This morning uber blogger & CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, Michael Hyatt announced on his blog that he is forming a mentoring group. For the first time ever, I actually wished I lived in Nashville (no offense Volunteers 😉 ).
I have a passion for seeing people become the best they can be. That’s why I write this blog, have led church small groups, and have done a little bit of mentoring myself. So, I think it’s really awesome that Michael would take the time, effort, and risk to pour into young leaders.
But it got me thinking about the importance of teaching and mentoring in leadership.
I’ve seen some good leaders who seem to have little interest in mentoring the people around them. They gravitate towards big-picture tasks like strategic planning, vision casting, and brokering deals. They talk about leadership development but they seem to want to outsource that development by sending people to conferences and having them read books rather than come along side and share their own time, experience, and wisdom with them.
Now I understand there are a lot of different leadership styles, but I wonder… if a leader is only as great as the people around him, won’t a leader who does not mentor end up with a team of people with unrealized potential around him?
So, what do you think? How important is mentoring? Can a person be a great leader without being a mentor?
[image by lebenszentrumadelshofen]
In my opinion, a leader who doesn’t mentor is not truly a leader.
If you’re not mentoring, you’re not building people up to take over from you when you retire/pass on.
If you’re not doing that, you’re not leading, you’re just achieving for yourself.
Peter, great point. I think I read once that when Jack Welch retired from GE he had 7 people around him who were qualified to take his place.
A person can’t be a great leader without leaving a legacy and one way to do it is in developing others.
I think great leaders not only should be mentored but also mentor others as well.
Great points Peter. I believe that a leaders responsibility is to train and mentor others and if a leader does not do that he is not a true leader. I have heard about Rick Warrens story and he has said that his entire goal was to work himself out of a job. By training and mentoring others to take the place. And just look at the success of his life or in fact almost every successful leader or business owner.
Thank you for the post
I sooo agree what the others said. Mentoring is so important and a key part of leadership!!
The greatest mark of a leader is the legacy he or she leaves. More is caught than taught, so a leader must share his personal experiences with others to truly be effective. Books and media are good accompaning methods of mentoring, but are ineffective at best when used ascthe sole form of mentoring. Ones personal experiences and heart are only truly accessed with time and personal communication. You never read about Christ telling “his” disciples to look elsewhere for the answers to their questions. You only read about Christ sharing and teaching. If we are followers of Christ shouldn’t we pattern our leadership after Him as well? Leaders grow when they mentor and mentorees are blessed as well, it’s a must and a win, win.
It’s good to be in good company. I love serving great leaders. I know that when I am working alongside them I am destined to learn and be a better leader myself. I am particularly drawn to leaders who see conflict as an opportunity to be stretched and to stretch others. I stand in awe watching those who model great ways of leveraging conflict and neutralizing the tension. I learn to think better with better thinkers. Thinkers who ways are not my ways. Each time I come across Jesus ~ His leadership style stretches me. He served and led, passionate, got angry and used it well to set the tone, address madness in His troops quickly, and I could go on.
So I’m with you all~ great leaders are great because they live self-awareness, passion, think well, and they stretch all who walk with them. Like Jesus, I will follow a great leader almost anywhere.
Can you be a great leader, if you don’t mentor?
Good question and one that a great number of leadership books themselves overlook. In general, many would discount mentoring as even being a component of leadership at all.
There are many, heroic, flash-in-the-pan type leaders. They pop up, lead with tremendous personal strength, and after they depart their former organizations are hollow shells crumpling in upon themselves. Were they ‘great’ leaders?
It can be hard to argue against their tremendous successes. In line with Sean’s comment, if nothing survives after you, if you have no enduring legacy, perhaps you may not have been all that great after all.
Mentoring is a long term mindset, one that I feel is failing us today. We need our leaders to take an interest in what they leave behind, in the people following in their footsteps. Unfortunately, mentorship seems an American casualty of 80-hr work weeks and quarterly-by-quarter stock watching.
JT, thanks for your comment. I think you’re on to something as far as a short-term vs long-term mindset. There is something to be said for a leader who can step into a crisis and quickly lead an organization to overcome it – turn a company around, win a war, or win a Superbowl for example. I would say mentoring is irrelevant under those special circumstances. And there are some leaders that are especially gifted to lead in those situations.