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How to Develop Potential Leaders Leadership

How to Develop Potential Leaders with .0025% of Your Time Each Month

Coaching is an essential element to groom potential leaders. Even if potential leaders do new projects and actively pursue professional growth, they still need a little bit of coaching every month from their direct supervisor. What is coaching? According to Clinton and Stanley, “The Coach’s central thrust is to provide motivation and impart skills and application to meet a task or challenge.”[ref]Paul Stanley and J. Robert Clinton, Connecting: The Mentoring Relationships You Need to Succeed in Life (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1992), 73.[/ref] Let’s look at how to do that.

How to Develop Potential Leaders with .0025% of Your Time Each Month

Photo Credit: Robert Sullivan

THIRTY MINUTES A MONTH

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How to Develop Potential Leaders Leadership

How to Develop Potential Leaders by Giving Them New Projects and Tasks

In his book, Developing the Leaders Around You, John Maxwell writes, “Varied experiences add incredibly to people’s development. It keeps them growing, stretching, and learning. The broader people’s base of experience, the better they will be at handling new challenges, solving problems, and overcoming difficult situations” (p. 118).

Providing potential leaders with new projects and tasks gives them the skills they need to develop into leaders. Thankfully, this idea helps current leaders because they can get rid of projects they are working on which can easily be delegated to potential leaders. However, this is not an opportunity for leaders to dump tasks that leaders do not want to do onto potential leaders.

How to Develop Potential Leaders by Giving Them New Projects and Tasks

Photo Credit: Robert Sullivan

If you are a leader that needs to develop potential leaders, here’s how you can develop those potential leaders. 

LEADERS DELEGATE PROJECTS AND TASKS

Leaders must be intentional about what they delegate. Three criteria are important to follow when leaders look for projects to delegate to potential leaders.

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How to Develop Potential Leaders Leadership

Top 5 Qualities and Skills You Should Look for in Potential Leaders

In organizations, people will always come and go. Therefore, to remain viable, an organization must develop a pipeline of potential leaders.

John Maxwell describes the importance of looking for potential leaders in his book, Developing the Leaders Around You, when he writes, “There is something much more important and scarce than ability: It is the ability to recognize ability. One of the primary responsibilities of a successful leader is to identify potential leaders. It’s not always an easy job, but it is critical.”[ref]John Maxwell, Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1995), 37. [/ref] 

Top 5 Qualities and Skills You Should Look for in Potential Leaders

Photo Credit: Robert Sullivan

To develop this pipeline, one must identify potential leaders with both prerequisite qualities and prerequisite skills.

PREREQUISITE QUALITIES

Some people are happy with their current job responsibilities and do not want to stretch into new roles. This means that some people will not want to be developed into leaders. Maxwell’s summary is relevant:

“Nurture all of your people, equip many. But develop only a few—the few who are ready and willing.”[ref]Ibid.[/ref]

Below are descriptions of the prerequisite qualities for potential leaders that should not just be nurtured or equipped, but also developed.

Good Character

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How to Develop Potential Leaders Leadership

How to Develop Leaders by Using Your Key People and Organizational Culture

To develop leaders, there must be buy-in from all levels of the organization. From the board of directors or elders down to the administrative support staff, everyone needs to believe in the importance of developing leaders. Besides support from people, there needs to be support from the systems and culture of the organization.

How to Develop Leaders by Using Your Key People and Organizational Culture

Photo Credit: Robert Sullivan

GET SUPPORT FROM PEOPLE

Board of Directors and Elders

To develop leaders in nonprofit organizations, Tom Adams says, “Top leadership commitment is the place to start.”[ref]Tom Adams, The Nonprofit Leadership Transition and Development Guide (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010), 230.[/ref] Within nonprofit organizations, top leadership is the board of directors. The board of a nonprofit holds more authority than any staff position in a nonprofit organization because the board is the governing arm that makes decisions about the CEO, key staff, budgets, and mission.

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How to Develop Potential Leaders Leadership

Why We Must Have Leadership Development in Nonprofits and Churches

Nonprofit organizations and churches are often understaffed and underfunded, resulting in over-worked mid-level managers. Most nonprofit managers and church pastors face the challenge of running a program, managing staff, providing monthly board reports, helping with various fundraising responsibilities, and last but not least, developing leaders within their staff. Sadly, all of the challenges nonprofit leaders face often prevent leadership development from occurring.

Why We Must Have Leadership Development in Nonprofits and Churches

Photo Credit: Robert Sullivan

While developing leaders can yield the highest outcomes for employee productivity and improvement in the community, this area often gets put aside amongst other pressures because it does not provide immediate results. Investing in leadership development, whether financially or timely, “can feel like a luxury compared with investing in needs at the heart of a nonprofit charitable purpose, but failure to invest in leadership, as well as services, puts the entire mission at risk.”[ref]Kirk Kramer and Preeta Nayak, “A 5-Point Plan for Grooming Future Leaders,” Chronicle of Philanthropy 24, no. 14, June 28, 2012. Accessed May 14, 2015.[/ref] Investments in leadership development for nonprofit and church staff must be made.

MY STORY

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Leadership

The Qualities You Want in Your Pipeline of Potential Leaders

In nonprofit organizations, people will always be coming and going. Therefore, nonprofit organizations and churches must develop a pipeline of potential leaders. John Maxwell describes the importance of looking for potential leaders when he writes, “There is something much more important and scarce than ability: It is the ability to recognize ability. One of the primary responsibilities of a successful leader is to identify potential leaders. It’s not always an easy job, but it is critical” (Developing the Leaders Around You, p. 37). Included in this pipeline of potential leaders are the necessary qualities a potential leader needs to have as well as some of the basic skills that need to be possessed for future development of leaders. 

The Qualities You Want in Your Pipeline of Potential Leaders

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I. PREREQUISITE QUALITIES FOR A PIPELINE OF POTENTIAL LEADERS

Some people are happy with their current job responsibilities and do not want to stretch into new roles. This means that some people will not want to be developed into leaders. Maxwell’s summary of this issue is relevant, “Nurture all of your people, equip many. But develop only a few—the few who are ready and willing”(Developing the Leaders Around You, p. 109). Below is a list of the prerequisite qualities for Christian and secular potential leaders that should not just be nurtured or equipped, but also developed.

A. Christian

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Leadership

How To Grow Leaders with Support from People and Culture

One of the best ways that busy leaders can grow leaders is to get buy-in from all levels of the nonprofit organization. From the board of directors down to the administrative support staff, everyone needs to believe in the importance of developing leaders. In addition to support from people, there needs to be support from the systems and culture of the organization. Here is a brief outline of the people and culture that you need support from in order to develop potential leaders in churches and nonprofit organizations. 

How To Grow Leaders with Support from People and Culture

Photo Credit: Pearl

I. BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND ELDERS TO GROW LEADERS

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Leadership

Why Leadership Development Is Needed for Young People

Nonprofit organizations are often understaffed and underfunded, resulting in over worked mid-level managers. As a result, most nonprofit managers are faced with the challenge of running a program, managing a staff, providing monthly board reports, helping with various fundraising responsibilities, and last but not least, developing leaders within their staff. Sadly, all of the challenges nonprofit leaders face often prevent leadership development from occurring. While developing leaders can yield the highest outcomes for employee productivity and improvement in the community, this area often gets put aside amongst other pressures because it does not provide immediate results or feedback. 

Why Leadership Development Is Needed for Young People

Photo Credit: Ken Lund

I. MY EXPERIENCE NEEDING LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

I experienced this lack of leadership development during the six years I was an employee at the United Way. As a Campaign Associate my primary responsibility was to recruit, equip, train, and lead approximately 125 volunteers. During those five years I had three different direct supervisors. These individuals were responsible for my growth as a competent employee and potential future leader within our organization. 

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4 Reasons Leaders Must Develop Others

You can be a leader or you can develop others. Which should you do? The answer is “both.”

A leader must lead while also developing others. In this post I explain that there are (at least) four reasons leaders must develop others.

 

4 Reasons Leaders Must Develop OthersPhoto Credit: BibleVector

I believe there are four reasons that leaders must develop others.

1. Jesus Developed Others

The books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are each filled with stories about Jesus developing His 12 disciples. Jesus sent those disciples out and He developed them. He taught them and then released them to attempt ministry on their own.

Jesus had a five step process for developing His disciples: