Passing It On: Growing Your Future Leaders (10 page)

Provide recognition
. Tell the mentee how well she is doing. Let others know how well she is doing too. Recognition is a little different from
just praising someone. Praise might be done in private. Recognition is generally in front of others. A mentor can instill
confidence in a mentee by introducing a mentee to your audience, presenting the mentee to those in your environment, or sharing
your platform. This is a powerful force. It shows belief and faith in that person when you introduce her to your market. You
have given that person high recognition and honor. Recognition also means giving your mentees access to your relationships,
introducing them to people you know and letting others know their value.

Keep a long-term perspective
. This has to do with seeing the future,
believing in it, and then working to make it a reality. Mentorship is working with the future. When you begin to mentor a
person, you mentor with vision. The mentor anticipates what is up ahead or what is coming because you know the vision. You
expose your mentee to things that are relative to your field. For example, you are a bank executive, and you want to mentor
a young officer. You do not mentor that person to become a mechanic. You offer mentoring related to banking. If you are a
priest, you mentor a future priest. You mentor with the perspective of your vision of what they will become.

Focus on developing people, not managing them
. You cannot manage a human. Individuals have a will. Even God cannot manage humans. He paid the price for their salvation,
but He still cannot save them. He said, “Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift
of the water of life” (Rev. 22:17). Even though Jesus prepared the way, we still can refuse Him. Jesus does not impose salvation
on us. We have to choose. We have free will. You can manage a copier, a printer, or a computer, but not people. We should
develop people. I am an equipment manager and a people developer. A mentor is more concerned about human development than
about technology. The mentor does not allow things to become more important than people. Equipment can never compete with
the potential, intellect, emotions, and physical development of a person.

Understand that transformation comes only through association
. Mentoring can take place only through close association. You produce leaders by allowing them to come into your space. Allow
people to enjoy the glow of your light. Let people feel the power. Let them taste it. Let them see the power. Like the lioness
that places her cubs nearby, you have to allow the mentee to come close enough to observe how you work and think.

View people as opportunities, not interruptions
. If you are a mentor, you probably are a busy person. Most people qualified to be mentors are deeply engrossed in activities
with great responsibility, perhaps running a country, organization, or business. Mentors are very busy people. That makes
mentoring very challenging. Remember, however, not to consider people who want to learn from you as nuisances. If you have
a mentoring agreement (see chapter 20, “Mentorship Is by Agreement”), the mentor cannot view the mentee as a bother. Any time
my office tells me that a mentee wants to see me, I stop doing whatever I am doing because we have an agreement. If I am in
a foreign country working with a group or
government and someone I am mentoring leaves a message that he needs to talk to me, I respond at the first opportunity. It
is not an interruption. That individual knows he must respect my time, but I also know that I promised to give my time.

People are opportunities. I will never forget how that lesson took on special meaning for me one day when a group came to
my office in Nassau. My secretary, who is also my sister, called me to say that some people were there to see me. I thought,
“This is not a good time for this.” People often come to see me unscheduled, but this day I was working on a deadline to finish
our annual report. I told my sister that I could not see anybody right then.

She said, “I know you are busy, but they said that they
must
see you. They have been reading your books and watching your TV shows. They came to the Bahamas on a cruise, and they took
a taxi all the way over to our center. They just want to see you for three minutes. Just to shake your hand and tell you thanks
for helping them.”

I said, “Ah, man!” Then I heard a voice in my head say, “People are not interruptions. They are opportunities. They are people.”

Right then I closed my folder, shut my computer, and said, “Bring them up.” They came up to my office, a couple dressed in
their casual clothes, sandals, straw hats, short pants, and T-shirts.

They were so happy to see me. We hugged and greeted, and I said, “Sit down.”

They said, “No, we did not come to stay long.”

I said, “Sit down.”

They said, “Why?”

I said, “Because you are people.”

“You would actually take time to see us?” they asked.

“Sure, you are people.”

That is what I heard the voice say.

Then we sat down and chatted a little bit as they told me how much my work had blessed them and changed their lives. Their
young son had started a business from reading one of my books, and they were so excited. Listening to them, I was deeply encouraged.
When I said, “Thank you so much for coming,” I meant it from my heart.

They stood up and asked, “May we take a picture?”

“Sure,” I said.

We took a picture, and we were walking to the door when the man turned around and said, “By the way, we brought you something.”
He gave me an envelope, and they left.

I quickly went back to work on my report. When I opened the envelope later, I found a check for ten thousand dollars, and
I prayed, “Lord, send me more people.”

Never consider people interruptions. In some of the circles in which I travel, other leaders and presenters have entourages,
security, and people with microphones who follow them. I show up with my wife, and people ask, “Where are your security guards?”
I respond, “My wife is my security.” I do not want to protect myself from the people I came to serve. People are not interruptions.

What are you missing out on when you tell people, “Oh, I have no time for you. I’m a man of the church. I have a vast ministry
to run”? Jesus took time for children. His disciples wanted to act as security guards, but Jesus said He came to serve. He
did not need protection from the people, especially not the young. Neither do you if you are going to mentor effectively.

Matthew 19:13–14
Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked
those who brought them. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven
belongs to such as these.”

Jesus blessed the little ones on the spot and used it as a teaching moment for His grown-up mentees. You cannot train people
if you avoid them. Leadership is about people.

I use seven key points to summarize the marks of a courageous leader.

Courageous leaders:

1.  Free others to be leaders.

2.  Provide opportunities for others to find and fulfill their God-given
potential and purpose.

3.  Mentor successors willingly.

4.  Think in generational terms.

5.  Embrace the chance to be absent.

6.  Refuse to see the success of mentees as a threat.

7.  Rejoice when mentees become greater and more effective than you were.

Jesus once sent out seventy-two followers deputized to heal and preach, and He rejoiced when they came back reporting their
successes.

Luke 10:17–24
The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” He replied, “I saw Satan fall
like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of
the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are
written in heaven.” At that time
Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit
, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and
revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. “All things have been committed to me by my
Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom
the Son chooses to reveal him.” Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you
see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear
but did not hear it.”

Often when leaders hear good reports about their staff, they become threatened. However, Jesus rejoiced in their accomplishments,
as we should rejoice when our mentees are leading others.

It takes courage to mentor.

Make yourself increasingly unnecessary.

Produce leaders who can lead others.

M
ANY HAVE COME
to me and said, “I have read your book.” Others might have seen my television show, listened to a CD, or come to a conference,
and they tell me that something I said changed their lives. They built a business or started a ministry of their own. To me,
that is leadership success. Your legacy is what you do for the people around you that will make them better than you are.

My greatest joy comes when I see people around me starting their own businesses, believing in their dreams, pursuing their
passions, and developing their ideals and ideas. I take pleasure in making them leaders of others.

The measure of true leadership optimally is your ability to leave. You are successful when your organization grows after you
leave. When the greatest leader of all time left the earth, He had eleven devotees, and then one hundred twenty showed up
in the room. Then in one week, there were three thousand, and the rest is history. The church grew in His absence.

The only memory people have of you might be the old picture in the lobby. Instead, paint your face on the hearts of people.
If they never put up a photograph of you, will people still speak your name in the halls? Would you hear them talk about you?
Would you hear things like this?

“She did this for me.”

“Yes, I was discouraged, but one day she spoke to me.”

“Yes, I started this business because one day he gave me this idea.”

In other words, will your name be on lips rather than walls? Legacy is about giving life, not photographs, to people. Therefore,
your greatest contribution is to outlive yourself. How do you outlive yourself? By transferring yourself to other people.
Succession is about living beyond your grave, and the only way to do that is to reproduce yourself in the next generation.
If you seek power because you need power, you will never mentor. But if you seek to serve the next generation and leave a
legacy, you will always desire to mentor.

The good leader is:

•  Thinking beyond his leadership.

•  Thinking generationally.

•  Aware of his mortality.

•  Aware of his dispensability.

•  Responsible for the organization’s future.

•  Very secure in the position.

•  Not afraid of the success of others.

•  Acting as a visionary.

•  Preparing to leave, not to stay.

•  Securing his legacy.

I think it is very important and critical that people learn quickly as they rise in the ranks of leadership that they are
dispensable. I am always in touch with my death. Become friendly with your demise. Always think of yourself as a flower that
fades and turns to dust. You could be here today and gone tomorrow. Think that way, and you will work harder on the right
things, things like investing in people.

Have you noticed that no one lives forever? Most of us probably have a good seventy years, if we are blessed with good health.
If we are very, very blessed with grace, we may make it to seventy-five or eighty years old. After that, most of us are unable
to contribute effectively to our generation. A few
people are blessed to live to see a hundred years or more, but all will eventually die. We have to prepare for that.

A true leader is always preparing to leave. Every day I live, I write my obituary. Every day, I decide what people will say
over my dead body. I am writing that myself, and I hope you are writing yours. What will they say about you when you die?

“Success without a successor is failure.”

Leadership success is not measured by what you have done, but by what you can successfully transfer to the next generation:
the vision, the passion, the ideals, and the dreams that you will not live long enough to finish. Can you give them to someone
else? That is your leadership success. That is how you measure it—by living forever through people.

You know you are going to die, so you might as well make it worth it. Do something that is going to make you live beyond the
cemetery. Do not live just for yourself. Leadership is about transfer—the intentional release of power.

If we are good leaders or good parents, we want to leave something of what we have accumulated to those we left behind. Whether
we want to or not, we have to leave all our material assets behind, as Job, the long-suffering Old Testament servant of God,
reminds us.

Job 1:21
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The L
ORD
gave and the L
ORD
has taken away; may the name of the L
ORD
be praised.”