Passing It On: Growing Your Future Leaders (8 page)

Vision is always greater than the visionary.

Vision is purpose in pictures.

W
HILE THE LION’S
reputation for courage comes from its dominance of other animals in the wild, perhaps the bravest thing it does is to prepare
its young to stand on their own. In our lives, we deem it a courageous act even to consider giving up power. Mentoring requires
courage in multiple ways.

•  It takes courage to train your replacement.

•  It takes courage to make yourself unnecessary.

•  It takes courage to work yourself out of a job.

•  It takes courage to train the person who will make sure you do not stay.

The last thing any of us wants is to be replaced. We want to protect our position, and none of us wants to feel we are not
significant. Yet true leaders seek to replace themselves. Successful succession requires working yourself out of a job and
making room for the next phase of leadership. Jesus Christ addressed this with His disciples:

John 16:7
“But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you;
but if I go, I will send him to you.”

All leaders should have this attitude. In other words, “It is expedient that I
go away. It is necessary that I leave you. It is in your best interest that I vacate this position.”

What kind of philosophy of leadership is that? It is maturity. It is selfconfidence. It is awareness of your own value. It
is a sense of self—of knowing who you are and what your value is.

“Be willing to relinquish power. It is the sign of greatness.”

If your value comes from being a manager, then you had better not lose that position. If your significance comes from having
people call you pastor, bishop, or doctor, you had better not lose that job. However, if your value is not in the title, the
position, or the paycheck, then wherever you go, your value goes with you. Do not become synonymous with your title. Do not
become synonymous with your position. Be willing to relinquish power. This is the sign of greatness. Great leaders train their
replacements to produce more leaders.

The measures of true leadership are not how well we maintain followers but how well we:

•  Produce leaders.

•  Judge success by the diminishing dependency of the followers.

•  Make ourselves increasingly unnecessary.

•  Prove we are able to leave.

•  Produce replacements who can lead others.

Visionary leaders are already preparing for the time their leadership will end because they can see what lies ahead. They
are preparing new leaders to rise up and take their place.

The ultimate goal of true leadership is not to maintain followers but to produce leaders
.

I have taught this to thousands of leaders around the world. The conventional concept of leadership is that leaders need followers
and the number or caliber of one’s followers defines one’s leadership. This is a very dangerous notion because if one believes
having followers defines leadership, then in
order to be a leader, you will always need to have people following you.

“Following” is normally defined as lesser, subordinate, or ordinary, less intelligent, less valuable, less significant. That
too is dangerous because if you believe that your leadership depends on having people around you who are less intelligent,
then the temptation to oppress increases. The temptation to impede the advancement of others increases. Your staff ’s confidence
in their potential and hope for the future will wither.

The first measure of true leadership is in the production of leaders, the idea that every person under your influence has
the capacity to replace you and that you are committed to mentoring them to do that. That is the most wonderful attitude that
any leader can have. If the leader is dedicated to that idea, the spirit of hope, inspiration, motivation, and passion among
those around him or her is unlimited. That mentoring spirit makes the leader successful. 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.

Jesus conveyed this attitude toward His assistants and passed the mantle to them after His resurrection and reappearance to
them.

Matthew 28:18–20
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go
and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching
them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Here is a man who just accomplished the greatest victory in history, achieving authority over death and life. He achieved
authority over everything in existence. He said all authority has been “given to me,” or essentially, “I am in control of
everything.” Normally when you give people this type of power, they would use it to protect and defend their positions, to
preserve and protect their turfs. For that reason, His use of power shocks me. He takes the authority that He was given and
He delegates it, gives it away to others, and He says, “Therefore (you) go.” He told them to go and spread the power.

If you give a human all of that power, he would be tempted to take on all of the responsibility and not practice the mature
leadership principle of
sharing power. Yet Jesus did the reverse. He distributes the power to activate other people’s dreams, goals, visions, energy,
potential, gifts, and talents. He uses authority to create authority. This exemplifies the greatest act of leadership. He
is showing us that the purpose of power is to release others and empower them.

This is the shining light of true leadership. Leadership is empowerment. Leaders do not seek power. They seek to empower.
Insecure people with leadership titles pursue power. Secure leaders empower people. They mentor people to make them powerful.
My job is to make everyone around me powerful. Your job is to make everyone around you powerful. A true leader mentors to
make sure others succeed. True leaders are not concerned with their own success. They achieve success through the success
of the people they mentor. Empowerment is more important than power in the mind of a leader.

True leadership measures its success by the diminishing dependency of its followers
. This explains why many leaders do not mentor and why they do not produce successors. They believe in some strange way that
the more people depend on and need them, the greater they are as leaders. In fact, the opposite is true.

Mentees should not become parasites to a leader. They should be like a child in the womb. A parasite feeds on the host, not
giving back. It can even destroy the host. A child is not a parasite. A baby dolphin is not a parasite. A fruit on a tree
is not a parasite. While a fetus is entirely dependent on its mother, that is but only for a season. Eventually the offspring—whether
human, dolphin, or tree—emerges, grows, and becomes independent. The child is capable of giving back, even of becoming a parent.
Even the fruit pit can become a tree. Likewise, the mentee draws knowledge from the mentor, but eventually matures and is
able to function independently, contribute value, and eventually lead the organization.

True leaders do not measure success by how many people depend on them
. They mentor people to make them independent. They work for the independence of their mentees. They invest in the independence
of their mentees. They want to see their people become independent, and they take pride in that.

Leaders often become insecure when people no longer call on them for help or advice. They feel as though they are no longer
valuable. In reality, that should be the greatest evidence that the successor is able to lead. Under the leadership philosophy
of the young rabbi Jesus Christ, the emphasis should be
on reproducing leaders and making yourself increasingly unnecessary. Leadership is not about holding on, but rather about
letting go of a position.

In the Scriptures, Matthew tells of a time when Jesus went to the mountain to pray. His students went to a village where they
met a man who had a demon-possessed son. The father brought the child to them, but the disciples could not cast out the demon.
People gathered around. Then Jesus came down from the mountain and asked what was causing so much commotion.

The man said to Him basically, “I brought my son who has a problem to your students, and they could not help him.” Jesus did
not attack the man for complaining or His disciples for their failure. He asked His disciples a question that reveals a lot
about His mentoring style.

Matthew 17:14–17
When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him. “L
ORD
, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water.
I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.” “O unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “
how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?
Bring the boy here to me.”

How long should I be with you?

This is a very powerful question. This is a leadership question, a mentoring question, a leadership succession question. He
was saying in a way, “Look, I am not here forever. I want you to learn from me. I want you to understand me. I want you to
know that I will not be with you long. I will not be with you forever.”

How long must I be with you? What a beautiful question! To me this is the most awesome question about leadership succession.
This question should become a part of the vocabulary of leaders. It communicates the spirit of mentorship and succession—the
desire of true leadership to produce leaders. He expected them to handle this, so He was saying, “Look, did you not learn
anything from me? I want you all to replace me.”

He also took the time to tell them where they went wrong and how to do better next time, as the rest of the passage indicates.

Matthew 17:18–20
Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed from that moment. Then the disciples came to Jesus
in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” He replied,
“Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this
mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Jesus knew He would not be with them long, and He wanted them to face the reality. He was preparing them to take over. Immediately
after that, He tells them.

Matthew 17:22–23
When they came together in Galilee, he said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They
will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life.” And the disciples were filled with grief.

The last thing that many leaders—whether religious, corporate, educational, or political—want today is a replacement. They
protect their turf. The leaders are more concerned about protecting their position than about replicating and replacing themselves
through mentoring.

The measure of true leadership, however, is the ability to leave
. True leadership makes itself unnecessary through mentoring. Leaders must begin to accept that they are not as “irreplaceable”
as they think. Somehow we think that if we do not do something, no one will do it, or that if we cannot do it, no one can.
This too is a very dangerous fallacy. We must lead with the consciousness that we have to become unnecessary to the organization.
The more we think that way, the easier it is to mentor others, develop our successors, and invest in our replacements.

When our enterprise no longer needs us, this is the most telling evidence of success, not failure. When it is not necessary
for me to be in a board meeting to know that it will run smoothly and productively, that is a good sign. When I am absent
from a marketing meeting and the team produces great
promotional campaigns that I could not conceive, this reveals a good sign that my leadership has been effective. I am not
in the pulpit preaching every Sunday morning. Yet the church continues to fill up with people, and the congregation is inspired
and exalted. That is evidence that the positive results and impact of mentoring those in the environment of the ministry are
experiencing a measure of success.

True leadership makes itself increasingly unnecessary
. Gradually the leader can leave because he did such a great job. The greatest example of this is Jesus Christ. He sat with
the disciples in the upper room, and He talked about leaving. After He died and rose from the grave, He lingered with them
for a while and then finally left. To a degree, they were still dependent on Him. We can tell because they stayed, looking
up and staring after He ascended into heaven.

Acts 1:6–11
So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to
them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when
the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of
the earth.” After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking
intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they
said, “
why do you stand here looking into the sky?
This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”