ONE
THE LEADERâS KEY QUESTION:
AM I RAISING UP
POTENTIAL LEADERS?
One night, after working quite late, I grabbed a copy of Sports Illustrated, hoping its pages would lull me to sleep. It had the opposite effect. On the back cover was an advertisement that caught my eye and got my emotional juices flowing. It featured a picture of John Wooden, the coach who led the UCLA Bruins for many years. The caption beneath his picture read, âThe guy who puts the ball through the hoop has ten hands.â
John Wooden was a great basketball coach. Called âthe Wizard of Westwood,â he brought ten national basketball championships to UCLA in a span of twelve years. Two back-to-back championships are almost unheard of in the world of competitive sports, but he led the Bruins to seven titles in a row. It took a consistent level of superior play, good coaching, and hard practice. But the key to the Bruinsâs success was Coach Woodenâs unyielding dedication to his concept of teamwork.
He knew that if you oversee people and you wish to develop leaders, you are responsible to: (1) appreciate them for who they are; (2) believe that they will do their very best; (3) praise their accomplishments; and (4) accept your personal responsibility to them as their leader.
Coach Bear Bryant expressed this same sentiment when he said:
Iâm just a plow hand from Arkansas, but I have learned how to hold a team togetherâhow to lift some men up, how to calm others down, until finally theyâve got one heartbeat together as a team. Thereâs always just three things I say: âIf anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, then we did it. If anything goes real good, they did it.â Thatâs all it takes to get people to win.
Bear Bryant won people and games. Until a few years ago, he held the title of the winningest coach in the history of college football with 323 victories.
Great leadersâthe truly successful ones who are in the top 1 percentâall have one thing in common. They know that acquiring and keeping good people is a leaderâs most important task. An organization cannot increase its productivityâbut people can! The asset that truly appreciates within any organization is people. Systems become dated. Buildings deteriorate. Machinery wears. But people can grow, develop, and become more effective if they have a leader who understands their potential value.
The bottom lineâand the essential message of this bookâis that you canât do it alone. If you really want to be a successful leader, you must develop other leaders around you. You must establish a team. You must find a way to get your vision seen, implemented, and contributed to by others. The leader sees the big picture, but he needs other leaders to help make his mental picture a reality.
Acquiring and
keeping good people
is a leaderâs most
important task.
Most leaders have followers around them. They believe the key to leadership is gaining more followers. Few leaders surround themselves with other leaders, but the ones who do bring great value to their organizations. And not only is their burden lightened, but their vision is also carried on and enlarged.
WHY LEADERS NEED TO REPRODUCE LEADERS
The key to surrounding yourself with other leaders is to find the best people you can, then develop them into the best leaders they can be. Great leaders produce other leaders. Let me tell you why:
THOSE CLOSEST TO THE LEADER WILL DETERMINE THE SUCCESS LEVEL OF THAT LEADER
The greatest leadership principle that I have learned in more than thirty years of leadership is that those closest to the leader will determine the success level of that leader. A negative reading of this statement is also true: Those closest to the leader will determine the level of failure for that leader. In other words, the people close to me âmake me or break me.â The determination of a positive or negative outcome in my leadership depends upon my ability as a leader to develop those closest to me. It also depends upon my ability to recognize the value that others bring to my organization. My goal is not to draw a following that results in a crowd. My goal is to develop leaders who become a movement.
Stop for a moment and think of the five or six people closest to you in your organization. Are you developing them? Do you have a game plan for them? Are they growing? Have they been able to lift your load?
Within my organizations leadership development is continually emphasized. In their first training session, I give new leaders this principle: As a potential leader you are either an asset or a liability to the organization. I illustrate this truth by saying, âWhen thereâs a problem, a âfireâ in the organization, you as a leader are often the first to arrive at the scene. You have in your hands two buckets. One contains water and the other contains gasoline. The âsparkâ before you will either become a greater problem because you pour the gasoline on it, or it will be extinguished because you use the bucket of water.â
Every person within your organization also carries two buckets. The question a leader needs to ask is, âAm I training them to use the gasoline or the water?â
AN ORGANIZATIONâS GROWTH POTENTIAL IS DIRECTLY RELATED TO ITS PERSONNEL POTENTIAL
When conducting leadership conferences, I often make the statement, âGrow a leaderâgrow the organization.â A company cannot grow without until its leaders grow within.
Grow a leaderâ
grow the
organization.
I am often amazed at the amount of money, energy, and marketing focus organizations spend on areas that will not produce growth. Why advertise that the customer is number one when the personnel have not been trained in customer service? When customers arrive, they will know the difference between an employee who has been trained to give service and one who hasnât. Slick brochures and catchy slogans will never overcome incompetent leadership.
In 1981 I became Senior Pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, California. This congregation averaged 1,000 in attendance from 1969 to 1981, and it was on an obvious plateau. When I assumed leadership responsibilities, the first question I asked was, âWhy has the growth stopped?â I needed to find an answer, so I called my first staff meeting and gave a lecture titled The Leadership Line. My thesis was, âLeaders determine the level of an organization.â I drew a line across a marker board and wrote the number â1,000.â I shared with the staff that for thirteen years the average attendance at Skyline was 1,000. I knew the staff could lead 1,000 people effectively. What I did not know was whether they could lead 2,000 people. So I drew a dotted line and wrote the number 2,000, and I placed a question mark between the two lines. I then drew an arrow from the bottom 1,000 to the top 2,000 line and wrote the word âchange.âIt would be my responsibility to train them and help them make the necessary changes to reach our new goal. When the leaders changed positively, I knew the growth would become automatic. Now, I had to help them change themselves, or I knew I would literally have to change them by hiring others to take their place.
From 1981 to 1995 I gave this lecture at Skyline on three occasions. The last time, the number 4,000 was placed on the top line. As I discovered, the numbers changed, but the lecture didnât. The strength of any organization is a direct result of the strength of its leaders. Weak leaders equal weak organizations. Strong leaders equal strong organizations. Everything rises and falls on leadership.
Everything rises and
falls on leadership.
POTENTIAL LEADERS HELP CARRY THE LOAD
Businessman Rolland Young said, âI am a self-made man, but I think if I had it to do over again, I would call in someone else!â Usually leaders fail to develop other leaders either because they lack training or because they possess wrong attitudes about allowing and encouraging others to come alongside them. Often, leaders wrongly believe that they must compete with the people close to them instead of working with them. Great leaders have a different mind-set. In Profiles in Courage, President John F. Kennedy wrote, âThe best way to go along is to get along with others.â This kind of positive interaction can happen only if the leader has an attitude of interdependency with others and is committed to win-win relationships.
Take a look at differences be...