “Yes, I needed him to do that and a little bit more.” And so some of that intense correction.
Joseph Grenny: Yeah, yeah. A little bit of truth. Sometimes you’ve got to say the truth real loud. And lots of examples in the scriptures of that.
38:49
Jon Ryan Jensen: This year, President Nelson is celebrating his 100th birthday, and ahead of his birthday, he made a statement and said, “I have no need of earthly gifts,” basically saying, “I don’t need members of the Church or others in the community to send me anything. What I really hope is that you, as I look toward 99 plus one, is that you will think about the 99 and the one that the Savior left to serve.”
Through all of your experiences, is there one thing that you could look at and say, “Here is a key to you being able to look for and minister to the one that you feel prompted to reach out to”?
39:26
Joseph Grenny: Well, I think we all have these moments where we feel urged to do something uncomfortable. And I’m glad that you distinguish between the still small voice and this uncomfortable nudge that I think it often takes the form of. And it’s almost always interpersonal discomfort. It’s almost always some relational thing that we’re being asked to do. And so I think learning to honor those is important.
But the second thing for me that’s thematic in life is that — there’s a parable in the Book of Mormon, the parable of the olive tree, and it’s the one that I think a lot of us feel a little bit dispirited when we encounter it, because it’s going to be 77 verses long, and “I don’t want to read it one more time.” That one has broken open to me and offered such treasures. And one of the treasures in it is when the master of the vineyard says, “It looks like the whole project here is just going downhill.” It says that he went to the nethermost part of the vineyard.
And to me, that’s a beautiful principle. It’s what Heavenly Father expects of us, that when the tree that you care most about isn’t having it, when the person in your life that you wish you could minister to or fix right now isn’t letting you fix them, go to the nethermost part of the vineyard, because there are other trees there, and your life has uniquely suited you to serve that kind of tree, trees with exactly that kind of problem. All of us have been uniquely prepared to be able to reach out. Pain is an invitation to connection. Pain in our lives is an opportunity for intimacy.
So when somebody is struggling, when they’re in pain, when their life is a disaster, that is by design on the planet so that we have reasons to create these exalting relationships with one another. And for crying out loud, if your life has exposed you to a certain kind of pain, find those trees in the nethermost part of the vineyard that are ready for you to share what you’ve learned, and you will create exalting relationships with them. And my belief — I hope I’m not out of line by saying this — I believe that anything you do to contribute to the exaltation of anyone eventually helps in the exaltation of everyone, that as one boat lifts, all of the boats eventually get lifted, and that what we need to be doing is working in any part of the vineyard where we can, not just obsessing over the place that we can’t do anything about right now.
And as we do that, we’re gathering Zion. As President Nelson says, that’s the most important work that’s going on on the earth, and this is what it looks like. It looks like going to the nethermost part of the vineyard and using the things I’m uniquely aware of because of the pain that I’ve had in my life to help those who are ready to be helped. And who cares if it’s not someone who shares your last name? What matters is it’s one of your Heavenly Father’s children and shares your divine last name. And as you do that, I absolutely know that the tree you care most about gains blessings and is lifted in the bargain.
42:14
Jon Ryan Jensen: I think there are some people who right now are going to go read that parable and see that perhaps in a little bit of a different way. Joseph Grenny, thank you for joining us on the Church News podcast today. We have a tradition here where we like to give our guests the final word. And so my question to you finally is: What do you know now through all the experiences that you’ve had? What do you know now that you would share with us?
42:33
Joseph Grenny: I know that there is no population so marginalized that it’s not capable of extraordinary achievement if they enter into exalting relationships. What we’re doing at The Other Side Academy, what we’re doing in the Grenny family, what we’re doing in the village, falls so far short of perfection, but I see so much beauty and majesty in what we’re able to accomplish when we unite together.
If I could end with one last little comment, we just opened a new social enterprise of what will be called The Other Side Village. It’s called The Other Side Donuts. It’s a donut store. And one of the most beautiful moments that I will take to my grave and beyond was about two months ago where a bunch of formerly homeless people that you would have been driving past and seeing them screaming at a fire hydrant or waking up face down in a ditch have joined together and have started this new enterprise, The Other Side Donuts. And they decided, just for the heck of it, to say, “Well, let’s test ourselves against the best that are out there in our first year of operation.” So they went to the Dough Show, which is this winner-take-all competition of all the donut providers in Utah.
And so they stacked theirs up against all of the best of the best — and they won. And they won. And more important than the trophy was the feeling between them of mutual respect, of pride, of contribution. The relationships they forged while trying to solve the problem of launching this donut shop has been exalting to all of them, and to me at the same time. There is no community that isn’t capable of extraordinary things if we join in these kinds of relationships. And to me, that’s the message of the gospel.
44:20
Jon Ryan Jensen: Thank you for listening to the Church News podcast. I’m your host, Church News editor Jon Ryan Jensen. I hope you learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had your faith in the Savior increase by looking through the Church News window as a living record of the Restoration. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; to my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and to others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates about the Church on TheChurchNews.com or on the Church News app.
