Passing It On: Growing Your Future Leaders (2 page)
Be ever mindful that you are a link in a long chain of purpose that was designed to fulfill the divine desire of the Creator.
Thus, life is not about you, but it is about preparation for the next phase.
History is replete with sad stories of great leaders who accomplished outstanding social, economic, military, political, or
spiritual feats only to witness an unprepared succeeding leadership dismantle most of what they spent a lifetime laboring
to create. It is a true tragedy to see one generation’s work destroyed, ignored, or devalued by the one that followed.
I am certain that every leader throughout history desired to see a vision, work, programs, projects, mission, and passion
continued beyond his or her tenure. No generation wants its hard-fought leadership success to be
swallowed up in a whirlwind of neglect, insensitivity, and lack of appreciation for the sacrifice expended on that achievement.
We must mentor! No greater measure of leadership success exists than the ability to protect, preserve, and transfer the accomplishments
of the present leadership to the next generation. This is the heart of the principle of succession and must be a priority
in our twenty-first century leadership challenge. This book is about this challenge, and I invite you to join the adventure
and the journey. It is my hope that this book will inspire and equip you to think beyond your own leadership and motivate
you to leave a legacy, not in institutions or on tombstones, but in people. May you always remember that your success depends
on your successors.
Dr. Myles Munroe
The Principles—Success Is to Perpetuate Purpose for Posterity
Chapter 1
The Greatest Leadership Obligation Is Preparing Your Replacement
H
UMAN OBSERVERS HAVE
designated the lion “king of the wild” or “king of the beasts.” Lions are the largest creature in the cat family and of all
African carnivores. These large and powerful creatures have the loudest roar and are the leading predators in their ecosystem.
The lion is fierce, courageous, and cunning. Yet even the lion knows it will not be “king” forever. The lion is constantly
working to prepare its replacement to run the kingdom.
Lions are the only cats that live in groups. Lions travel in prides. A pride is essentially a family of lions and lionesses
that live and work together to create an environment in which to “mentor” cubs, the next generation of “kings” and “queens.”
Before the cub is a year old, the lioness meticulously begins to train her young to hunt and to survive.
Lions are visionary leaders.
Whether you are the head of a family, captain of a football team, chair of a women’s organization, president of a company,
the CEO of a corporation, the pastor of a church, or the pilot of an aircraft, you are the responsible leader. In your domain,
you are king. You are a visionary leader. Your gift
has taken you to the top. Congratulations! You have arrived. Now, find your replacement. The first act of a true leader, a
visionary leader like you, should be to identify your replacement and begin mentoring that person to eventually succeed you.
You might identify several individuals and groom each of them for leadership.
You may ask, “Why? I have other things to do first. I just got here, and I have all these plans. That can wait.”
It should not wait. Perhaps if you knew just how long you might remain healthy, active, and effective or how long you might
live, it could wait. None of us knows these things. We must prepare someone to follow us. We will have mentored and trained
this leader-in-waiting so carefully and thoroughly that he or she could step in at a moment’s notice to take our place and
run on without stumbling. That person would preserve what we have built and take it to new heights.
“The first act of a visionary leader like you should be to identify and begin mentoring your replacement.”
Our successors can do that only if we have groomed and trained them to the best of our abilities for the day they take over.
It was our duty to bring them into our inner circle, expose them to our contacts, and instill in them all the wisdom we can
offer.
The greatest obligation of true leadership is to transfer the deposit of knowledge, wealth, experience, influence, relationships,
and understanding to the next generation. The word
obligation
means a responsibility you have to the future. Perhaps you have been measuring your success by the trappings, as I once did.
You see it in terms of the size of a building you built, your salary, a house—or the car. Remember all of those things are
decaying daily, and if you built your success on those things, it is eroding daily.
It is not good enough to transfer a title, a facility, or a building to the next generation. It is more important to transfer
your knowledge, your experience, and your values—the things that have helped you to succeed. Giving those to the next generation
is more important than giving money and wealth. Leadership includes taking what made you who you are and giving it to someone
else. That cannot happen without mentoring.
Every leader wants to be successful, but we rarely think about succession
as proof of success, the final measure of our own success. We think in terms of projects, products, the bottom line, and profits.
We do not think in terms of people. Buildings do not succeed you. Equipment does not succeed you. Only people can succeed
you and carry on your vision. People will remember your name and perpetuate your legacy. As we age and consider our frailties
and our mortality, it is time to start doubling up on the time spent on mentoring and preparing for a smooth succession.
The first act of true leadership is to identify, train, and develop a replacement
. To put it another way, the first act is to begin mentoring this new leader. If I can get this point across, I could help
save many organizations, departments, ministries, and countries.
The first thing that many leaders do when they enter a position of power is to get rid of opposition. They try to annihilate
threats. You see this in Third-World countries and leading industrial nations. It is the spirit of “kill or be killed.” You
see it in businesses, where those who are threats to corporate power are fired. I am recommending the opposite. Your first
act should be to begin surveying the horizon, looking around you to identify the potential replacement/successor, and mentoring
this prospect.
Before we go on, it might be helpful to share with you (or to review for those who have read my previous books) my philosophies
about what leadership is. You have to understand and appreciate what you have before you can pass it on. You have to be the
right kind of leader to produce leaders for the future.
I have spent decades studying the issue of leadership from the time I was an undergraduate at Oral Roberts University and
a graduate student in leadership administration at the University of Tulsa. I have studied the theories of many business leaders,
economists, and scholars on leadership. The many theories and perspectives offered by the early and contemporary leadership
gurus addressed multiple issues and principles on the subject of leadership. However, I was still unsatisfied in my pursuit
of understanding the essence of true leadership, and I continued my search and research. It was not until I discovered
the leadership philosophy and school of thought of the young Jewish rabbi Jesus Christ that I felt I had found the answer
to the leadership dilemma. It was His introduction and demonstration of the philosophy of “servant leadership” that provided
the context for the type and style of leadership that brings value, worth, and dignity to all humankind. After many years
of study and implementing this philosophy of leadership in my life and organization, I have seen the superior advantage and
benefits to both the individual and the corporate effort. This “servant leadership” philosophy forms the foundation of all
the content of the leadership training programs, seminars, and consulting projects that I have facilitated around the world.
I have written dozens of books and spoken hundreds of times on this leadership philosophy and model exemplified by Jesus Christ.
His standard for leadership was that of serving your gift and energy to the followers for their benefit. He modeled the behavior
of a servant leader and urged His protégés to do likewise. In His final “working dinner” with them, He demonstrated and later
explained the concept.
Matthew 20:25–27
Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials
exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead,
whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant
, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—”
Then He goes on to say:
Matthew 20:28
“Just as the Son of Man
did not come to be served, but to serve
, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Jesus’ concept of the leader as servant and not as one to be served was demonstrated by Jesus Himself, and He urged students
(the disciples) to achieve greatness through the same spirit of leading through service, not by controlling or oppressing
others. Servant leadership, as I define
it, is the discovery of one’s purpose, gifts, and talents with a commitment to offer them in service to humankind. In other
words, servant leadership is the discovery of what you are supposed to serve to the world.
Servant leadership is being prepared to serve one’s gift at every opportunity. Now, I want to emphasize the last part of the
statement:
every opportunity
. To become an effective leader, you have to take advantage of each chance to serve. Do not wait until you are great to be
great, or you will never be great.
If the bathroom needs cleaning, that is an opportunity to exercise your gift for attention to detail and high standards to
those in your organization. If they need help with the youth organization, that is an opportunity to demonstrate your gift
for empathizing with and commanding respect from young people. If the leaders need someone to clean the building after every
session, volunteer and display your gift for organization by recruiting and supervising a team to do it quickly and efficiently.
That is an opportunity to serve. If the organization needs someone to type and you can do that, then submit yourself. While
serving, you can show off your speed, devotion to accuracy, and mastery of computer skills.
Maybe your vision is to become a great speaker, teacher, pastor, or CEO. That opportunity has not come yet, but the opportunity
to park the cars presents itself. Park the cars. If nothing else, you can demonstrate your loyalty and your people skills
in handling the owners. Servant leadership is serving at every opportunity.
In a previous book
In Charge: Finding the Leader Within You
, I summarized my thinking about servant leadership. These are the key points:
•
Every human being was created to lead
. Your desire and disposition to lead is inborn.
•
Every human possesses leadership potential
. You have the ability to lead in an area of gifting.
•
Trapped in every follower is a hidden leader
. If you accept false
ideas about who can or cannot become a leader, it can smother your potential.
•
Though everyone was born to lead, most will die as followers
. If you do not identify and tap into your giftedness, it will be wasted and buried with you.
•
Leadership is your history and your destiny
. You were created to be a leader and designed to fulfill your assignment.
•
The world needs your leadership
. You exist to meet a specific need on earth that no one else can meet.
Succession is an amazing word. It begins with the very concept of success. Success has to do with movement. It has to do with
continuity.
Successful succession guarantees continuity
. Succession means to “follow after,” but the definitions of “succeed” in some dictionaries even put the sense of “following”
before the idea of doing well. Etymologists tell us that the word
succeed
comes from ancient terms that mean to “follow” or “go under.”
Success itself has to do with advancing toward something, and for the most part, people think of success as “I establish a
goal. I move toward the goal, and I accomplish the goal. I am finished.” In a very simplistic sense, that is true; you decide
you want to build a house, and you start the design, you build it, and now that it is finished, you receive the key. You could
call that success, but succession preserves success.
We normally think of success as having to do with pursuing, achieving, and concluding something, but success implies moving,
advancing, continuing. Succession is the perpetuation of purpose. Purpose is your assignment. Succession is protecting your
assignment beyond your lifetime. Succession preserves all of your hard work after you retire or die. Succession is the transition
of the leader’s purpose, content, character, standards, values, morals, and qualities to succeeding generations. Succession
first involves transferring your vision to another generation of leaders. That is a hard thing to do.
It means you must transfer your way of thinking to another person. That requires a lot of intimate time together. To effect
the vision transfer, the mentor must devote time to the potential successor.
The vision must live on even if you die. If your vision dies with you, you failed. I have seen unfinished churches overgrown
with grass. Why? Because the leader failed. Crowds came to his services and people shouted at his sermons, but no one carried
on and completed his tabernacle. The weeds that choke the unfinished dreams will always expose failure. Unfinished monuments
are a sign of failure, telltale signs that you did not mentor and invest in the right thing, the people for whom you were
responsible.
