Life or Death?
You choose.
Improve these 3 areas and your organization will LIVE.
Ignore these 3 areas and your organization will DIE.
Maybe not immediately, but it will die slowly.
Here’s the BIG 3
- Leadership/Learning Culture
- Training
- Coaching
- Leadership/Learning Culture
It’s been said a variety of ways but within leadership, “You attract who you are.” Emerging leaders don’t join organizations that fail to take them further then where they already are. Although leaders want a challenge, they also want to serve alongside like-minded people.
Top leaders value personal growth and want to invest their lives in a worthy organization that is believable. Likewise, such leaders want to serve within a structure and a culture that contains momentum and will complement with their gifts, talents, and abilities. (The alternative is no alternative at all–a culture that frustrates, limits, and repels leaders.)
In order to attract the next generation of leaders, we need to create a leadership/learning culture that will discover, develop, and deploy leaders into strategic initiatives. Although work gets messy, we need to present a model that adequately envisions, equips, and empowers men and women to navigate successfully through these storms.
The moment a compelling vision is cast to emerging and/or established leaders is the moment they test the waters and discern if the vision is believable and achievable. If necessary training to reach the next step is nonexistent or inferior then these leaders will become discouraged, disillusioned, and disengaged.
When we identify leaders without simultaneously providing adequate training to develop them we convey a culture of reactionary unpreparedness as opposed to strategic preparedness. When a leader is recruited we have one chance to communicate a development plan. Leaders kept in “the wings” or “in pools” until training systems get created will be lost.
Why? It’s simple.
True leaders lead.They don’t wait around for someone to tell them what to do. Leaders that aren’t engaged in the process will engage themselves in other projects or endeavors that are going somewhere.
Leaders will not serve undersomeone who is a less skilled leader. This may work in the short-term, but it is not a sustainable strategy. Emerging leaders respect those leaders who have a greater skill than themselves. This isn’t a “sinful tendency,” it’s just reality. (We see this trend in John 1:35-51.)
We all have a certain amount of leadership potential. Some leaders choose to develop their potential and increase their leadership skill. One of the easiest ways to increase one’s leadership skills is to serve under someone who is a better leader. We see this pattern in athletics.
If an inferior team plays against a superior team often times they are pushed to play better. A better team stretches them and causes them to grow. It’s the same with leadership. A leader’s potential is determined by those closest to him. A leader reproduces who he or she is within the lives of his or her followers. Emerging leaders know this. They won’t follow positional leaders who are weaker than themselves.
In organizations, if we want strong emerging leaders to join us then we need to offer them something compelling. We need to be stronger than they are. We need to be sharper than they are. Some of our current leaders need to be coached before they coach others. It’s hypocritical to think that we will attract leaders who want to grow and develop when we are not growing or developing.
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So how is your church, business, or organization doing in these 3 areas?
Would you add a 4th?
If so what?
