Mentoring leaders recognize that emerging and maturing leaders are developed over time.
How are you developing the emerging and maturing leaders in your ministry?
Succeeding in succession starts long before a change in leadership.
Leadership development does not happen instantaneously. It takes time; it happens gradually.
Mentoring leaders understand that they influence people in many different ways ranging from directly to indirectly to organizationally.
Your role is to merely help the emerging and maturing leaders in your ministry respond to God’s call on their lives.
Knowing that God develops someone one step after another and that such development is a product of his use of other people, events, and experiences in a person’s life, mentoring leaders exercise a keen attentiveness to development movements.
This attentiveness is most often expressed in the form of listening (to the emerging and maturing leaders in your ministry reflect on these movements) or prompting (them with powerful questions) or directing (to help them discern the significance of these movements).
A call to leadership is highly personalized. Mentoring leaders do not attempt to constrain others to a prescribed development process. The process is free to flex to the unique development needs of each leader.
A fourth expression of attentiveness in mentoring leadership is the willingness to invite an individual to take on a “daunting stretch assignment” (as observed by Fernandez-Araoz et al., 2021; Tichy, 2014, p. 88).
Active participation in such assignments is significant to the development of every leader in your ministry.
Stretch assignments can be any task or project that legitimately needs to be completed and is directly connected to the advancement of the mission of a ministry.
Success is not guaranteed. There is an actual risk of failure in the assignment. Completion of the assignment is truly expected to challenge the leader.
While it is your responsibility to establish an environment that will allow the emerging or maturing leader to complete the assignment, success is not guaranteed. There is an actual risk of failure in the assignment. Completion of the assignment is truly expected to challenge the leader. As they work toward completion of the assignment, you must continue to engage them in the first three expressions of attentiveness. Engagement in these expressions helps the development of the leader and is the only way to determine their true potential and capacity.
Remember that throughout this development process, your role is to merely help the emerging or maturing leaders in your ministry respond to God’s call on their lives.
An on-demand video series on how succession planning can help ministries advance their mission.
Succeeding In Succession is an on-demand video series on how succession planning can help ministries advance their mission. This series is designed to help leaders and ministries sustain organizational health even as they experience a leadership change.
Everything you need for this series is right here.
There are 10 sessions, plus 5 additional bonus sessions. Each session has its own set of presentation slides and an accompanying handout. Together these act as an interactive learning experience.
You can choose to work through this series over time taking one session at a time or bundle all the sessions together at once for a team retreat or simply pick and choose sessions that will be most helpful for you. The best approach will best fit your context.