Room to Grow
Leaders in some organizations don’t recognize the importance of creating a climate conducive to building potential leaders. To see the relationship between environment and growth, look at nature. One popular aquarium fish is the shark. The reason is that sharks adapt to their environment. If you catch a small shark and confine it, it will stay a size proportionate to the aquarium in which it lives. Sharks can be six inches long yet fully mature. But if you turn them loose in the ocean, they grow to their normal size.
The same is true of potential leaders. Some are put into an organization when they are still small, and the confining environment ensures that they stay small and under-developed. Only leaders can control the environment of their organization. They can be the change agents who create a climate conducive to growth.
~ John C. Maxwell, Leadership Promises for Every Day.