GROWING FUTURE LEADERS

The greatest act of leadership is mentoring.  No matter how much you may learn, achieve, accumulate or accomplish.  If it dies with you, then you are a generational failure.  The act of mentoring is the manifestation of the highest level of maturity and self confidence.  Leaders who fail to mentor exhibits spirit of insecurity, low self esteem, poor self concept and devalued self worth always focusing on self preservation and self protection.

The lack of willingness, understanding and interest in mentoring is the greatest curse and weakness of the 21st Century leaders.  Leaders should be more interested in investing in people than in pursuing private ambitions.  The highest manifestation of True leadership is to identify one’s replacement and begin mentoring him or her.

Life is really a generational relay with each succeeding generation responsible for passing the baton safely to the next with all the distilled knowledge, experience and wisdom intact.

You are only successful in leadership if your accomplishment and achievements are preserved and perpetuated for prosperity.  It is not what leaders achieve that count.  It is what they transfer.  Building people to protect and preserve our institution is more important than building institution.  Leading beyond your leadership is the ultimate accomplishment of true leadership.

No matter how great your accomplishment might be, if it dies with you, you are a failure.

True leaderships makes deposits in the Banks of human spirit and souls, not in the financial institution of Wall Street and Switzerland.

Losing a lifetime of leadership achievement to an unprepared generation is the highest level of violation of leadership responsibility.  A vision is only successful if it is durable.

Succession is the perpetuation of purpose.  Purpose is your assignment.  Succession is protecting your assignment beyond your lifetime.  Succession preserves all your hard work after you retire or die.

“Your vision must live on even if you die”.  If your vision dies with you, you have failed.

 

Success is not what happens when you are alive, it is what happens when you are no more in charge, what happens after you leave.  That is why the term ‘successive’ is key, it connotes continuity.  Success is knowing someone will continue the work after you leave.  You measure your success by the people you leave behind.  Greatness in leadership is measured by continuity.

One of the greatest transfers of leadership is the story of Jesus Christ.  He built an organization at 30 years old that is now more than 2000 years old.  It is the largest company on earth with upward of over two (2) billion clients.

True leaders do not hold on to knowledge, experience, achievement, opportunities or relationship they accrue on their position.  True leaders transfer knowledge.

Your influence will not continue in buildings or bank accounts.  Your influence will continue in people.  Buildings are perishable, people live on.

Visionary leaders always possess a sense of destiny.  Destiny forces one to think beyond a lifetime.  Destiny is bigger than all of us.  It is that massive, uncompromising eternalness of life.  That is why visionary leaders communicate the vision of the future effectively.

As leaders we should build our legacy in people, not in our work, our greatest legacy is not a product or the institution left behind but the people.

Leaving your child a building or a house is not succession.  That is inheritance.  Whatever a person inherits he can lose, but if you mentor a person, he cannot lose what you gave him.  “It is not what you leave behind for your kids that matters, it is what you leave inside them”.  

Mentoring is a transfer of things that are durable:  vision, passion intent and character.

True leadership is the capacity to influence others through inspiration, generated by a passion, motivated by a vision, brought by conviction, produced by a purpose.  The secret to leadership is not the pursuit of power, but of self.  No one will buy into your vision if you do not have passion for it.  You passion grows out of conviction that your vision is worth pursuing.  This inspires people, and attracts them towards you.  A leader does not look for followers. Followers are attracted to a leader’s passion.  “If you say you are a leader and no one is following you, you are simply taking a walk”.

 

Your goal as a leader is to produce one greater than yourself.  Leaders do not clone others in their own image.  They help other discover themselves, deploy their abilities, reach the height of their capabilities and refine their unique personalities.

True leaders prepare for their departure the day they get into position of power.  You are dispensable, mortal and temporary – that should be your watchword.  Your job is to leave someone greater than yourself in this position.  Finishing well is more important than starting well.

Nothing is as addictive and intoxicating as power, authority and influence.  One of the most difficult decisions leaders have to make is to surrender the reins of power to another.  True leaders must be secure enough to leave and fearless to face their own future.

Knowing when to leave a position is essential and critical to leadership, any mismanagement of the delicate process can dismantle and destroy years of hard work and investment of resources and human capital.

One of the greatest example of knowing when to leave is the former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela.  He handed his successor, Thambo Mbeki, all the power and influence of over 30 years of struggle in a 30-minutes ceremony. Do not overstay your time.

True vision is generational.  The visionary must accept that he will not and should not expect to complete the vision within a term of leadership service or in a lifetime on earth.  True vision is debt owed to the present and future world.

True leaders fashion their future beyond their graves by mentoring.

The willingness to relinquish power is a great sign of leadership.  If your value or significance comes from being a branch manager or being called a BDM, then you have better not lose that position.  However, if your value is not in the title, the position or the pay check, then wherever you go, your value goes with you.  Do not become synonymous with your title, it’s a sign of greatness.

Leaders produce leaders.  The greatest and ultimate goal of leadership is not to maintain followers but to produce leaders.  When people dedicate themselves to achieving the goal of another person who believes in them and regards them as potential replacements, as equals, productivity is limitless. 

True leaders do not seek power, they empower others to achieve greatness.  Secured leaders empower others.  True leaders are not concerned about their own success, they achieve success through the success of the people they mentor.

True leadership measures its success by the diminishing dependency of his followers.  Final measure of leadership is when your mentees can mentor others.

True leadership is what you do for people around you that will make them better than who you are.  True leadership is outliving yourself, its leaving a legacy that will make you live beyond the cemetery.

As a true leader, what happens in your absence will be a measure of your greatness.

One of the greatest failings of leadership is fear.  The greatest being the success of followers.  When people around you are more successful, it is a compliment to your leadership style.

True leaders put people before paper work and company policies.  The greatest work of a leader is developing people not hiding from them.  True leaders share decision making than dictating since it brings commitment on the part of the team.

True leaders are authentic.  True leaders do not work for money, they work for fun.  Money follows. Authenticity will always find prosperity.  When you are authentic, the money and the people seek after you.

As leaders, your greatest contribution to life is not leadership, but the seed – leaders that you produced and carried to maturity.  Leaders you fail to mentor are seedless fruit.

The greatest accomplish of leadership is not “attaining it, it is releasing it”.  Leadership is a relay, not a sprint or a marathon.  Leadership is about passing on knowledge, experiences, wisdom and achievements, to the next generation.  Remember, in a relay, the whole team wins!

You cannot go to the next level in life if you are not willing to “let go” of the present level.  Great leaders look for opportunities to leave because they have bigger and more exciting things to achieve.  They want to explore different aspects of life.  As leaders your vision should be bigger than your current role.

Inheritance of leadership is not automatic.  Blood does not qualify people to succeed you.  It does not give someone same interest, skills, drive, or determination that you had.  Children in very rich families can destroy the family fortune because they do not respect the price their parents paid to build it.

 

Paris Hilton is a good example.  Her great grandfather, Conrad Hilton Sr, built a global hospitality company called the “Hilton”.  Her father and grandfather continued in similar fashion.  She wanted to play tennis and buy clothes.

So whenever God calls you to do anything, it is not a guarantee that he will call your off-springs to do same thing.  It is not an assurance that your family will be a dynasty.  Leadership is not a dynasty of kingship.  God’s destiny is based on conditions of hearts, not genetics.  It is important to set children free so they do not feel obligated to follow in the footsteps of a successful family member.

 

The greatest obligation of a true leader is to transfer a deposit into the next generation.  The worst mistake the leader can make is to mentor no one, choose no successor and leave no legacy.

 

Culled from:  “Passing It On” – Growing your Future Leaders, by Myes Munroe