Leaders Build Leaders, Not More Followers

As a leader, your focus should be on building your people up, guiding them in the right direction, and preparing them to lead themselves. You want them to trust you enough to seek you out when necessary, but you don’t want them to rely on you for everything. Ralph Nader once said, “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”

When leaders adopt this mindset, they stop worrying about how many followers they have and start thinking about how many potential leaders they are building. This leads to an empowering atmosphere where individuals feel comfortable pushing themselves, trying new things, voicing their ideas, and contributing more than just what is expected of them in their current position. 

Think back to a leader that believed in you and wanted you to succeed in your own leadership journey. What were some of the behaviors that they exhibited? Did they micromanage you, or did they let you experiment with and learn some things on your own? Did they push you to be better, or did they let you just scrape by? How did their influence affect your outlook on life?

Most successful leaders have someone that they looked up to as they grew into their leadership potential. Sometimes this person mentors them in a professional setting, and other times this person is an outside influence. It does not matter where you met this individual; what matters is that they helped shape you into the person you are today. You know what their influence meant to you, so what do you think it would mean to someone else if you could be that person for them?

Take a moment to think about how you lead and interact with others. Are you instilling the confidence in them to lead themselves, or are you acting as a crutch for them? If your current focus is not on building more leaders, what would you need to do differently in order to nurture your team’s leadership potential?

When leaders build more leaders, they experience a more productive workforce, increased engagement from employees, stronger team dynamics, and sustainable growth within the organization. A leader’s legacy lies not only in what they do and the results they get but also in the people that they build up.

-Meghan Slaughter