Growing Leader
The best leaders produce more leaders! Here's how!
My People,
The Backdrop
Farmers around the world understand a simple principle: if you are going to be in the business of growing something, you must recognize two things.
First, growth takes time. Patience is a virtue because anything worth growing will not flourish overnight. You have to plant the seed, trust the process, and believe that what you are cultivating today will eventually produce fruit. For leaders, that can be one of the hardest lessons to embrace but also one of the most important.
Second, while waiting, you have to provide the proper nutrients. Growth does not happen simply because time passes. What we plant needs intentional care, attention, resources, and the right environment to become what it was created to be.
I think we can learn a lot from farmers as we step into this academic year. If we want to kick things off with a win, we have to think differently about what it truly means to grow leaders.
The Problem
It is important that our leadership bears fruit.
A hill I will die on is this: the best leaders create other leaders.
I call this the “Leadership Circle of Life.” As we develop leaders, we create a growing pool of talented individuals who have the skills to have impact. Think of that pool as a fruit basket.
A healthy fruit basket needs variety.
Every leader needs to understand what kind of tree they are and what kind of fruit they naturally bear.
We don’t need lemon trees trying to produce oranges. We need lemon trees producing the best lemons possible.
Too many leaders are trying to produce multiple kinds of fruit from a tree that was never designed to produce them. We see someone else’s leadership style working and assume we need to replicate it. Then, instead of cultivating leaders from a place of authenticity, we begin trying to manufacture leaders who lead exactly like us.
Our goal should not be to create copies of ourselves. Our goal should be to cultivate leaders who understand who they are and have what they need to flourish.
The Solution
This begins with becoming secure in your own leadership identity.
Mainstream leadership development teaches us that there is one “right” kind of tree. We become convinced that perhaps the apple tree is the best because everyone seems to celebrate apples. So the lemon tree starts questioning its lemons. The orange tree starts trying to grow apples. And eventually, we have leaders spending more energy trying to become someone else than developing what is already inside of them.
Instead, you have to own your tree.
Own your leadership style.
Because when you understand what is true about your own leadership, you become better equipped to recognize what is true about the leaders around you.
