So I've had this new job for a couple of months and although I love it, it's very frustrating because my boss is terrible at explaining goals and procedures to those on her team and changes her mind constantly, then gets extremely irritated when we make mistakes. It's unfair because we aren't mind readers.

For some reason, this reminded me of Mormonism and the way they are constantly changing their minds about doctrines and the members are supposed to blindly follow their changes. And how they don't fully explain the beliefs and history but then the church leaders get frustrated when you ask questions. But most of all, how much of church culture you are supposed to be able to absorb and regurgitate in order to be considered a "good" Mormon. People will look at you like you are from Mars if you deviate from the unspoken rules - like you are the bad one even though they never explained the rules to you. There is some stuff you are just supposed to KNOW.

Am I right or is Mormonism so micromanaged that this is a bad comparison?

You made me think of something George Orwell said of authoritarian systems. The members become so adept at changing their perceptions on demand, they eventually develop an ability to anticipate what they'll need to believe next.

Interesting.

At the very least, they're not surprised.

I think of mormonism these days, as more of a lifestyle or self definition, rather than a religion, per se. Individuals don't seem to be interested in the "gospel" or the endlessly regurgitated pablum that is spewed forth on any given Sunday. They've heard it all before a thousand times and are just doing what they've always done and likely always will do.

They're enduring to the end. They're being obedient. They're checking off the boxes. They're sitting in the seats. They're zoning it all out. But they're not thinking about the goals, or the the alternatives, or any creative ideas, or any "what if's." They're the definition of sheep. And if they're not, they're heading for the doors.

My opinion is that the Church lives in the margins of honesty and dishonesty. When the Church wants a commitment, they minimize the responsibility to gain acceptance. Once having got a minimal commitment, they extrapolate their advantage to the greatest extent possible.

The greatest examples of these are baptism and the temple covenants. The "commitment pattern" they teach missionaries to use minimizes any Church commitment to use any leverage to get their investigator baptized. Later if they can use similar tactics to get the person endowed. Once endowed you have covenanted "everything" to the Church. Now they play the temple card (recommend) that a member must accept whatever idea pops into a superior's head. Otherwise, you aren't honouring your priesthood or temple covenants.

Minimize until they are inside; maximize when you can capitalize on that.

Mormons learn to follow the Church's example in their family and other dealings. Members also learn to combat the Church with passive aggression. They never say "No" - but will do "No" when it suits them.

Good point. It's interesting that in many other religions, converts are required to attend special classes and demonstrate a firm knowledge of the religion before they join. Not so in Mormonism. Missionaries only offer a small glimpse of Mormonism before potential converts are asked to commit to baptism. My own father, who is a convert, said that he was never taught the first vision until after he joined the church.

The church can't really be specific and nail down the rules because that would make it hard to change them when they want to down the road.

If God is running the show through his prophet, all rules and doctrine could be clearly defined. I've often thought that the church could be very specific about what constitutes an offense that leads to excommunication, for example. But, it won't because it needs things to be very vague so that it can excommunicate or not excommunicate as it sees fit.

The church is very good at playing this little game. It does it all so subtly that most members aren't frustrated by it at all. They usually don't even notice.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2015 07:11PM by want2bx.

Until / unless there's some meaningful Quality Control regarding what is said from local pulpits and in lessons, this is impossible.

Just about anyone can say just about anything in a talk or lesson, without it being corrected; this is especially true for Royalty & (local) sub-royalty.

I've seen it where well-placed members (frmr Bishop) said goofy things in a talk, and the current leadership didn't want to offend/correct.

Folks, that happens 'all the time'.
For some reason, people 'go off on tangents.

And your boss sucks too.

Your team may want to "train" her by making status reports of what you're doing and offering them to her on a regular basis. If she's not crazy but just disorganized, it might help her get on track.

The "columns" for the status report might include:
Project name
Short description
Point person
Date assigned/due
Action items

Sometimes supervisors are promoted because they are good workers, whether or not they know how to supervise/manage yet.

I can't help you with that church thing, though. They're NUTS

I agree - I'm a bit "off" my boss at the moment too. Especially when it's clear she thinks her team is the problem when her erratic leadership and poor communication skills are, IMO, the real problem.

And Mormons are just nuts.

It is squishier than a mushy marshmallow.

Mormonism (LDS)/ TMC = ambiguity

Wannabe chameleon
Sheep losers

Change

Stories

No, they do not explain themselves well at all. Quite the opposite, especially for prospective new members.

I find it odd that what goes on at church on Sunday is not what goes on in the temples. Its as if there are two different churches functioning independent of each other, with differing rituals, ceremonies, twists on prayer (the true order), seperating the men from the women, and all the other BS.

I never really thought about that but there are two different churches, if you compare the temple to the chapel - three if you compare the religion taught in the Book of Mormon with the temple and chapel religions.

I see your point manifested when the church teaches people to reason out things in their minds or to study and gain knowledge, since the glory of God is intelligence. But then when you do what they told you to do and you comment on what you learned, they get all pissy and say you think too much and are on the road to apostacy.

Or they tell you to pray about something, but when you do and your answer is different than what they teach, you're told you must have prayed wrong.

Mormonism isn't cerebral. Intelligence being God's glory disappeared with correlation. Now it's about obedience and appearances. Mormons will change their story to back up their church and/or leaders in an instant. I've seen it with the revealing of the essays.

I had a Mormon boss like that. She would give instructions for a project but only give us half the information we needed to accomplish the task. Of course, we didn't know we were operating on partial information and proceeded (often in the wrong direction).

We would update her on the program, only to learn that we were going in the wrong direction. She would berate us for the wasted effort but only then give us the 'rest of the story'.

Yes, we were always the problem - not her.

We got good at asking "is there anything we need to know about this?" Sometimes, it worked; often not.