Two Leadership Trade-Offs Not Worth Making

We live in a busy world where leaders make critical decisions every day. And every time you decide to do something, you are also deciding what you will not do. 

I used to have a guy ob my team who always pointed out the trade-offs' reality in our decisions. We would have a new idea, and he would say, "We can do that, but if we do that, then we cannot do the other thing we said we wanted to do." He wasn't being malicious; he was simply pointing out the trade-offs that would result from our decision. 

The same is true of leadership development. There are trade-off decisions we are making every day. But these are hurting not helping our development efforts. 

Trade-Off #1 Choosing Speed over Quality

If you develop a leader fast, you can deploy them quickly. But when you chose speed, you sacrifice quality. 

If you develop a leader slowly, you may not deploy them for a full semester. But the competence and confidence of that leader are likely to be high.

We choose speed over quality when we are more concerned with filling a position than developing a person's abilities. 

Trade-Off #2 Choosing Control over Decentralization

If you are developing ALL the leaders in your area of ministry, you control the experience. But you become a bottleneck that limit's the scale of leaders that can be developed. 

If you decentralize the development of leaders, you are no longer personally controlling the experience. Empowering those on your team to develop others will give you an army of developers. This is a game-changer for scaling new leaders.

We choose control over decentralization when our identity is founded in the amount of control we have doing our ministry.

What other trade-offs do leaders make when it comes to development?

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