Before you can lead anyone else, you must first learn to lead yourself. But after you have a developed a decent level of self-leadership competence, the time will come to invest in other people. And when you do, investing in one person is good, but investing in multiple people is much more preferable. Allow me to explain.
Twenty years ago a killer whale named K16 gave birth to a male calf, a son named K35. Center for Whale Research research director Michael Weiss describes their association in this npr.org article as “an extremely close relationship.”
Male orcas are extraordinarily large animals with extraordinary large appetites. This is where K35’s mother K16 comes in. Weiss noted the mother would “catch a salmon, and bring it up to the surface and actually bite half of the fish off and leave that half for her son. So she’s sharing a huge amount of food.” That’s a high-maintenance 20-year-old.
K16 would be described as a helicopter parent. So much so, she never had another baby calf. All her efforts went into investing in her male son. He is her whole life.
The hope now is that K35 will breed with a female killer whale and have about three or four calves, with at least the first two being females. This would allow the species to continue and thrive. But if you have a male first, you may not have any other calves.
Weiss said of the fewer offspring, “Killer whale mothers pay a really huge cost to take care of their sons. And they do this throughout their son’s life and never really stop paying that cost to keep their sons alive.”
Here is the leadership lesson:
It is important to invest in a younger leader. No doubt. This is referred to as mentorship, discipleship, or reproduction and it is vitally important. I would never discount one-on-one investment. But what happens if that one leader does nothing with what was invested in them? Much like K16 and K35, your leadership influence will be limited at best, and could potentially cease to exist at worst. To prove my point, when a mother killer whale dies, their son often dies a year or two afterwards. Weiss thinks it is because of a significant reduction in their food supply.
A killer whale shortage is currently happening in the Pacific Northwest. What the killer whale population needs right now are many more reproductive females.
There is also currently a leadership shortage in our world. What the world needs right now are many more healthy leaders who can reproduce themselves. Much like killer whales, this only comes from investing in not just one leader, but a number of leaders. It is what is necessary for our leadership to continue into the future.
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