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How to Build Leaders Who Excel

One of the most crucial roles of a leader is to ensure the leaders on his team are developing others. This is absolutely essential for the long-term health and vitality of the organization.

But one of the challenges to reproducing new leaders is a commitment to doing things right. We’ve all heard it:“If you want it done right, you just have to do it yourself.” 

Instead of investing the time and energy it takes to teach others, many leaders just do the job themselves. But we actually hurt our organization when we put excellence above multiplication.

All of us want to see our church or company produce at the highest level possible. We want to put our best foot forward and be proud of the product we deliver.

So how do we develop leaders while delivering excellence at the same time?

Here are a few tips to balance this tension and eliminate this excuse for not reproducing leaders.

Lengthen the developmental process.

We love to rush reproduction. But developing leaders takes time.

Instead of having a two-week training process, why not a two-month or even six-month process? Allow potential leaders to walk alongside and learn from those on your team who lead with excellence. But don’t allow your commitment to excellence nullify your commitment to reproduction.

You can choose not to develop anyone and allow your current team to produce excellence, totally ignoring the development of future leaders, or you can lay out a longer developmental pathway.

I love Christian Community Church’s approach. They use an apprenticeship model in every area of ministry to ensure the leaders are being developed over a long period of time.

Define excellence.

How do you quantify excellence? If excellence is undefined, the potential leader will have a difficult time achieving it.

We can’t hit a target we can’t see.