5 Essential Practices for Multiplying Leaders
The personal scorecards of hero makers are measured not by what they do and accumulate, but rather by who they invest in and release the potential of. Hero makers have shifted their focus from being the hero at the center of their own story to becoming the hero maker of others in God’s unfolding story.
Dave Ferguson, co-author of the new book Hero Maker: Five Essential Practices for Leaders to Multiply Leaders, stresses that these five practices derive from the characteristics we see in the life and ministry of Jesus, the ultimate hero maker, and in the leadership of contemporary hero makers.
The five practices are:
HeroMaker Practice 1: Multiplication Thinking
The first practice is a shift in thinking, as leaders move from thinking the best way to maximize ministry is through their own individual efforts to understanding that effective ministry actually happens through developing the leadership of others.
HeroMaker Practice 2: Permission Giving
The second practice is a shift in seeing. Hero makers take the focus off their leadership and begin to see the leadership potential in the people around them.
HeroMaker Practice 3: Disciple Multiplying
The third practice is a shift in sharing. Leaders begin to share not just what they know to help others follow Jesus, but to also share their lives and invest in the development of leaders who become disciple makers and then do the same for other leaders.
HeroMaking Practice 4: Gift Activating
The fourth practice is a shift in blessing. Not only do leaders ask God to bless the gifts He has given them, but they also ask God to bless the leaders they have developed and sent out.
HeroMaking Practice 5: Kingdom Building
The fifth practice is a shift in counting. Hero makers are no longer only concerned with who’s showing up at their thing; they also count who’s doing God’s thing!
Top 3 Introductory Resources on Hero Making
Resource 1 – Free Online Assessment
Interested in assessing your personal multiplication leadership capacity (i.e. your “hero making capacity”)? We’ve created a simple, FREE online tool that takes less than 30 minutes to complete. You will immediately see your results on a 5 level scale. Click the button below to take the assessment.
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Resource 2 – Video Summary
Dave Ferguson provides a short video overview of the five essential practice of Hero Making.
Resource 3 – Audio Interview
In this podcast Dave Ferguson & I focus on the importance of hero making to Exponential’s “4-10” mission (to see the number of reproducing churches in the United States increase from less than 4 percent to greater than 10 percent) and why these statistics represent a leadership problem in the church.
I think the operating system we’ve created is the biggest barrier to becoming Hero Makers. The average pastor wakes up each day and there’s a well-established system in the church that revolves around budgets and attendance—a hero kind of scorecard that values accumulation over multiplication. We have to intentionally put a value on investing in other people and build platforms for others vs just making our platform bigger. People will emulate what they see, especially in those they look to as leaders.
Upcoming Articles
Interested in learning more about the journey from hero to hero maker? Over the coming weeks, I will be walking through the 5 essential practices.
Todd
