Life.Church Senior Pastor, speaker and author Craig Groeschel. InkFreeNews photo by Kory Stoneburner-Betts.

WINONA LAKE — About 500 attendees from Kosciusko County and beyond gathered at the Manahan Orthopaedic Capital Center on the Grace College campus for a special live event featuring Life.Church Senior Pastor, speaker and author Craig Groeschel, Thursday afternoon, Dec. 5.

Groeschel is the founder and Senior Pastor of Life.Church, an American evangelical multi-site church with campuses in 10 states. He has a successful leadership podcast, “The Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast,” that has millions of weekly downloads. Life.Church also owns the popular YouVersion Bible app.

On Thursday, Groeschel spoke of the importance of cultivating future leaders within an organization.

“The potential of your organization always reflects on the strength of its people,” said Groeschel.

Groeschel expanded upon that idea by providing examples from his organization and his past. The Oklahoma-based Life.Church, entering its 24th year, meets in 34 different locations across the country. He credits the longevity of his organization with the longevity of its executive leadership over the 20 plus years of the course of the church’s existence.

“Where do you find amazing people?” said Groeschel. “We don’t find amazing leaders, we build amazing leaders.”

Goeschel broke down the process of creating great future leaders into three main points; discover, develop and deploy.

Whatever one happens to do, Groeschel said, that everyone wants high potential people on their teams. Groeschel identified these high potential individuals as “Hi-Po’s.”

“A high potential player is one possessing the capacity, the character and the drive to become a future catalytic leader,” he said.

There are high potential players to be discovered all around us, according to Groeschel. “There is unrecognized, untapped potential in people all around you,” said Groeschel.

Unfortunately, the true high potential players usually don’t realize their worth. And the ones who think they’re high potential players, usually are not, he said. Most high potential individuals have extreme strengths balanced by extreme weaknesses, incredible at a few select things and have blind spots in others. The key, he says is “don’t let the downsides draw away from the potential.”

Groeschel drew upon his past to illustrate focusing on the potential in spite of extreme weaknesses. In his college days, he said, one Sunday he brought several of his fraternity brothers to a church he attended in which many of the attendees were predominantly elderly. It led him to obtain his first position within the ministry, despite being a business major at the time. He admitted several weaknesses including impatience and a demanding nature that were looked past due to his potential.

For development, Groschel said to “make leaders where they are.” He said that developing great leaders requires effort and comes with a great degree of difficulty that one can imagine. However, “it’s going to lead to better results than one can imagine,” he said.

A key is to commit to developing “through the dip,” he said. As a leader, some know that once they hand off a task, it won’t be completed as well as if they completed it. “If you will let the quality drop and let them grow, over time they will do it just as well, but the right person will come up with things you’ve never thought of,” said Groeschel.

“The best way to let them grow is to let them do,” he said.

To illustrate, he told the story of when he was given a sermon to develop and preach at the last minute early in his time in ministry. When giving the message, “I did well for about 12 minutes,” he said. Wording, he said, was his downfall with the congregation and the sermon. Being in that “dip” lead him to further develop more effective preaching style. “We don’t see people as a way to complete tasks, we see tasks as a means to develop people,” he said.

Coaching through the dip toward the potential creates successful leaders, he said. “Develop through the dip and on the other side, you’ll have someone really special.”

Finally, deploying great leaders requires mentors and teachers of these individuals to give up control. Not an easy task, Groeschel admits. “If I release this person, they might not be up to my standards immediately,” he said.

“You can have growth, or you can have control but you can’t have both,” said Groeschel. A lack of belief inhibits growth, he said. In talent acquisition at his organization, not micromanaging the hiring process has led his team to take the reins and find their own high potential players.

By stepping back, “what do you think that communicates to our team about how much I believe in them to invest in the most important roles,” he said about the importance of delegating authority.

To end the talk, Groeschel challenged the audience to find someone in the area and work through the dip to see their potential.

This event was organized by the Global Leadership Summit and Intercession Group based in Winona Lake.