Let me tell you a true story.
In 2005, I founded Shaping Destiny, a non-profit organization that has now served over 1,000 children in Cameroon. I did it a couple of months before I started medical school. I don’t recommend that ;-). By the time I finished medical school 4 years later, I had made huge personal sacrifices and the organization had grown to be serving hundreds of orphans each year and 85 of those were in an orphanage building. Because of a combination of factors such as lack of experience and the demanding nature of medical school, I had grown the organization without really developing leaders. The burden of the organization was on my shoulders and I couldn’t take a day off. When I finished medical school in May 2009, I spent the 6 weeks I had between finishing medical school and starting residency on July 1st trying to hire someone to take over from me so that I could actually focus on residency and finish. I was already burned out, exhausted, and was literally having panic attacks.
Using Craigslist and other web sources, I hired a girl named Jessica to work as Shaping Destiny’s Coordinator. I was willing to take my pay as a resident and pay her so that she could focus on Shaping Destiny while I focused on residency and finished. If you know anything about medical residency, it is as demanding as any job gets. I was able to take a hit in my grades to run Shaping Destiny while in medical school itself, but I knew residency wasn’t going to permit that. When my fellow first residents were simply moving themselves and their families (where applicable) to Waco for residency, I moved mine and also went looking downtown to find an office space for Jessica. Within weeks, Jessica quit. I hired another young adult who also didn’t work out. By this time, residency had started. To make things worse for me, the office space that I had rented and furnished with a donated table from one of our donors, which I had to go and carry from their house to that office, was taken from us. The landlord said a larger company came wanting to rent the entire floor which included our one little room. I had to move those things from there into our home.
Then, I made one last-ditch effort to get someone to work for us so that I could focus on residency and do well. The time was passing and the pressure was mounting on me. I could not carry the weight of both my residency training and the organization. Medical school teaches you mostly head knowledge and a few skills. Doctors are really made during residency which lasts at least 3 years. I had people’s lives in my care and my decisions mattered. I had to either choose to focus on medicine or on the orphan care organization. I couldn’t do both. As a last-ditch effort, I interviewed and hired 3 part-time employees instead of one full-time person. And guess where I had them work? My home. I had a newborn at home and brought three perfect strangers to come work in my home office. I’m sure they found it weird for an organization to be doing that, but they came to work. I was hoping that since hiring one at a time hasn’t worked out, maybe hiring three at a time would ensure that if some leave, some would at least stay and I wouldn’t have to start from scratch. Looking back, that was a big mistake. I was making one mistake after another!
My application process wasn’t as good as it is now. One of the people I hired was smoking in my house! When I would leave and go to work, they spent in my home talking about how weird the situation was and before you know it, three weeks later, they all quit.
By this time, it was almost one year in and I still felt the weight of the organization and its orphans and staff overseas tied to my neck. I had to do everything to keep donations coming in or they wouldn’t. I feared if I didn’t, the children wouldn’t have their needs met and the organization would fall apart. But also, I needed to give my best to my patients.
By this time, I had already been to the emergency room with a panic attack that felt like I was having a heart attack. My stress from the organization coupled with the already demanding and stressful rigors of residency was impacting my performance. That’s when, after much reflection and prayer, I resigned from residency in September 2010. After doing that, I soon moved from Waco to Austin where I believed the organization was to be based.
The root cause of my problem was in only two words: leadership development. There was a lack of leadership development within the organization. I had grown a significant ministry organization without doing the necessary leadership development that brings and equips other leaders with the same vision to be part of the process. If I had done that, we all would have carried the burden together and shared the joys of making an impact on the world.
I spent the first two years after resigning from residency on just developing myself. I spent all day, seven days a week in my home office studying, praying, meditating. I took a graduate training program that was appropriate for my intended ministry training. I have never focused on self-development at any time in my life as I did at that time. My maturity grew. After spending the first two years pouring into myself, I started recruiting and developing others with the hope that I can develop and build a solid team that can run the organization on their own while I go to finish residency. This process wasn’t simply a process of growth that I had to find other people that were passionate and equipped. I had to grow to be able to let go the organization into these competent hands.
It took about 2-3 years to develop enough well-equipped leaders to take over the organization so that I can go back to residency and succeed. I was out of residency about five years before I went back in 2015. I am happy to say that even though leadership development takes a long time, I recruited and equipped some amazing people who not only ran Shaping Destiny when I was in residency (without my help) but they grew it and by the time I was done, the organization for the first time had reserves in the bank and was blossoming tremendously! The leaders I developed not only ran and grew Shaping Destiny, they also ran Servants University, an independent organization I founded to help me with effective leadership development. Today, that organization has developed many leaders who have gone to serve in different organizations and settings.
Leadership organization works, but it takes time and hard work.
What I went through isn’t unique to myself or to running a nonprofit. The American economy is powered by small businesses and many of these small business partners are suffering from the same anxieties and carrying the same burdens I carried for my nonprofit organization. They cannot take a vacation because there are no trusted leaders on their teams who can run the business in their absence. They have worked hard to build a good small business but if they fall sick and are hospitalized for a few months, that business could evaporate as customers may go somewhere else and can’t wait for so long. Their lives work could vanish in a moment. They know this and the stress of lack of rest and the worries of the uncertain futures of their organizations bother them.
Like me, the root cause of their problems in two words is leadership development.
Leadership development isn’t only important to organizations, it’s important to lead individual lives. I tell people all the time, each one of us is an organization. Our families are organizations. Organizations aren’t simply companies and nonprofits. Leadership development has the power to transform personal lives and to transform cities and nations. It has the power to break generational poverty, take us to new frontiers and give meaning to our lives. That’s why I love leadership and leadership development so much!
Below, I share some reasons why leadership development is important.
1. Everything rises or falls on leadership.
The late Dr. Lee Roberson, notably said: “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” John Maxwell has popularized this quote. This is so true. Everything we do in life will rise or fall depending on our level of leadership.
2. Our leadership ability determines our level of effectiveness.
Do you want people to be effective in your life callings? If you answered yes, then you have to first grow yourself as a leader, then you must start developing leaders in your own sphere of influence.
John Maxwell calls this phenomenon The Law of the Lid.
A person’s leadership determines his overall effectiveness and success in life.
We must develop leaders within our organizations because that is the ONLY way to help them achieve their God-given potential, achieve maximum levels of success in ministry as well as in personal and family relationships. Nothing you can do to a person beats helping them develop their leadership ability.
Remember, if a person is not succeeding, his leadership is most likely at fault. In life, nobody, I mean nobody, can succeed beyond his leadership capability. Maxwell is right. Leadership is the lid that will hold many of us unless we grow and develop in that area.
3. Your ability to achieve your calling and live a fulfilled life depends on your leadership ability.
Everyone is gifted. Everyone has talent. Everyone has a huge calling to impact the world. Deep within all of us, we want to live out our calling and impact the world. The only difference between those who succeed at life and those who don’t is leadership development. No one is born a leader. We become good at leadership because we develop ourselves to be good at it. Those who want to change the world develop themselves and then help others develop as well.
4. Leadership development is how you achieve explosive growth in your self, family, group/organization.
When Jesus wanted to grow a movement what did he do? He focused his time developing 12 leaders. It took him nearly 3 years. When he had created a shared vision for them, inspired them, mobilized them, and empowered them he left and has been supporting them since. What is the result? They have changed the world. Maxwell is right when he says, to achieve explosive growth, multiply leaders. Leaders will go on and multiply other leaders and the cycle will continue.
5. Leadership development is how you ensure succession or legacy within your organization or movement.
Leadership expert Ken Blanchard has said, “One way to tell a self-serving from a servant leader is how they approach succession planning.” This is so true. A self-centered leader wants to remain the leader forever. He wants to protect his position more than he cares about the organization or the team. So he is not going to develop leaders. I’m sure if you are studying my material or taking one of my leadership development courses, you are not one of those. You care about the common good, you care about yourself, and you want to develop leaders and make an impact on others.
Some other good resources on why we should develop leaders.
https://www.sagu.edu/thoughthub/why-your-organization-needs-a-leadership-development-program
