When I was ten years old, I tried out for a Little League football team in Liberty City, Miami.

Making the team mattered. Every boy in the neighborhood wanted to prove himself on that field, and I was no different. I showed up. I practiced hard. I wanted it.

But when the names were called, I didn’t hear mine.

I watched the other boys receive their uniforms and helmets while I stood there empty-handed. At ten years old, I didn’t have a word for what I was carrying home with me. Looking back, I do: discouragement.

Then my brother Keith said five words that stayed with me: “Let’s try again next year.”

It was simple, but it was all I needed. Just an invitation to believe that this disappointment didn’t have to be the end of the story.

The following season, at a different ballpark, Keith and I both made the team. But what I remember most clearly is what happened afterward. I found the boys who hadn’t made it.

I knew what they were carrying because I had carried it too. And I wanted them to know what my brother had helped me understand: It wasn’t over.

Decades later, I’ve learned that some of life’s hardest moments work the same way.

Some setbacks arrive suddenly: a diagnosis, a rejection, a loss, a phone call you never expected. Others come one by one until you realize moving forward feels much harder than it did before.

I’ve experienced both.

I’ve faced a fast-growing cancer, open-heart surgery, professional disappointments, and a devastating accident that shattered both of my legs. I’ve known seasons of leading publicly while struggling privately.

I’ve learned that discouragement does more than affect how you feel. It can change what you believe.

It can distort the way you see your circumstances. It can undermine your confidence. It can disconnect you from the strength and momentum you need to move forward.

And that means overcoming discouragement requires more than simply telling yourself to “stay positive.”

Over time, I’ve found myself returning to four movements that help turn discouragement into forward motion. Together, they form a simple framework: R.I.S.E.

1. Recognize the Reality

Every rise begins with honesty.

When something goes wrong, our instinct is often to move past it as quickly as possible. Leaders can be especially good at this. There are people depending on us and responsibilities that don’t disappear just because we’re discouraged.

So we keep going.

But there is a difference between continuing to lead and pretending nothing hurts.

You cannot rebuild what you refuse to acknowledge. Before you can move forward, you have to be willing to ask: Where am I, really?

Name the setback. Seeing it clearly gives you something solid to build from.

2. Be Informed by the Lesson

Once you have acknowledged what happened, resist the temptation to let it define what happens next.

Instead, get curious.

What can this experience teach me?

Every setback carries information. It may reveal something about your preparation, your expectations, your relationships, your priorities, or even yourself.

Now, not every disappointment has a neat and tidy explanation. But that doesn’t mean they can’t all teach us something valuable — and our frame of mind will help us see it or make us miss it.

John Maxwell has often taught that experience isn’t the best teacher; evaluated experience is.

Evaluation changes the questions we ask. Instead of only asking, Why did this happen to me? we begin asking, What do I know now that I didn’t know before? What needs to change because of what I’ve learned?

Pain alone does not automatically produce growth. Reflection can turn pain into wisdom.

3. Draw Strength From Within

Discouragement has a way of turning an event into an identity.

A failure becomes I am a failure. A rejection becomes I’m not valuable.

If we’re not careful, we start looking at ourselves and only seeing our disappointments.

That is why rebuilding after discouragement requires returning to something deeper than circumstances.

Your identity cannot depend entirely on anything that couldbe taken away from you — the last result you produced, the title beside your name, the approval of the people around you, whether your most recent plan succeeded.

For me, that means returning to my faith, my purpose, my values, and what I know to be true about who God created me to be.

External encouragement matters; I know firsthand what five encouraging words from another person can do. But lasting resilience also requires an internal anchor.

Your circumstances may tell you what happened, but they do not get to tell you who you are.

4. Execute the Right Next Step

Eventually, rising requires movement. But here’s the thing — it doesn’t have to be dramatic.

When you’ve been knocked down, the distance between where you are and where you want to be can feel overwhelming. Trying to conquer all of it at once often creates more paralysis.

So don’t start with the whole journey; just start with the next step.

Make the phone call. Have the conversation. Apply again. Rework the plan. Ask for help. Return to the habit you abandoned. Make one decision that moves you in the direction you know you need to go.

Small actions matter because movement creates confidence, and confidence makes further movement possible.

You don’t need certainty before you act. In fact, certainty often comes after you begin moving.

The goal isn’t instant transformation; it’s momentum—built through small, intentional, consistent action.

Rising Is a Rhythm

I used to think resilience was mostly about surviving the big moments.

Life has taught me otherwise.

Resilience is not one heroic comeback after which you never struggle again. Life is a rhythm of rising, stumbling, learning, adjusting, and rising again.

That ten-year-old boy who didn’t make the football team had no idea how many more disappointments were ahead of him. He couldn’t have imagined hospital rooms, surgeries, career setbacks, broken expectations, or an accident that would leave him wondering whether he would walk again.

But he learned something that day that I’m still learning now:

A setback does not have to have the final word.

When discouragement comes, recognize what is real. Be informed by what the experience can teach you. Draw strength from the identity and purpose beneath your circumstances. Then execute the next right step.

You may not be able to change what knocked you down, but you can decide what you do from there.

Looking for practical ways to rise past life’s hurdles?

RISE: A Framework to Overcome Discouragement At Its Roots to Comeback With Purpose is a framework for rebuilding what life tries to break down. It helps leaders confront reality, learn from adversity, draw strength from within, and take the next right step forward. It restores confidence. It clarifies purpose. It reignites momentum. And it empowers leaders to rise—not just for themselves, but for the people they are called to lead. RISE is more than a book—it’s a blueprint for leaders committed to transformation. It is my offering to a world that needs courageous, compassionate, and purpose-driven leadership. And it is my tribute to the Maxwell Leadership team, whose work continues to shape leaders across the globe. Click here to get your copy today.

About the author

Kelvin Henry is an encourager at heart. He is also a seasoned Senior Manager with extensive leadership and coaching experience across Fortune 25 companies (Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Nabisco), the U.S. Air Force, the ministry, and nonprofit board governance. His background and experiences offer a unique perspective and deep insights into the challenges and opportunities of modern leadership.

Plenty of managers run tight operations and still watch their best people leave. The work gets done, the deadlines hold, and the team quietly stops following. Being a good manager means running the work well; avoiding the bad-leader trap means earning the people too, through help, genuine care, and trust a title cannot demand. When both halves are in place, the team you manage becomes a team that wants to follow you.

What you’ll find

• What makes a good manager
• How to be a better manager this week
• Where good managers turn into bad leaders
• Three questions your team is asking about you
• Frequently asked questions

What makes a good manager

The management half of the job is about running the work well: translating goals into clear assignments, keeping priorities steady when everything claims to be urgent, and giving people the feedback and authority they need to deliver. Most good managers share a core set of leadership skills that set the best managers apart:

• Clear expectations and honest feedback
• Priorities protected from daily noise
• Delegation with the authority to act
• Consistency people can plan around
• Reasons shared along with decisions

Teams feel it immediately when the fundamentals slip, because unclear goals and shifting priorities cost more energy than the work itself. Mastering them is what makes a manager good at the job, and it is where the job of leading begins.

How to be a better manager this week

Good management improves through small, repeatable habits, and each of the five below can start in the next five working days.

Make one-on-ones about the person, work second. A standing conversation where someone talks about their goals, their frustrations, and their family tells you how they need to be led, and it signals care no team lunch can match.

Ask “what can I take off your plate?” and follow through. Helping becomes believable the first time you act on the answer, because people measure a manager’s support in actions rather than offers.

Keep a running list of your commitments. Most trust breaks by accident, so write down what you promise in meetings and close the loop every week. A manager who visibly tracks their word rarely has to defend it.

Share the reason along with the decision. People can commit to a call they disagree with when they understand it, and explaining your thinking treats the team as partners in the work.

Correct in private, credit in public. Where feedback and recognition land shapes how safe people feel taking risks for you, and safety is what turns compliance into commitment.

None of the habits require budget or permission. They require consistency, which is exactly what makes them convincing.

Where good managers turn into bad leaders

A title determines what you can assign; whether people want to follow you is earned separately. Managers who lean on authority alone get compliance, which holds only until a better offer arrives.

Google reached the same conclusion when it studied its own managers, expecting technical expertise to define the best ones. It ranked last. What set great managers apart was coaching, listening, showing genuine concern for people’s well-being, and supporting their growth. The work of managing earns you the job. The work of leading earns you the people, and John C. Maxwell defines leadership in exactly those terms: influence, nothing more, nothing less.

In Maxwell’s teaching, people buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. A manager who asks for commitment before earning it is working the sequence backward, and the three questions below are how to run it forward.

Three questions your team is asking about you

In 3 Questions Every Follower is Asking About their Leader, an early episode of the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, Chris Goede and Perry Holley put language to what earning followership takes: every person on your team is quietly asking three questions about you, and the answers decide whether they follow willingly.

Can you help me?

Whether the change is a new project, a new opportunity, or a new boss, the first thing people want to know is how it affects them. Your team wants a manager whose experience, access, and advocacy move their work and careers forward. A manager who visibly invests in someone’s growth gives them a reason to invest back.

Do you care about me?

Nobody gives their best to a manager who treats them as a production unit, and care lands differently for every person. The golden rule says treat others the way you want to be treated; the platinum rule of leadership says lead people the way they need to be led, because leading everyone your own way only reaches the people wired like you, and most of your team is not. Watch how someone talks about their family, interacts with coworkers, and responds to recognition, and they will show you how they need to be led.

Can I trust you?

Trust is the foundation leadership stands on, and it grows the same way every time: you make a commitment and you follow through. Most broken trust is accidental. A manager forgets a commitment, half-listens in a meeting, or lets a promised follow-up slide, and each small miss costs more than it seems. Guard those moments, because a team that trusts you gives you the one thing a title never can: their full commitment.

Grow from good manager to trusted leader

Managers who earn a yes to all three questions lead teams that work with greater ownership, communicate more openly, and stay longer. Over time, that kind of influence strengthens trust across a team and gives the organization a bench of people who follow their leaders by choice.

Maxwell Leadership helps managers turn that shift into daily practice. Leadership Training for Managers equips managers to clarify direction, communicate in ways that build trust, and lead through influence instead of position. The broader Leadership Training programs develop leaders at every level around aligned vision and values, from emerging managers to executive teams.

Subscribe to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast for free leadership insight, and connect with our team to explore where your managers could start.

Frequently asked questions

What are 5 qualities of a good manager?

Clear communication, consistency, strong delegation, genuine care for people, and trustworthiness come up in nearly every study and survey. The first three keep the work on track, and the last two determine whether people stay. A manager strong in all five is usually described by the team as a leader rather than a boss.

What are the top 3 weaknesses of a manager?

Micromanaging, avoiding difficult conversations, and leading everyone the same way appear most often. Each one erodes something different: micromanaging erodes ownership, avoidance erodes standards, and one-size-fits-all leadership erodes connection with most of the team.

What are the 5 C’s of management?

Definitions vary depending on who you ask. Common versions include clarity, communication, consistency, coaching, and care. Whichever list you use, the pattern is the same: the early items cover the work, and the later ones cover the people.

What is the 30-60-90 rule for managers?

A 30-60-90 day plan structures a manager’s first three months: learn the team, the work, and the culture in the first 30 days, begin contributing and building relationships in the next 30, and take full ownership of goals in the final 30. New managers use it to earn trust before making changes.

Most leaders can point to a set of core values on a wall or a slide. Fewer can say those values show up in how their team works on an ordinary Tuesday. The distance between the two is culture, and closing it comes down to daily leadership: values your team helped define, lived out where everyone can see them. Built consistently, culture outlasts any single initiative.

Why your team already has a culture

Every team has a culture, whether anyone planned it or not. Leaders either define one on purpose or default to whatever forms on its own. The default is rarely the culture they would choose. Culture shows up in how people think, act, and interact. It runs on the values a team believes rather than the ones printed on a mug.

Two truths put culture squarely in the leader’s hands. Culture is more caught than taught, so people absorb it from what they watch far faster than from what they are told. Culture also exists in your absence: whatever happens when you are not in the room is the culture you have built. John C. Maxwell defines leadership as influence, nothing more, nothing less. Culture is the shape your influence leaves on a team over time.

How to build team culture in seven steps

In Building an Extraordinary Culture, an episode of the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, Chris Goede and Perry Holley share a seven-step model. The steps run in sequence: the first three build commitment, and the last four turn it into results.

1. Inform your team continually

Culture needs repetition and a common language, because values fade when they are mentioned once at an offsite and never again. One practical habit is opening team meetings with the purpose, the mission, and the values before the task list, so the why stays in front of the what. Recognition works the same way: when you celebrate a win, name the value it expressed before naming the person who delivered it, and the team learns both are worth noticing. Definitions deserve as much attention as the words themselves. 

A value like service means something different in every organization, which is why the strongest cultures spell out what each value means here and the behaviors it should produce. Left to individual interpretation, a value stops being shared at all.

2. Involve people in shaping it

People commit to what they help build, which is why informing a team is never enough on its own. Invite team members into decisions about how the values get lived out, especially where they hold experience and a point of view, and let them see how and why the final calls were made. Everyone wants to be seen, valued, and heard, and a person whose voice shaped the culture treats it as their own rather than as a policy handed down. The stakes are larger than they look: Gallup found global employee engagement fell to 21 percent in 2024, only the second decline in twelve years, driven mostly by a drop in manager engagement. Involvement is one of the most direct remedies a leader controls, because people give their best where they feel connected and heard. Rebuilding it is also one of the most common reasons organizations bring in Employee Engagement training, since the habits behind connection are easier to name than to practice.

3. Inspire by living the culture out

No amount of communication survives a leader who does not model the message, because people believe what they watch long before they believe what they are told. Presence is what makes values believable: being visible, doing the work you praise, and letting people catch you living the culture when you think no one is looking. Maxwell describes the habit as walking slowly through the crowd, staying close enough to people that the culture has a chance to spread. The example can be as small as picking up stray trash on a walk across the property; the people who notice will come down and join in without being asked. A culture lived visibly gives everyone else permission to live it too.

4. Inspect what you expect

What gets inspected gets respected, so take a regular look at whether decisions, behaviors, and priorities still line up with the values you have named, and correct course where they drift. A useful question for the review is a simple one: is what we are doing still aligned with who we say we are? Staying close to the work matters here, because a culture delegated to someone else while the leader steps away stops being led at all.

5. Improve continually

Inspection only matters when it leads to adjustment. You already run this loop elsewhere: leaders review financial statements, customer scores, and their kids’ report cards because they want the next stretch to be better than the last, and culture deserves the same treatment. Small, visible corrections tell the team the values are alive, while a finding that never changes anything teaches them the review is a formality.

6. Increase capacity

A healthy culture increases what a team can carry, and you will feel the shift as engagement and trust grow: more customers, more responsibility, and more change become manageable where they once felt like strain. The temptation at this stage is to coast on what is working, which is why the model treats growing capacity as part of the culture itself. A team that keeps expanding what it can handle never has to relearn the habit under pressure.

7. Impact people

Whatever your industry, every team is in the people business, and the final measure of a culture is the change it creates in people: teammates who grow, customers who are served well, and a community that benefits. The first six steps all point here: inform, involve, and inspire your people, then inspect so you can improve, increase, and ultimately impact people.

Start building a culture that lasts

A lasting culture is built in ordinary moments, in what a leader repeats, models, and rewards over time. Leaders who treat it as a daily practice give their organizations something competitors cannot copy.

Maxwell Leadership can help you build it: Company Culture consulting works with organizations to define their values, translate them into daily behavior, and build the alignment and trust a strong culture runs on. Everyone can learn to lead well, and no one should do it alone. Schedule a discovery call to talk through where your culture stands today, and subscribe to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network for free weekly teaching from Maxwell Leadership’s growth and development professionals.

Frequently asked questions

How do you build a good team culture?

Start with values your team can define in behavioral terms, then reinforce them through repetition, involvement, and example. Culture strengthens when leaders review it regularly and adjust, the same way they manage any other priority. Most culture problems trace back to values people were told about once and never saw modeled.

What are some examples of team culture?

Common patterns include collaborative cultures built on open communication, results-driven cultures organized around performance, learning cultures where growth and feedback are constant, and service cultures centered on the customer. Most healthy teams blend several. The visible signs are the same in each case: how people treat each other, what gets celebrated, and what happens when no one is watching.

What are the 5 C’s of culture change?

Definitions vary depending on who you ask. Common versions include clarity, communication, consistency, commitment, and celebration. Whichever list you use, the discipline behind it is the same: define the culture you want, talk about it often, live it consistently, and recognize it when it shows up.

What is the culture of team building?

Team building activities support a culture without creating one. An offsite or a shared exercise builds connection for a day, while culture is formed by the values a team lives out daily. Use activities to strengthen relationships, and rely on consistent leadership behavior to do the deeper work.

Most leaders who want to improve run into the same obstacle: the workday leaves no room for it. The book goes half-read, the course stays bookmarked, and growth gets pushed to a slower season that never quite arrives. John C. Maxwell has spent his career studying how leaders grow, and his core finding is that leadership develops daily, not in a day. He has lived the principle through what he calls the Rule of 5, five actions he completes every day without exception: he reads, files, thinks, asks questions, and writes. None of it looks impressive on any given day, yet carried out consistently over the years, those five actions have added up to more than 75 books and a lifetime of teaching. The five habits below work the same way. Each takes about five minutes, and each comes with the steps to run it and the reason it works.

Habit 1: Capture one idea worth keeping

Keep one running file of ideas, and add a single entry to it every day. A note on your phone works fine: title it your quote file, and record each idea along with where you found it, whether a line from a book, a colleague’s observation, or a point from a podcast. The reason for writing them down is simple. Ideas you only hear are usually gone within days, while a written idea waits for you, ready to be pulled up months later when a situation calls for it. Maxwell has kept a quote file for decades and draws on it for his books and lessons, guided by a rule worth adopting as your own: if you don’t file it, you lose it.

Start today: create the note and add your first entry before the end of the day. One a day is the target; the value comes from accumulation over months, not from volume in any single week.

Habit 2: Ask one better question each morning

Before you open your inbox, write one question at the top of the day: how can I be a better leader today? Then answer it with one concrete action, maybe giving a teammate ownership of a decision you’d normally make, or preparing thoroughly for a conversation you’ve been improvising. Maxwell asks the question every day, and his reasoning applies to any leader: a team’s growth is capped by its leader’s growth, so the time you spend on yourself serves everyone who reports to you. You’ll also find the question changes what you notice. Prime your attention with it in the morning, and coaching opportunities, process gaps, and teammates who need support become easier to spot, because you’re looking for them.

Start today: pick your question and keep it for a full month. Comparing a month of answers will show you where your leadership keeps needing the same work.

Habit 3: Go one relationship deeper

Have one conversation a day that goes past status updates. Ask a teammate what they’re stuck on, ask a peer what they’re seeing in their corner of the organization, or follow up on something someone mentioned last week. Candid input gets scarcer as your role gets more senior, and unfiltered perspective is the input most likely to improve your decisions. Maxwell puts a number on it from his own practice: across hundreds of meetings where he asked his team to improve an idea, the idea never once came out worse.

If you want to build the habit faster, put some structure behind it. A mentor, a small peer circle, or a Leadership Coaching engagement gives you a standing relationship whose whole purpose is your development, with the candor built in.

Start today: contact one person with something specific: a question about their work, a follow-up, or a detailed thank-you. Rotate through your team before repeating anyone.

Habit 4: Reflect before the day ends

Close each workday by writing two answers: what belongs in front of me tomorrow, and what can I set aside? The first list holds the work connected to what you’re building. The second holds the noise that filled the day without moving anything. Maxwell teaches the sorting in those exact terms, put what matters before you and put distractions behind you, and the reason it works is how attention behaves: whatever you keep deliberately in front of you gets clearer and gets done, while whatever you consciously set aside gradually stops pulling at you.

Start today: set a recurring five-minute block at the end of the workday. Review the answers monthly; the pattern will show your working priorities more honestly than a self-assessment.

Habit 5: Name one win on your team

Once a day, tell one person specifically what they did well. Name the behavior rather than the person’s general quality, because “you caught the error before it shipped” gives someone an action to repeat, while “great job this week” gives them nothing to work with. In most teams, feedback flows toward problems, so wins pass unmarked and the habits behind them fade instead of spreading. A daily dose of specific recognition reverses the pattern one person at a time, and it costs you about a minute.

Start today: before your last meeting of the day, pick one win and deliver it directly to the person behind it, in person or in writing.

The 3 things every leader needs to thrive

It helps to know what all the daily work is building. In a conversation on the Maxwell Leadership Podcast, Maxwell and Jon Gordon, a bestselling author and longtime Maxwell collaborator, identified three things every leader needs to thrive: a mission, a team, and a scoreboard. Each of the five habits develops at least one of them.

• A mission gives your attention somewhere to point, and it needs regular renewal. Gordon puts it plainly: “We don’t get burned out because of what we do. We get burned out because we forget why we do it.” The capture, question, and reflection habits keep the why in view a few minutes at a time.
• A team supplies the perspective and support no leader generates alone. The relationship habit builds yours one conversation at a time, whether with teammates, peers, or a coach.
• A scoreboard creates the awareness improvement depends on, since you can’t fix what you don’t know and you can’t repeat what you never identify. Daily recognition trains the skill, and Gordon suggests tracking two measures: the results your team achieves and the impact people have on each other.

For a deeper dive into all three, listen to the full episode, where Maxwell and Gordon unpack each one with stories from their own leadership.

The compounding math of daily leadership habits

Five habits at five minutes each comes to under 30 minutes a day, and across a working year the practice passes 100 hours, gathered in increments small enough to survive any schedule. Maxwell’s shorthand for the effect is that consistency compounds, and you’ll see the compounding in practice: captured ideas feed better questions, deeper relationships make honest feedback easier to come by, and the daily reflection keeps everything aimed at what matters. Give it a few years and the change can look sudden from the outside, even though you built it a day at a time.

Don’t grow your leadership alone

The habits above give you a development plan you can run without changing your schedule, and a coach helps you get more from it. Maxwell Leadership’s Leadership Coaching pairs you with a trusted partner, one-to-one or alongside your leadership team, to work through your specific goals and blind spots with practical application and checkpoints along the way. Honest feedback gets scarcer as you advance, and a coaching relationship keeps it coming when it matters most. We believe everyone can learn to lead well, and no one should do it alone. To find the right starting point, schedule a discovery call with our team. And for a regular supply of ideas worth filing, subscribe to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast wherever you listen.

FAQ

What makes someone a better leader?

Maxwell defines leadership as influence, nothing more, nothing less. Leaders improve by growing what influence rests on: credibility, relationships, judgment, and genuine care for the people they lead. Daily habits build each of those more reliably than occasional intensive effort.

How long does it take to become a better leader?

There’s no finish line, but visible change arrives sooner than most leaders expect. A few months of consistent daily practice typically shows up in faster decisions, stronger relationships, and a team more willing to bring problems forward.

What daily habits do good leaders have?

Common threads include reading and capturing ideas, asking a daily growth question, investing in one relationship at a time, reflecting at the end of the day, and recognizing specific wins. Maxwell’s own Rule of 5 is one model: every day he reads, files, thinks, asks questions, and writes.

Can anyone learn to be a leader?

Yes. Some people start with natural gifts, but leadership is a learnable set of skills and disciplines rather than an inborn trait. Maxwell’s entire body of work rests on the conviction that everyone can grow as a leader once growth becomes intentional.

Developing future leaders means preparing the people on your team to carry leadership before the organization needs them to. Most teams have someone with the potential, and most of the time nothing is done with it until a role opens up and the scramble begins. The work of developing that person starts long before the promotion, in how you spot them, what you model for them, and how much room you give them to lead while they are still learning.

Why developing future leaders is worth your time

A leader who only leads followers grows the team by addition, one task and one decision at a time, all of it flowing through one person. A leader who develops other leaders grows the team by multiplication, because every person they develop starts developing others. John C. Maxwell has taught for decades that developing leaders is the fastest way to grow a team or a business: decisions stop bottlenecking at the top, the team keeps running when you are out, and when a role opens up, the successor is already on the bench.

How to spot the future leaders on your team

Potential rarely announces itself with a title, and the person who ends up leading is often not the loudest voice in the room. In the Maxwell Leadership Podcast episode How to Develop Leaders, Mark Cole, CEO of Maxwell Leadership, and co-host Chris Goede build on Maxwell’s lesson with the markers Cole looks for:

• They are hungry to learn. Teachability shows up before talent does.
• They want to grow. Not just perform in the current role, but become more.
• They value relationships. Someone who works only for themselves can produce, but they cannot lead a team.
• They serve. A servant’s heart points leadership at other people instead of at the title.
• They get things done. When someone without any leadership position keeps producing results, it is worth asking why they have never been given the chance to lead.

You will only spot the markers if you expect to find them. As Cole puts it:

If you wait for proof before you invest, the first disappointment will disqualify someone who never got your belief in the first place.

Model the leadership you want to see

Your future leaders are learning from you right now, whether you are teaching or not. How you run meetings, handle mistakes, share credit, and treat people under pressure teaches more than anything you say. As Maxwell puts it:

It works the other way too: you cannot pass on what you do not practice, so if you want to grow others, keep growing yourself. Maxwell calls it the Law of Respect: people naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves, so the level you are leading at decides the level of leader you attract and keep. Share what you are learning with the team, whether it is a book, a lesson from a hard week, or a decision you would make differently. Something as small as opening your team meetings with whatever you are studying at the moment works, because the people in the room pick up the habit along with the lesson.

Give future leaders room to lead before the title

Development happens in live situations, not in theory. Hand a future leader a project with the decisions attached, let them run the meeting you usually run, or put them in front of a problem one size bigger than anything they have solved. Some of it will go wrong, and how you respond is part of the development. If you treat the mistake as coaching, they learn to lead through failure; if you take the work back, they learn it is not safe to lead here.

Cole watches for three things when he is developing someone for bigger responsibility: perspective, whether they can get above the details and see the bigger picture; people skills, whether they have enough relationship in the tank to take people on the journey; and production, whether results still come when the work runs through others. Watch for the same three while your future leader runs the project, and you will know exactly what to develop next. By the time the title arrives, leading should already feel familiar.

Put structure around their growth

Belief, modeling, and stretch assignments will carry development a long way, but they depend on you remembering to do them. Keep it simple: name the people you are developing, meet with them regularly, and keep a running note of what to discuss and hand over next. Leadership training programs add what a single manager cannot, giving emerging leaders frameworks, peers on the same journey, and a track that outlasts any one reporting line. Read: Develop Young Leaders

Develop your team’s future leaders with Maxwell Leadership

A team that develops its own leaders stops depending on outside hires to fill its most important roles. Maxwell Leadership builds its training programs on Maxwell’s conviction that it takes a leader to grow a leader, and has delivered them inside some of the world’s largest organizations. Connect with our team to build a development track for your emerging leaders, and subscribe to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast for free weekly insights along the way.

FAQ

How do you identify future leaders on your team?

Look for teachability, a desire to grow, strong relationships, a willingness to serve, and a track record of getting things done. Production without a title is one of the clearest signals, since it shows influence working before any authority backs it.

What is the best way to develop future leaders?

Combine belief, modeling, and live practice. Tell the person you see leadership in them, let them watch you lead well, and hand over work with the decisions attached. Structured training adds frameworks and peers, and regular one-on-ones keep the development intentional.

How long does it take to develop a future leader?

Leadership develops daily, not in a day. Most emerging leaders need a year or more of stretch assignments and coaching before they are ready to carry a formal role, which is why development should start well before a vacancy does.

Why is developing future leaders important?

Teams that develop leaders promote from within, keep their best people longer, and grow faster, because leading through other leaders multiplies what one person can do alone. Teams that skip it depend on lucky external hires for their most important roles.

Most leadership development plans are training calendars wearing a strategy’s name. Workshops get scheduled, attendance gets tracked, budgets get spent, and two years later the organization is still promoting managers who have never been developed as leaders. The gap shows up in succession conversations, retention numbers, and the bench strength available when a key leader leaves. Closing it takes architecture rather than activity, which is where leadership consulting engagements usually begin.

What separates a leadership development plan from a training calendar

A leadership development plan is a multi-year architecture for identifying, growing, and measuring leaders at every tier of the organization. It defines who gets developed, what growth looks like at each level, who does the developing, and how progress gets measured. A training calendar answers one question: what sessions are we running this quarter. A plan answers the harder ones. Where are our leaders now, where do they need to be in three years, and what happens between those two points?

Organizations that rely on classroom sessions alone tend to see enthusiasm spike after each workshop and behavior revert within weeks, because nothing in the leader’s environment or responsibilities changed. Growth takes root when learning is paired with surroundings that reward it and assignments that stretch it.

The four pillars of a durable leadership development plan

The plans that survive contact with a budget cycle share four structural elements, each grounded in frameworks John C. Maxwell has spent his career teaching. Together they give leaders at every level a shared language for growth.

Start with an honest assessment of your leaders

Every plan needs a baseline, and the 5 Levels of Leadership gives the baseline a shape. Each level describes why people follow:

• Position. People follow because they have to.
• Permission. People follow because they want to.
• Production. People follow because of the results you deliver.
• People Development. People follow because of what you have done for them.
• Pinnacle. People follow because of who you are and what you represent.

Mapping your leadership population against the five levels tells you something a skills inventory never will: which leaders are still relying on title, which have earned trust, and which are ready to develop others. The assessment only works when it is honest, because a self-rating exercise designed to flatter gives the plan a baseline it cannot trust.

Build development pathways for every leadership tier

A first-time supervisor, a director of directors, and a C-suite executive should not sit through the same content. Pathways give each tier a distinct route, and Maxwell’s Three E’s of Leadership Development describe what every route needs: Environment, Equipping, and Exposure. Most companies invest in equipping alone, then wonder why leaders stall. The other two E’s do as much of the work. Environment means the leader’s daily context rewards growth instead of punishing it. Exposure means stretch assignments, new rooms, and problems one size bigger than the leader has solved before. Structured leadership training programs supply the equipping, and the plan’s job is to engineer the other two around it.

Add a mentorship and coaching layer

Programs equip groups. People grow people. The strongest plans pair every high-potential leader with someone a level or two ahead, because growth transfers through relationship in ways a curriculum cannot replicate, and growth transferred that way compounds. As Maxwell puts it:

Mentoring works when it is planned rather than improvised. Mark Cole, CEO of Maxwell Leadership, keeps a running list for every leader he is developing in a given year and reviews it daily, asking what he needs to discuss, transfer, or add:

“You don’t lead them well reactively. You lead them well proactively. What is your plan of adding value, of holding accountable, and increasing the performance, the ability of that leader in your life?”

The Maxwell Leadership Podcast episode How to Develop Leaders goes deeper into building an intentional mentoring rhythm. For senior leaders whose growth has outpaced what internal mentors can offer, executive coaching extends the same one-on-one layer with an outside perspective.

Close the loop with measurement that outlasts a quarter

Completion rates measure logistics, not leadership. A working measurement loop tracks the outcomes development exists to produce: internal promotion rates, retention among high-potentials, movement between assessment cycles, and how many leaders each leader has developed. Leadership develops daily, not in a day, so a plan judged on one quarter’s data will always look like a failure, while the same plan measured across years shows the compounding. Development also matures through predictable stages, and the 4 phases of leadership development map what to expect at each one.

How to focus development time for the highest return

Not every leader gets equal investment, and saying so out loud is what keeps a plan affordable. The Pareto principle applies directly: rank ten team members by production, invest 80 percent of your development time in the top two, and the return covers most of what the team needs, especially once those top producers begin mentoring the rest. Everybody still gets developed, and the concentrated investment flows where it multiplies.

The principle works only when it rests on belief. Development starts from the conviction that leadership potential exists in every person, because a leader waiting with skepticism will let the first disappointment disqualify an emerging leader before they ever get a chance.

A 12-month rollout template for your leadership development plan

A full architecture takes years to mature, but the first year follows a repeatable rhythm.

• Months 1 to 3. Run the baseline assessment against the 5 Levels, define your leadership tiers, and identify the top 20 percent in each tier. Confirm executive sponsorship and the metrics the plan will answer to.
• Months 4 to 6. Launch tiered pathways, pair every high-potential with a mentor, and brief mentors on what proactive development looks like month to month.
• Months 7 to 9. Introduce exposure through stretch assignments, cross-functional problems, and rooms the emerging leaders have never been in. Hold a mid-year review against the baseline.
• Months 10 to 12. Measure movement, promote from within where the data supports it, capture what worked, and build year two on the evidence.

Build your leadership development plan with Maxwell Leadership

An organization that develops leaders at every tier stops depending on lucky hires, because the bench builds itself. Maxwell Leadership has carried Maxwell’s frameworks into some of the world’s largest organizations, built on a single conviction: everyone deserves to be led well. Connect with our consulting team to start drafting your architecture, and subscribe to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast for free weekly insights between planning sessions. 

FAQ

What should a leadership development plan include?

Four elements form the core: a baseline assessment of where leaders currently are, development pathways matched to each leadership tier, a mentorship and coaching layer that pairs growing leaders with more seasoned ones, and a measurement loop tied to outcomes like promotion and retention rather than attendance.

How is a leadership development plan different from a leadership development program?

A program is a single offering, such as a workshop series or cohort experience. A plan is the organizational architecture that decides which programs run, who attends them, and how their results get measured over multiple years. Programs live inside plans.

How long does a leadership development plan take to show results?

Leading indicators such as engagement and mentor activity move within the first year. Outcome measures like internal promotion rates and high-potential retention typically take 18 to 36 months, which is why the measurement loop runs on an annual rhythm rather than a quarterly one.

How do you measure the success of leadership development?

Track internal promotion rates, retention among identified high-potentials, movement in leadership assessments between cycles, and the number of leaders each developing leader has raised up. Attendance and satisfaction scores measure logistics, not growth.