Summary: Curtis Lebaron teaches in the Department of Organizational Leadership and Strategy at BYU. I first was introduced to Curtis LeBaron when I listened to his BYU devotional talk he gave in July 2009. I was extremely impressed by his research experience and thought it applied so well to church leadership.<br> <br> I later contacted Curtis LeBaron and asked if he would be willing to allow me to ask him some questions about his research and see how we could apply it to typical church leadership. He graciously agreed and I had a wonderful hour interview with him.<br> ETHNOGRAPHY<br> Professor LeBaron's main focus in research is through a method called ethnography. <a id="z8na" title="enthnography" href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ethnography">Ethnography</a> is the study and systematic recording of human cultures. It's typically used in anthropology. Here’s what Professor LeBaron had to say about it:<br> Research methods are kind of a menu of choices and they all have strengths and weaknesses. Most of the social science research that has been done in the last 50 years or so has been informed by psychological model of understanding. Of course research methods and theory need to be compatible in any kind of research project. I am speaking in very broad<br> terms so please understand that I am generalizing probably irresponsibility. <br> <br> Psychologists have been very good at experimental methods often bringing people into a laboratory where they study under controlled conditions. How people behave, how they make decisions, how they live in the social world. A lot of insights have come from that kind of work. But one of the weaknesses of that approach to study human behavior and trying to understand people in that way is that it removes people from the natural environment in which they live and work and behave on a day to day basis. To some extent the argument goes, who we are is related to where we are; who we are is related to the situations in which we behave. As soon as we separate ourselves from our contexts we are no longer who we are within our context.<br> <br> So ethnographic approaches which come not from the field of psychology but from the field of anthropology primarily--they try and understand people by looking at people within their natural circumstances or situation or context and of course when one does that the downside is that we can’t control those conditions because they are naturally occurring so they are not laboratory like settings where variables can be control and hypotheses can be tested. So we have to study people and learn about them by looking closely sometimes conducting interviews. And my research comes from that kind of a tradition. Now there is kind of a twist on that which is when I go into a situation I don’t just observe I make audio and video records of people actually going about their work, conducting meetings, having conversations, making plans, forming strategies, developing new ideas, foster innovation--all those sorts of things. Things that can be captured on video tape. They can be carefully analyzed and studied and those details that come from the recorded data can be examined against a backdrop of understanding that come from interviews or documents and histories. And so it’s a different approach to research than most people take.<br> Imagine what could be learned about leaders if we recorded typical Elder Quorums or Relief Societies around the church. This probably wouldn't be realistic, but thankfully church leadership principles can be very similar to those in the secular world. The following interview explains what Professor Lebaron learned from his research and how it can be related to LDS church leadership.<br> Interview with Professor Curtis LeBaron<br> Leading Saints: Is there anything from your research that you have discovered as far as leadership goes that could tie over with leading in the church?<br> <br>
