The Potential Around You
John Maxwell
I'm always asking, "How can I add value to the person I lead?"
—John Maxwell Investing in people is like investing in stocks. High risk can bring a huge return or a huge loss. The greatest leaders will help you the most—but they can also hurt you the most. The best leader on my staff once took a hundred of our people and started a new church a few blocks away. The way he did it crushed me. Another staff member was accused of a moral failure. He told me he was innocent, and I defended him. I found out three months later that he had, in fact, committed sexual sin. These weren't leaders left from some previous administration. I had identified their potential and poured my life into them. For months I told myself, I'm never going to let staff get close to me again. They'll never hurt me or lie to me again. Then one day I realized, John, this is the dumbest thing you've ever done. When we embrace people and pour our lives into them, they'll sometimes hurt us. But the future of our ministry and our churches depends on developing others to lead. My eyes were opened to this truth in my first church. When I went to Hilliham, Indiana, I could count the people on one hand. Over several years, I worked night and day, and the church grew to over three hundred. I really thought I had done something, not realizing that my self-reliance would break me. When I left that church, attendance dropped from three hundred to less than one hundred in only a few months. I realized I had failed. I had not prepared others to lead. I vowed, This will never happen again. Since then, one of the primary focuses of my ministry has been leadership development. One thing this emphasis has taught me is that developing leaders is hard. People willing to be developed ...
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