By Dr. John C. Maxwell
Imagine that you're visiting your favorite bakery. Not the kind that boasts its bread is "baked fresh daily" (as if that fools anyone into thinking the bread didn't really start out the day as frozen bread dough), but the type of mom-and-pop shop that actually does prepare everything it sells from scratch.
While you're admiring the gourmet breads, the flaky croissants, the mammoth muffins and the delectable pastries, you suddenly notice that the guy up to his elbows in flour is shockingly thin. You make a mental note of his physical shape, then get back to the more important business of choosing between the mouth-watering apple fritter or the blueberry bagel with low-fat cream cheese. By the time you pay for your selection and head out the door, you've all but forgotten about the baker.
Until the next time you come to the bakery, that is. This time, you're startled to observe two things about the guy in the white hat: Not only is he even skinnier than he was before, but he's also running the entire kitchen solo. Sure, there's a clerk up front serving the customers, but the baker is alone in the back—frantically rushing here and there; measuring, mixing and frosting everything himself.
This scenario represents a hazard that is all too common for leaders. As my friend Tim Elmore, author of Nurturing the Leader within Your Child, explains it, many leaders are like this starving baker—they spend so much time providing for others that they fail to provide for themselves.
It's all about personal growth. Your people can only be as healthy as you are. They can only be as strong as you are. So your first responsibility as a leader—if you want to be effective, that is—is to feed yourself before you feed anyone else.
This brings me to two critical questions for you to consider:
1. What is your plan for personal growth? In other words, what is your plan to feed yourself? Do you even have one, or are you like the starving baker who serves everyone in town but has no plan for taking care of himself? Amazingly, most people don't have a personal growth plan. They think growth is automatic. But it's not. We don't automatically grow. As Paul Harvey once stated, "You can tell you're on the road to success; it's uphill all the way." You might be able to coast for a while, but you can only stay ahead of the pack if you keep growing.
2. What is your plan for team growth? What are you doing right now to develop your team? When your people grow, the company grows. This reminds me of the Law of the Lid that I wrote about in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. This law simply states that an organization, team, group or department cannot grow beyond the lid of its leadership. If you feel as if you're already working at maximum capacity, your assignment is clear. You need to get your team members to operate at maximum capacity with you. And to do that, you need a plan.
The next time you stop by your local bakery for a box of doughnuts or muffins, take a minute to evaluate whether you've fallen victim to the starving baker syndrome lately. Remember, you can't export what you don't have.
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