day no. 15,171: initiative is learned and earned

"Damaging a leader's self-esteem, especially in public, therefore should be strictly avoided. A leader's self-confidence is the wellspring from which flows the willingness to assume responsibility and exercise initiative." -- MCDP 1-3: Tactics

If you want to develop leaders, you have to let them lead. You can't train them to be responsible for something else by routinely robbing them of the opportunity to own anything before they are turned lose to own something in particular.

That said, emerging leaders, as the name implies, have not yet arrived. They are still, emerging. But that also means they aren't where they used to be and are going somewhere you're excited to see them venture. 

So how do you manage the tension of giving them real responsibility without giving them the keys to a vehicle they don't yet know how to drive or fully appreciate the damage that could be caused by poor decisions? 

This same tension is presented in parenting. How do you fan into flame the desire to aspire while correcting the mistakes and shaping their energy? If you turn them lose without direction, they will fail. If you suffocate them with critique, they will burn out. So how do you stoke a flame without letting it burn everything down? How do you keep the arrow flaming without burning your fingers so badly that you can no longer aim it?

2 Timothy 2:2
What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

This requires wisdom. You want to give emerging leaders real responsibility, but not so much that it crushes their ability to emerge.

One way to do this, is to give them low stakes responsibilities. These are things for which they are given real sway, but things which if they were to go wrong wouldn't do much damage. As they grow in discernment and comfort in handling freedom and responsibility, you can pile on more responsibility quantitatively and qualitatively. The responsibilities can become more numerous and more meaningful. The stakes can be raised and the slice of the pie can be increased. This allows the leader in training to exercise initiative enough to grow it.

If you give them too much responsibility too early, they will hurt themselves, perhaps damage their confidence in decision-making or damage their ability to make future decisions by allowing them to be exposed to consequences greater in proportion than their ability to navigate. In other words, allowing them to experience over-confidence too early may inhibit their ability to have any confidence down the road.

In order to give someone else the gift of initiative, you must take the initiative without squashing theirs. It's a trick worth learning and if you have it, someone spent themselves in order to help you obtain it.

Initiative is learned and earned.