Are You a Leadership Hoarder, Lender, or Giver?

Having meetings with dynamic church leaders this week in Cape Town, South Africa, I’ve been reminded once again of the kind of leadership that delivers impact.

Against significant odds, these leaders have been giving selflessly of themselves in order to achieve the greatest possible impact.

These generous leaders reminded me of an earlier post, where I examined how generosity in leadership is key to extraordinary results.

In your leadership, are you a hoarder, a lender or a giver?

How you answer that question will go a long way to determining what kind of impact you’ll have.

The hoarding leader

This is someone who devours leadership learnings, but keeps it all to themselves. Rather than investing their knowledge and experience in other rising leaders, the hoarding leader will simply amass more and more leadership knowledge.

Sometimes they’ll toss out some leadership nuggets they’ve picked up someplace, or they’ll casually mention the title of the latest leadership book they’ve read, but this will be more to impress people than to build into them.

Ultimately the hoarding leader will have almost no impact. They’ll just keep reading leadership books (and blogs), they’ll listen to leadership podcasts and they’ll attend leadership conferences.

But no one else will derive any benefit from any of it.

The lending leader

This person is a notch better than the hoarding leader. But not by much.

They will indeed share their leadership insights with others. And these lending leaders will do so in the hope that others will develop as a result.

But lending leaders have an agenda. Like a money lender, lending leaders expect something in return. While they will invest in rising leaders, their hope will be that this investment will yield dividends that will benefit themselves in some way.

The giving leader

Ultimately, it is only the giving leader who will make a lasting impact.

That’s because giving leaders selflessly invest all of who they are in the development of others, with no thought to any personal reward.

Giving leaders are driven only by the desire to see other leaders grow, mature and develop. Giving leaders recognize that the investments they have received are not meant to be either hoarded or exchanged. They know that their experiences and learnings are a gift that must be shared.

So they’ll study leadership and they’ll learn everything they can from their own experiences. Then they’ll take this rich investment and they’ll pour it into the development of rising leaders around them.

So, once again, what kind of leader are you?

If you truly desire to make a positive, lasting impact, the only route is to be the kind who gives it all away.

How do you give away your leadership?