Passing It On: Growing Your Future Leaders Read Online Free PDF Page A

vision.
    The secret to leadership is not the pursuit of power. Leadership is a pursuit of self. While you may delegate some authority
     and confer a position on your mentee, you demonstrate that leadership is not a pursuit of those things. You show your mentee
     that when you discover what you were born to do, your leadership is born. Thus, leadership has very little to do with people.
     It is about self-discovery. It is finding your passion and pursuing it, and then people will find you. This is why leadership
     really cannot be taught. It can only be mentored. You can teach people the principles for discovering themselves, and when
     they find their purpose, the leader is born.
    Purpose is the beginning. Purpose is having a sense of destiny. Your purpose then fuels your conviction. Your conviction is
     a sense of significance. In other words, a leader is someone who discovered that he or she is important to the world. Your
     mentoring must endow your mentee with a sense of purpose.
    That happened to me. I had an argument with my Creator.
    I said, “I cannot be that important.”
    He said, “Yes, you are.”
    I said, “No, I can’t be that important. Don’t you know where I was born? Who my relatives are?”
    He said, “Look, you are that important.”
    Do you know that the attitude I had is common to all the leaders that I have studied? When God spoke to Abraham, He got an
     argument (see Genesis 17:17). When God spoke to Moses, they argued (see Exodus 3:11–14). When God first spoke to Gideon, He
     had to argue with Gideon just to make him believe (see Judges 6:13–24). In other words, we never believe the truth about ourselves.
    You must help your mentees see they are that important, and the sooner they accept that, the sooner the third step develops,
     and that is vision. They begin to see how to fulfill their purpose. Vision is a concept of the future, and when the vision
     comes, passion comes. Passion is a deep desire and commitment to achieve the vision. That passion inspires other people. In
     other words, passion becomes what I call “contagious energy,” and that breathes air into people.
    When your mentees become so passionate about something that they are willing to strive for it, it breathes life into them.
     You have become contagious. Think about great leaders. Most of them went to prison or in other ways demonstrated they were
     willing to die for their passion: Jesus, the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mohandas Gandhi. They inspired people.
     Once you inspire people, you can influence them and attract support. You do not demand it. You attract it. People are attracted
     to passion.
    Therefore, if you want people to follow you, find your passion, and if your passion takes over your life, people will run
     after you. A leader does not look for followers. Followers are attracted to the leader’s passion. If you say you are a leader,
     but no one is following you, you are simply taking a walk.
    Your mentee must see from your example that following is a privilege that people do not have to give you. They can leave your
     church or resign from your company at any time. To keep people submitted to your passion, never let them see your passion
     waning. Keep your passion. Share it with your mentee. You can become tired, but you must maintain and renew your passion.
New and Improved!
    If you are going to be successful in producing a successor, you must make mentoring your priority. Mentoring is hard work.
     You serve as a model, anadvisor, a counselor, a guide, a tutor, an example for another. Your goal is to produce one greater than yourself. That may
     come as a shock. When you are mentoring someone, you are not trying to produce a person who is
like you
. You are mentoring to develop someone
better than you
. Mentoring is about replacement with a better product. Always leave in place someone who is better than you were. A true
     leader is always training a replacement, and the goal is to make