Free Passing It On: Growing Your Future Leaders by Myles Munroe

leadership is that leaders need followers
     and the number or caliber of one’s followers defines one’s leadership. This is a very dangerous notion because if one believes
     having followers defines leadership, then inorder to be a leader, you will always need to have people following you.
    “Following” is normally defined as lesser, subordinate, or ordinary, less intelligent, less valuable, less significant. That
     too is dangerous because if you believe that your leadership depends on having people around you who are less intelligent,
     then the temptation to oppress increases. The temptation to impede the advancement of others increases. Your staff ’s confidence
     in their potential and hope for the future will wither.
    The first measure of true leadership is in the production of leaders, the idea that every person under your influence has
     the capacity to replace you and that you are committed to mentoring them to do that. That is the most wonderful attitude that
     any leader can have. If the leader is dedicated to that idea, the spirit of hope, inspiration, motivation, and passion among
     those around him or her is unlimited. That mentoring spirit makes the leader successful. When people dedicate themselves to
     achieving the goal of another person who believes in them and regards them as potential replacements, as equals, productivity
     is limitless.
    Jesus conveyed this attitude toward His assistants and passed the mantle to them after His resurrection and reappearance to
     them.
Matthew 28:18–20 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching
     them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
    Here is a man who just accomplished the greatest victory in history, achieving authority over death and life. He achieved
     authority over everything in existence. He said all authority has been “given to me,” or essentially, “I am in control of
     everything.” Normally when you give people this type of power, they would use it to protect and defend their positions, to
     preserve and protect their turfs. For that reason, His use of power shocks me. He takes the authority that He was given and
     He delegates it, gives it away to others, and He says, “Therefore (you) go.” He told them to go and spread the power.
    If you give a human all of that power, he would be tempted to take on all of the responsibility and not practice the mature
     leadership principle ofsharing power. Yet Jesus did the reverse. He distributes the power to activate other people’s dreams, goals, visions, energy,
     potential, gifts, and talents. He uses authority to create authority. This exemplifies the greatest act of leadership. He
     is showing us that the purpose of power is to release others and empower them.
    This is the shining light of true leadership. Leadership is empowerment. Leaders do not seek power. They seek to empower.
     Insecure people with leadership titles pursue power. Secure leaders empower people. They mentor people to make them powerful.
     My job is to make everyone around me powerful. Your job is to make everyone around you powerful. A true leader mentors to
     make sure others succeed. True leaders are not concerned with their own success. They achieve success through the success
     of the people they mentor. Empowerment is more important than power in the mind of a leader.
    True leadership measures its success by the diminishing dependency of its followers . This explains why many leaders do not mentor and why they do not produce successors. They believe in some strange way that
     the more people depend on and need them, the greater they are as leaders. In fact, the opposite is true.
    Mentees should not become parasites to a leader. They should be like a child in the