F3 Reading about leadership is a fine start, but F3’s field manual says it will never be enough. At some point you have to do the thing, badly, next to someone who can catch you when you fall.
Why isn’t head-knowledge enough?
Because leading is a skill, and skills are built by doing. F3 describes the second stage of developing a leader as apprenticeship, which moves through watching, then helping, then finally doing. In the doing stage, the apprentice actually leads, running into his own problems and working out his own solutions, but with an experienced hand nearby. F3 compares it to a student pilot flying the plane while the instructor sits ready to grab the controls if inexperience puts everyone at risk. You are really flying. You are just not flying alone yet. That raises the question of what the man in the other seat is actually there to do.
What is the mentor’s real job?
To let the apprentice fail small and learn. F3 is honest that most of a new leader’s early attempts will turn out poorly, and it says a good mentor expects that, because it was true of him once too. So instead of punishing the stumbles, the mentor rewards the initiative and manages whatever outcome results. He is not looking for a flawless performance. He is looking to build the apprentice’s willingness to step up and lead on his own, and that only grows if trying is safe. All of which points at a stranger question: why a leader would build up the very man who could replace him.
Why would a leader train his own replacement?
Because that, F3 says, is the entire point. The mentor’s real goal is to produce leaders as good as himself or better, which means deliberately working himself out of a job. In healthy organizations, F3 notes, this is simply how it works; in the military, training your people to do your job better than you do is a basic principle. It only sounds strange, even threatening, in unhealthy groups where every man is guarding his own turf. A good leader is not diminished by raising up someone better. Raising up someone better is the legacy.
F3 calls this Apprenticeship, part of leaving right in the F3 Nation Q-Source, the field manual for virtuous leadership that F3 is built on. Read the full teaching: f3nation.com/apprenticeship. F3 Denver is where men practice it. Find a workout.