Passing It On: Growing Your Future Leaders (3 page)

Success is not what happens while you are alive. Success is what happens after you leave. This is why the word
successive
is so important. The terms
successive
or
succeeding
generations suggest continuity. We want to be successful, so we accomplish a project. We are proud that we did it and want
everyone to remember what we produced in our lifetime. That is not success. Success is knowing someone will continue the work
after you leave.

You are successful if your vision outlives you through another person. If we forget you after you die, no matter how great
your accomplishments were, you are a failure. You measure your success by the people you leave behind. Someone who comes after
you can destroy every goal that you achieved. If you are sixty, seventy, or eighty years old and you have done wonderful things,
will they outlast you? The only way to guarantee they will is through succession.
True leadership is about continuity
.

Succession is not just achieving success. Succession is preserving success. What you achieve, you need someone to preserve.
Can you imagine building your family business all your life and then some untrained son sells it after you die for half the
price, just so he can buy some golf clubs? All your life you worked hard, invested and built a building, built a business,
or built this massive empire. Then a son, daughter, cousin, or your wife’s next husband sells it on the market for half the
price to buy something that provides immediate gratification. We have seen this happen very often.

When it is time for leaders to transition, many have not prepared a successor, so there is a conflict, a fight, or a scuffle
for leadership. When a new leader emerges from that, the winner may be committed to destroying everything you have built to
prove that he is different or better. This has been the modus operandi of most leaders. If you have studied developing countries,
you know that in most cases when a leadership transition occurs, a coup breaks out. Often people are killed and the country
experiences tremendous turmoil. A similar thing happens in corporate board rooms, political parties, and church organizations
when it is time for these transitions, generally without the violence though.

This is why succession is so critical. It preserves success. Greatness in leadership is measured by its continuity. It is
not about you. It is about the next generation. You do not want anyone to destroy, misuse, or redirect your organization from
its original intent. You want it to advance and develop beyond what you have done. You keep your purpose alive through a successor.
You do not want all your dreams, plans, and ideas to go into the casket with you. Keep them alive in someone you mentor.

My definition of succession is the effective transfer, conveyance, and transition of the leader’s vision, passion, purpose,
intent, dreams, character, standards, values, morals, and qualities to succeeding generations of leaders
.

Succession perpetuates purpose.

T
HE MAJORITY OF
the experiences that most of us have had with leadership transfer came after somebody died. What follows usually is not a
smooth transfer, but a conflict, a fight, a struggle. Many times brokenness, frustration, and, worst of all, a split will
cripple or destroy the organization the leader built. How many of us have seen this in our families, churches, governments,
or businesses?

When the “president for life” of the African nation of Gabon died recently after more than forty years in office, government
leaders at first denied he was even ill and continued to dispute reports that he was in ill health only hours before announcing
his demise. Due to fear of a coup as news of his death spread, national officials immediately shut airports, closed borders,
blocked Internet service, and stationed guards in government buildings and at the utilities. Traffic was in gridlock as people
sped home from work and rushed out to buy groceries, fearing stores would close.

That may be the extreme, but chaos is very common when a leader dies. Anyone who has lived long enough to experience leadership
transition will agree that confusion, fear, uncertainty, and insecurity accompanied the change. All of these can be very debilitating,
immobilizing, and dangerous to the organization, country, family, or business. They are a direct result of the leader’s failure
to prepare for transition, products of the inability or un-
willingness to mentor and prepare others to succeed him.

When the head of the family dies, children fight among themselves for the spoils. Jealousy and hatred destroy the love they
might have shared in the past. Look at the infighting over the custody of Michael Jackson’s children and the disposition of
his assets. To some, he was just a successful entertainer, to others an oddity, but he was also the head of a family and the
leader of a billion-dollar entertainment enterprise generated by his music and rights to the music of the Beatles and others.
The legal battles could go on for years and destroy what he left. Even in ordinary families, children, stepchildren, wives,
ex-wives, and coinhabitants may fight so bitterly over petty issues and things of little worth that kinfolk do not associate
with each other generations later.

“Measure leadership success by the success of the successor.”

I have seen the chaos of transition in corporations, churches, and other organizations as well. When one strong leader passes
on, fighting takes hold. Followers resort to deception, deceit, and destruction. These are indicators of the failure to prepare
and mentor successors. How does one leader transfer leadership to the next without destroying the organization and losing
everything?

The greatest act of leadership is mentoring
. It took me forty years to write this one sentence. I thought a great leader is one who built a big building or organized
a massive campaign. I thought leadership was about building a corporation worth millions. This is not the measure of greatness.
Greatness must be measured by the transfer of success to future generations. In this book, I want to talk about how to transfer
leadership from one generation to another, from one leader to another.

I find it very intriguing that the first-century, young rabbi Jesus Christ built an organization at thirty years old that
is now more than two thousand years old. It is the largest company on earth with upward of two billion clients. I happen to
work for the company. He started the company with just eleven investors, to whom he gave shares. They did not have to buy
them.
The greatest leader of all time gave these shares to the partners by passing on knowledge, by mentoring. He told them they
were no longer servants because a servant does not know what his master is doing. He had shared everything with them, so they
were “friends.”

John 15:15
“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends,
for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

Jesus was a secure leader. “I am going to give you everything,” He essentially said. “Why? Because I don’t plan to stay.”

That is not an attitude that we often see in leaders today. Jesus never built a building, never opened a bank account, and
never established a physical institution, yet His company is still expanding after two thousand years. That means greatness
and leadership is not in buildings. It is in building people. We are so stuck on wanting our names on buildings, which can
decay and fall down, that we forget the greatest investment any leader can make is in people.

Some leaders have their names engraved in their office chairs. They have that chair chained to the floor, and they have a
seat belt on the chair. Every Monday they click it on and say, “No one is taking this. This is my position, my company, my
church…”

True leaders do not hold on to the knowledge, experience, achievements, opportunities, or relationships they accrue in their
positions. True leaders transfer knowledge. They cultivate the inquisitiveness of their mentees. Like the lioness, they encourage
the mentees to observe them in action. The leader encourages them to ask questions. “Ask me how I did this and why I did this.
I want you to know what I know. Because the sooner you learn this, the more quickly I can move on to my next position.”
The greatest accomplishment of leadership is succession
. Failure to mentor a successor is the cancellation of leadership legacy. Failure to mentor a successor is the cancellation
of your own legacy.

Your influence will not continue in buildings or bank accounts. Your influence will continue in people. This is why the greatest
leader of all time invested three and a half years in people—in a training program for people. He had this idea of living
forever through them. Buildings are perishable. People live on. You last in those who remember your name. You last in those
you mentor. You last in the leaders you left in your place and in the leaders that those leaders train to replace them and
so forth.

I do not want my name on a building because a hurricane, a terrorist act, or an earthquake could wipe it out. I want people
to remember my name by the continuing leadership of those I mentored and by the successor that I molded.

So we need to consider: what are our priorities?

Four principles summarize my concept of succession in leadership:

1.  Visionary leadership is generational.

2.  Vision is greater than the visionary.

3.  Mentoring is the highest responsibility of leadership.

4.  Succession is the greatest measure of leadership success.

Leaders must focus not so much on fulfilling their vision as on preparing new leaders to carry it forward. Many leaders have
great vision, but they think they should fulfill it in their lifetime. They do not think much about posterity. When a leader
does not prepare the successor, the result is always chaos and destruction. Two major mistakes leaders make are to believe
that they are the only ones who could and should fulfill the vision and to think that they should fulfill it in their lifetime.

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. Visionary leaders always think of their mortality. They
are not afraid of it. They interpret destiny as the privilege to paint in a small piece of history. This is why visionary
leaders communicate the vision of the future effectively. They are able to paint pictures and give conceptual vision to the
future of others. Visionary leaders transfer ownership of the vision to the next generation. Visionary leaders focus on
training others to fulfill the vision even beyond their lifetime. Leaders lead beyond their own leadership. They go beyond
what they are supposed to do. They are constantly thinking about what remains after death. These are true leaders.

Measure leadership success by the success of the successor
. This means that true leadership does not use achievements or goals, programs and projects as measures of success, but looks
to the quality, character, competence, and passion of people around the leader who can fulfill the vision. Leaders are not
in the business of focusing on projects. To a true leader, people are more important than projects. People are more important
than paper, personal ambitions, or pride. Leaders do not manage people. Leaders develop people.

Mentoring is the greatest and highest responsibility of leadership. It is not just a necessity for the operation. It is obligatory.
Yet the responsibility for mentoring is usually not in the forefront of leaders’ minds. Most people we consider leaders focus
mainly on themselves, their own achievements, and their successes. They focus on what they want to do, what they want to be
known for, and what they want to build as a legacy. Most leaders build their legacy in their work and not in people. I encourage
you to shift that paradigm. Your greatest legacy is not a product or an institution that you left behind, but rather a person
or people. This approach is different from anything else I have read on succession and leadership.

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

The average leader today has no interest in mentoring. He or she is preoccupied with defending a position and protecting turf.
These are insecure, false leaders with titles.

You know people in your company who have been there for forty years, and you still cannot get rid of them. They do not even
want promotions. They just want that position. How do you break that spirit? You teach them about mentoring. Teach this to
your staff, those you are mentoring, because if they understand this early, they will not hold on to jobs too tightly. They
will not develop the spirit of entitlement. That spirit of “this is my space” will be broken if they study and embrace mentorship.

Mentoring involves encouraging another to serve in that person’s area of gifting. Through the opportunities for service that
you provide, the mentee can discover, practice, and refine a gift. By serving that gift to others, the mentee discerns and
fulfills purpose. At the same time, seeing you serve so willingly and joyfully influences the mentee. The mentee helps you
carry out your vision and fulfill your purpose.

I have come to define true leadership as
the capacity to influence others through inspiration, generated by a passion, motivated by a vision, brought by a conviction,
produced by a purpose
.