No one would question that leadership development is a wise investment. Time spent developing new and better leaders has a long-term payoff for the individual as well as the organization.
But if this fact is so obvious why is it so few of your existing leaders engage in the development of new leaders? Why is it they default to doing the work rather than developing others to do the work?
Underneath the many possible excuses, I believe there is one deep seeded reason: Fear.
People avoid that which they are afraid of. So could it be your leaders avoid the investment in others because of the fear of failure? Fear of not knowing how? Fear of being replaced? Or fear of someone doing the job better than them?
To leverage your leaders impact and see an exponential emergence of new and better leaders your task is to identify and confront the fear. As you discover the real reasons behind their fear you can begin to reconstruct their confidence as a developer by simply encouraging, coaching and challenging them along the journey. Your greatest success will be seeing them confidently succeed in the reproduction of new leaders.
