THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP OBLIGATION IS PREPARING YOUR REPLACEMENT

Matthew chapter 20










Today we are walking in: The Greatest Leadership Obligation Is Preparing Your Replacement










Today we look to the word-LEADER- H5057 nagiyd-- leader, ruler, captain, prince; excellent thing, (chief) governor, leader, noble, prince, (chief) ruler.







The Torah Testifies.............................

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The prophets proclaim...............







Isaiah 55:4 - Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader H5057 and commander to the people.


















The writings bear witness.............







2Chronicles 32:21 - And the LORD sent an angel, which cut off all the mighty men of valour, and the leaders H5057 and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land. And when he was come into the house of his god, they that came forth of his own bowels slew him there with the sword










Chapter 1

The Greatest Leadership Obligation Is Preparing Your Replacement




HUMAN OBSERVERS HAVE designated the lion “king of the wild” or “king of the beasts.” Lions are the largest creature in the cat family and of all African carnivores. These large and powerful creatures have the loudest roar and are the leading predators in their ecosystem. The lion is fierce, courageous, and cunning. Yet even the lion knows it will not be “king” forever. The lion is constantly working to prepare its replacement to run the kingdom.




Lions are the only cats that live in groups. Lions travel in prides. A pride is essentially a family of lions and lionesses that live and work together to create an environment in which to “mentor” cubs, the next generation of “kings” and “queens.” Before the cub is a year old, the lioness meticulously begins to train her young to hunt and to survive.




Lions are visionary leaders.



First, Get Ready to Leave




Whether you are the head of a family, captain of a football team, chair of a women’s organization, president of a company, the CEO of a corporation, the pastor of a church, or the pilot of an aircraft, you are the responsible leader. In your domain, you are king. You are a visionary leader. Your gift has taken you to the top.




Congratulations! You have arrived. Now, find your replacement. The first act of a true leader, a visionary leader like you, should be to identify your replacement and begin mentoring that person to eventually succeed you. You might identify several individuals and groom each of them for leadership.




You may ask, “Why? I have other things to do first. I just got here, and I have all these plans. That can wait.”

It should not wait. Perhaps if you knew just how long you might remain healthy, active, and effective or how long you might live, it could wait. None of us knows these things. We must prepare someone to follow us. We will have mentored and trained this leader-in-waiting so carefully and thoroughly that he or she could step in at a moment’s notice to take our place and run on without stumbling. That person would preserve what we have built and take it to new heights.




“The first act of a visionary leader like you should be to identify and begin mentoring your replacement.”

Our successors can do that only if we have groomed and trained them to the best of our abilities for the day they take over. It was our duty to bring them into our inner circle, expose them to our contacts, and instill in them all the wisdom we can offer.




The greatest obligation of true leadership is to transfer the deposit of knowledge, wealth, experience, influence, relationships, and understanding to the next generation. The word obligation means a responsibility you have to the future. Perhaps you have been measuring your success by the trappings, as I once did. You see it in terms of the size of a building you built, your salary, a house—or the car. Remember all of those things are decaying daily, and if you built your success on those things, it is eroding daily.




It is not good enough to transfer a title, a facility, or a building to the next generation. It is more important to transfer your knowledge, your experience, and your values—the things that have helped you to succeed. Giving those to the next generation is more important than giving money and wealth. Leadership includes taking what made you who you are and giving it to someone else. That cannot happen without mentoring.




Every leader wants to be successful, but we rarely think about succession as proof of success, the final measure of our own success. We think in terms of projects, products, the bottom line, and profits. We do not think in terms of people. Buildings do not succeed you. Equipment does not succeed you. Only people can succeed you and carry on your vision. People will remember your name and perpetuate your legacy. As we age and consider our frailties and our mortality, it is time to start doubling up on the time spent on mentoring and preparing for a smooth succession.




The first act of true leadership is to identify, train, and develop a replacement. To put it another way, the first act is to begin mentoring this new leader. If I can get this point across, I could help save many organizations, departments, ministries, and countries.




The first thing that many leaders do when they enter a position of power is to get rid of opposition. They try to annihilate threats. You see this in Third- World countries and leading industrial nations. It is the spirit of “kill or be killed.” You see it in businesses, where those who are threats to corporate power are fired. I am recommending the opposite. Your first act should be to begin surveying the horizon, looking around you to identify the potential replacement/successor, and mentoring this prospect.




What Is a Leader?




Before we go on, it might be helpful to share with you (or to review for those who have read my previous seriess) my philosophies about what leadership is. You have to understand and appreciate what you have before you can pass it on. You have to be the right kind of leader to produce leaders for the future.




I have spent decades studying the issue of leadership from the time I was an undergraduate at Oral Roberts University and a graduate student in leadership administration at the University of Tulsa. I have studied the theories of many business leaders, economists, and scholars on leadership. The many theories and perspectives offered by the early and contemporary leadership gurus addressed multiple issues and principles on the subject of leadership. However, I was still unsatisfied in my pursuit of understanding the essence of true leadership, and I continued my search and research. It was not until I discovered the leadership philosophy and school of thought of the young Jewish rabbi Yahusha Christ that I felt I had found the answer to the leadership dilemma. It was His introduction and demonstration of the philosophy of “servant leadership” that provided the context for the type and style of leadership that brings value, worth, and dignity to all humankind. After many years of study and implementing this philosophy of leadership in my life and organization, I have seen the superior advantage and benefits to both the individual and the corporate effort. This “servant leadership” philosophy forms the foundation of all the content of the leadership training programs, seminars, and consulting projects that I have facilitated around the world. I have written dozens of seriess and spoken hundreds of times on this leadership philosophy and model exemplified by Yahusha Christ.




His standard for leadership was that of serving your gift and energy to the followers for their benefit. He modeled the behavior of a servant leader and urged His protégés to do likewise. In His final “working dinner” with them, He demonstrated and later explained the concept.




Matthew 20:25–27 Yahusha called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—”




Then He goes on to say:




Matthew 20:28 “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”




Yahusha’ concept of the leader as servant and not as one to be served was demonstrated by Yahusha Himself, and He urged students (the disciples) to achieve greatness through the same spirit of leading through service, not by controlling or oppressing others. Servant leadership, as I define it, is the discovery of one’s purpose, gifts, and talents with a commitment to offer them in service to humankind. In other words, servant leadership is the discovery of what you are supposed to serve to the world.

Servant leadership is being prepared to serve one’s gift at every opportunity. Now, I want to emphasize the last part of the statement: every opportunity. To become an effective leader, you have to take advantage of each chance to serve. Do not wait until you are great to be great, or you will never be great.




If the bathroom needs cleaning, that is an opportunity to exercise your gift for attention to detail and high standards to those in your organization. If they need help with the youth organization, that is an opportunity to demonstrate your gift for empathizing with and commanding respect from young people. If the leaders need someone to clean the building after every session, volunteer and display your gift for organization by recruiting and supervising a team to do it quickly and efficiently. That is an opportunity to serve. If the organization needs someone to type and you can do that, then submit yourself. While serving, you can show off your speed, devotion to accuracy, and mastery of computer skills.




Maybe your vision is to become a great speaker, teacher, pastor, or CEO. That opportunity has not come yet, but the opportunity to park the cars presents itself. Park the cars. If nothing else, you can demonstrate your loyalty and your people skills in handling the owners. Servant leadership is serving at every opportunity.

In a previous series In Charge: Finding the Leader Within You, I summarized my thinking about servant leadership. These are the key points:




• Every human being was created to lead. Your desire and disposition to lead is inborn.




• Every human possesses leadership potential. You have the ability to lead in an area of gifting.




• Trapped in every follower is a hidden leader. If you accept false ideas about who can or cannot become a leader, it can smother your potential.




• Though everyone was born to lead, most will die as followers. If you do not identify and tap into your giftedness, it will be wasted and buried with you.




• Leadership is your history and your destiny. You were created to be a leader and designed to fulfill your assignment.




• The world needs your leadership. You exist to meet a specific need on earth that no one else can meet.



What Is Succession?




Succession is an amazing word. It begins with the very concept of success. Success has to do with movement. It has to do with continuity. Successful succession guarantees continuity. Succession means to “follow after,” but the definitions of “succeed” in some dictionaries even put the sense of “following” before the idea of doing well. Etymologists tell us that the word succeed comes from ancient terms that mean to “follow” or “go under.”




Success itself has to do with advancing toward something, and for the most part, people think of success as “I establish a goal. I move toward the goal, and I accomplish the goal. I am finished.” In a very simplistic sense, that is true; you decide you want to build a house, and you start the design, you build it, and now that it is finished, you receive the key. You could call that success, but succession preserves success.




We normally think of success as having to do with pursuing, achieving, and concluding something, but success implies moving, advancing, continuing. Succession is the perpetuation of purpose. Purpose is your assignment. Succession is protecting your assignment beyond your lifetime. Succession preserves all of your hard work after you retire or die. Succession is the transition of the leader’s purpose, content, character, standards, values, morals, and qualities to succeeding generations. Succession first involves transferring your vision to another generation of leaders. That is a hard thing to do. It means you must transfer your way of thinking to another person. That requires a lot of intimate time together. To effect the vision transfer, the mentor must devote time to the potential successor.




The vision must live on even if you die. If your vision dies with you, you failed. I have seen unfinished churches overgrown with grass. Why? Because the leader failed. Crowds came to his services and people shouted at his sermons, but no one carried on and completed his tabernacle. The weeds that choke the unfinished dreams will always expose failure. Unfinished monuments are a sign of failure, telltale signs that you did not mentor and invest in the right thing, the people for whom you were responsible.




Success is not what happens while you are alive. Success is what happens after you leave. This is why the word successive is so important. The terms successive or succeeding generations suggest continuity. We want to be successful, so we accomplish a project. We are proud that we did it and want everyone to remember what we produced in our lifetime. That is not success. Success is knowing someone will continue the work after you leave.




You are successful if your vision outlives you through another person. If we forget you after you die, no matter how great your accomplishments were, you are a failure. You measure your success by the people you leave behind. Someone who comes after you can destroy every goal that you achieved. If you are sixty, seventy, or eighty years old and you have done wonderful things, will they outlast you? The only way to guarantee they will is through succession. True leadership is about continuity.




Succession is not just achieving success. Succession is preserving success. What you achieve, you need someone to preserve. Can you imagine building your family business all your life and then some untrained son sells it after you die for half the price, just so he can buy some golf clubs? All your life you worked hard, invested and built a building, built a business, or built this massive empire. Then a son, daughter, cousin, or your wife’s next husband sells it on the market for half the price to buy something that provides immediate gratification. We have seen this happen very often.




When it is time for leaders to transition, many have not prepared a successor, so there is a conflict, a fight, or a scuffle for leadership. When a new leader emerges from that, the winner may be committed to destroying everything you have built to prove that he is different or better. This has been the modus operandi of most leaders. If you have studied developing countries, you know that in most cases when a leadership transition occurs, a coup breaks out. Often people are killed and the country experiences tremendous turmoil. A similar thing happens in corporate board rooms, political parties, and church organizations when it is time for these transitions, generally without the violence though.




This is why succession is so critical. It preserves success. Greatness in leadership is measured by its continuity. It is not about you. It is about the next generation. You do not want anyone to destroy, misuse, or redirect your organization from its original intent. You want it to advance and develop beyond what you have done. You keep your purpose alive through a successor. You do not want all your dreams, plans, and ideas to go into the casket with you. Keep them alive in someone you mentor.




My definition of succession is the effective transfer, conveyance, and transition of the leader’s vision, passion, purpose, intent, dreams, character, standards, values, morals, and qualities to succeeding generations of leaders.




Succession perpetuates purpose.