It was one of the best Leaders' Retreats in the last couple of years. About 40 of us left M-Suites in JB with a strong resonance about growing a leadership mindset and rising on new sigma curves for the growing of our faith and vision for the future. It was, for me, a very fulfilling closing to a three month journey in seeking the LORD for 2009 and beyond.
Leaders live in the future. And my mind has since moved beyond the six leadership paradigms to crafting another new paradigm for leadership: The Four Levels of Leadership.
The concept of the "the 4 levels of leadership" is an important one if you are leading any growing organization. The basic gist, per Ram Charan, in his very insightful work, LEADERS AT ALL LEVELS, is that people who led an organization at one level are often unprepared to lead at the next level... as the organization grows, their job changes, and what made them good at one level may not be sufficient to make them excel at the next. For example, take a superb salesman... He is winsome, great with customers, and a good time manager. If the salesman is promoted to manage other salesman, however, those things that made him a good salesman don't ensure he will make a good manager of other salesmen.
In a small business, or church, the 4 basic levels are: managing self; managing others; manager of managers; and enterprise manager.
Some people will discover they have found their niche where they are, and are content not to climb the leadership pipeline (i.e., they are content to remain an expert salesman: that is ok, and they can excel at that--better to do what you're good at than pretend to be something else). Others will have the needed competency or want to develop the needed skills necessary to lead at the next level.
Each leader must be self-aware his personal capacity and competencies and it is the discerning task of the leaders over them to see who has what it takes to go up to the next level of leadership. Part of that discernment will include awareness of gift mixed, skills and most importantly depth of character and calling.
Hence begins a new journey for me in leading leaders.
