Mini-Me Leadership

What kind of leaders are coming out of your leadership program?
This is a very important question. The purpose of leadership development is not to turn out clones of you. I can’t think of a more egocentric way to pollute the world. What the world does not need is another you. I’m sorry, but it’s true. What the world needs is a man or woman that God has created specially and specifically for their own task.
Let’s stop trying to turn out mini-me’s and let’s start partnering with God to help Him turn out the kind of leaders that He wants.
Our job as leadership developers is to work with and hone our students as individuals, allowing them each to become what God has intended them to become, not what you are. This is very difficult for some leaders to put into practice, because they are very familiar with what trained and honed them as leaders. Each of us are different though, and each of us are going to need a different “program” to train us as leaders.
Let me give you a good negative example. I am a reader. I read voraciously. I learn from reading, and I love it. Right now I am mentoring a young leader who is not a reader (not that they don’t read, but they don’t read like me; see how egocentric this can get?). At first, I tried to make them read. That didn’t work so well. When that didn’t work I found out what kind of a learner I was dealing with and began to teach to their strengths. That worked much better.
What this means for us is it’s not going to be easy to train new leaders. It’s hard, messy, and time-consuming. But nothing worth doing was ever easy.

Training Tomorrow’s Leaders Today,
Matt