Training Leaders for Tomorrow: Why Succession Is a Leadership Responsibility

A leader who builds only a personal platform has built something fragile. Enduring leadership develops people who can carry responsibility forward after the original leader is no longer in the room.

Dr. Marshall S. McGill Sr. has expressed this concern directly: ‘We have failed generations of the past by neglecting to educate and train leaders who are qualified to carry the torch for tomorrow’s generation.’

That conviction is reflected in his educational, organizational, counseling, international and leadership-development work. It also shaped Kingdom Life Bible Center, established to equip emerging leaders for service in community organizations, faith-informed institutions, nonprofit leadership, marketplace leadership and organizational management.

Succession begins long before a title changes hands. It requires identifying potential, giving people real responsibility, allowing room for growth, teaching standards, modeling accountability and creating opportunities for emerging leaders to make decisions.

Leaders must also resist the fear that developing others will make them less important. The opposite is true. A leader’s influence becomes more durable when competent people are prepared to continue the work with integrity.

Leadership should create successors. The question is not simply, ‘What did I accomplish?’ A better question is, ‘Who is stronger, wiser and more prepared because I was here?’