It takes courage to make yourself unnecessary. We do not want to feel that we are not significant, but great leaders move themselves out of the spotlight. So often, when we get in a place of power, we settle in.
We begin to make plans on how we are going to hold our positions permanently. It takes courage for leaders to work themselves out of a job, but that is what succession is about: making room for the next phase of leadership.
Jesus Christ, the greatest leader, expressed His great leadership in His statement, “It is good that I go” (Jn 16:7). What kind of leadership philosophy is that? It is a philosophy based on maturity and self-confidence.
It is an awareness of one’s value. If your significance comes from being called pastor, bishop, or manager, I hope you never lose that job. However, if your value is not in the title, position, or paycheck, wherever you go, your value goes with you. Do not become synonymous with your title. Be willing to relinquish power. It is a sign of greatness.
Diminishing dependency is the measure of effective leadership and the tenet upon which leadership success is based. It takes all the skills of a leader to create an environment where they become less important. Sometimes the quality of the people around you may be tough to work with, and you may have to start from zero.
The people in your environment that you want to develop into leaders may need a lot of work. However, you must have a great deal of skill and patience to be an effective mentor. You have to trust your successors with power and with the right to make decisions.
As a leader, your greatest contribution is to outlive yourself. How do you outlive yourself? Through effective mentorship-you transfer yourself to other people. Succession is about living beyond the grave. The only way to outlive your life is to reproduce yourself in the next generation.
If you seek power because you need power, you will never mentor. However, if you seek to serve the next generation, you will always desire to mentor. As people rise in the ranks of leadership, they need to remember that they are dispensable.
You should think of yourself as a flower that can fade. You are here today and gone today. If you think that way, you will work harder on the right things.
We must not measure leadership in what we achieve or by the programs and projects that we complete or establish. People do not remember your events or projects. You cannot build projects as your legacy.
We need to measure leadership and success in terms of the kind of people that we produce and by what we do for those people. That is how you measure success.
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