The Leadership Development Method Jesus Used Daily
Why the most powerful discipleship strategy in history is also the one most leaders refuse to use.
Several years ago, a CEO I was working with with told me he had just spent $180,000 on a leadership development program for his executive team.
Six months later, his number two quit. His operations director got hired out by a competitor. And the three people he had identified as future leaders all admitted they still didn’t feel ready to make a real decision without him in the room.
I’ll never forget that call we had. He called me frustrated and said, “I don’t get it. I gave them everything.”
I asked him one question back.
“Did you ever let them try?”
He went quiet.
That conversation has stayed with me because it’s the exact moment most leadership development dies. Not in the budget meeting. Not in the org chart. In the gap between what we say we want and what we’re actually willing to release.
Jesus didn’t have that gap.
He spent three years training the most influential leaders the world has ever seen, and He did it without a curriculum, a certification track, or a single offsite retreat. He used a method so simple that medical schools would later borrow it and modern leadership books would dress it up with new vocabulary.
Watch one. Do one. Teach one.
He let the disciples watch Him heal. Then He sent them out to heal. Then He told them to go and make disciples who would do the same thing.
Modern leadership calls this apprenticeship.
Jesus just called it Tuesday.
The Method Hidden in Plain Sight
Most of us read the gospels and miss the genius of how Jesus actually trained His people. We focus on what He taught. We rarely study how He transferred it.
But look at the pattern.
In Matthew 10, Jesus calls the twelve together and gives them authority to do exactly what they had been watching Him do for months.
“These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: ‘Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, proclaim this message: “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.’”
Matthew 10:5-8 (NIV)
Read that slowly.
Jesus is sending people out to heal who have never healed. He’s sending people out to cast out demons who have never cast out a demon. He’s putting the message of the kingdom in the mouths of men who, just months earlier, were fishing for a living.
Most leaders today wouldn’t trust their direct reports to send a company-wide email without three rounds of edits and running it through ChatGPT.
Jesus released His disciples into real ministry while they were still learning what ministry was. He didn’t wait for them to be ready. He created the conditions where readiness could be built.
And here’s what we miss: He stayed close enough to debrief afterwards.
When the disciples came back from their mission in Luke 10, they were fired up about what had happened. Some things worked. Some things confused them. Jesus didn’t shame them for what they didn’t get right. He used the experience as a teaching moment for what was next.
That’s the pattern. Watch. Do. Teach.
The watching gives them vision. The doing gives them experience. The teaching gives them ownership.
Skip any one of those steps and you’re not developing leaders. You’re just running programs.
The Step Most Leaders Skip
I want to talk about the second step because that’s where almost every leader I work with gets stuck.
I’ve consulted a lot of organizations across the country. Churches, businesses, ministries, family-run companies. Different industries, different sizes, different cultures.
The breakdown is always the same.
Leaders love step 1. Watching feels safe. You stay the expert. You control the room. You get to be the smartest person in the meeting.
Leaders love step 3. Sending people out feels like multiplication. You can point to it on a slide and call it scaling.
Step two requires something most leaders quietly resist.
It requires you to watch someone do your job worse than you would do it. And not take it back.
It requires you to sit in a meeting where they fumble through the conversation you could have wrapped up powerfully in five minutes. And not interrupt.
It requires you to stand in the back of the room while they teach the lesson you’ve taught a hundred times. And let them say it their way.
I know that’s tough to hear.
This is the part where leadership actually gets transferred. The messy middle where they’re learning by doing and you’re learning to let them.
This is also the part where Jesus separated Himself from every other teacher in the ancient world. The rabbis of His day kept their disciples at arm’s length until they were “ready.” Jesus brought His disciples in and put them to work before they had any business doing the work.
That’s not poor judgment. That’s intentional discipleship.
Jesus understood something most leaders miss.
People don’t become leaders by hearing more information. They become leaders by being trusted with real responsibility before they think they can handle it.
What Step Two Actually Looks Like
If you want to build leaders who can actually lead, you have to give them assignments that are slightly beyond their current capacity. Then you have to resist the urge to rescue them.
In John 6, Jesus is staring at five thousand hungry people and a kid’s lunch.
Watch what He does.
“When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, ‘Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?’ He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.”
John 6:5-6 (NIV)
Jesus already knew what He was going to do.
He wasn’t asking Philip because He needed input. He was asking because He was developing a leader. He created a moment where Philip had to wrestle with a problem that was bigger than him. Where Philip had to look at the resources, run the math, and feel the weight of leadership he wasn’t ready for.
That tension is the curriculum.
Most leaders rob their people of that tension because the tension is uncomfortable for the leader, not just the learner. We don’t like watching someone flounder. We don’t like the silence in the room when they don’t know the answer. We don’t like the inefficiency.
So we jump in. We rescue. We give the answer. And we tell ourselves we’re being helpful.
What we’re actually doing is keeping them dependent on us.
Jesus didn’t do that. He let Philip sit in the impossibility of feeding five thousand people with no resources. He let the disciples count the fish and bread and report back. He let them pass out the food and watch the math break in their hands.
By the time they finished collecting twelve baskets of leftovers, they had learned something no sermon could have taught them.
They had learned what it feels like to lead through a problem that requires faith.
That’s what step two does. It puts your people in situations where they have to grow into the assignment. And it keeps you close enough to debrief without being close enough to take over.
The Heart Check Behind Multiplication
Here’s a question I’ve started asking leaders who say they want to develop their people.
Are you developing them, or are you cloning yourself?
Because there’s a meaningful difference between the two.
Cloning is when you want them to do it your way, with your words, in your style, at your pace. Cloning feels like development because there’s training involved. But the goal isn’t their growth. The goal is your replication.
Development is when you give them the principles, the heart, and the mission, then you release them to apply it in their own way.
Jesus made disciples. He didn’t make copies.
Peter led differently than John. Paul led differently than both of them. Their personalities were intact. Their gifts were distinct. Their methods varied.
The mission was the same. The message was the same. The heart behind it all was the same.
Jesus gave them the values. He let them keep their voice.
If you can’t tolerate your people doing it differently than you would, you’re not multiplying leadership. You’re protecting your version of it.
And when the day comes that you have to step away, the whole thing collapses because nobody else knew how to do it without you.
That’s not legacy. That’s a bottleneck dressed up in a leadership title.
Three Weeks. One Skill. One Person.
You don’t need a budget for this. You don’t need approval. You don’t need to launch a formal program or hire a consultant.
You need three weeks, one skill you want to transfer, and one person ready to be developed.
1. Week one is observation.
Bring them into the room where you exercise the skill you want them to learn. The hard conversation. The strategic decision. The difficult meeting. Don’t just let them watch. Tell them what you’re thinking as you go. Walk them through the questions you’re asking, the moves you’re making, and why you’re making them in that order.
You’re giving them access to how you think, not just what you do.
2. Week two is execution.
Hand it over. Let them lead the conversation while you sit in the back. Let them make the call while you’re available for questions. Let them deliver the message while you’re nearby to step in only if it falls completely apart.
When they’re done, debrief. Ask what they noticed. Point out what worked. Offer one or two adjustments for next time.
Then have them try it again.
This is where most leaders fail. They take it back the second something feels off. Don’t. Sit in the discomfort. Let the lesson land in their hands, not yours.
3. Week three is transfer.
Have them teach it to someone else. Walk a new team member through the same skill. Lead a workshop. Train the person stepping into where they used to be.
When they teach it, they own it. Now you’ve gone from one leader to two. You’ve stopped scaling yourself and started scaling capacity.
Do that with one skill, with one person, every quarter, and within a year you’ll have a different team. People who can make decisions when you’re not in the room. People who can think on their feet. People who can develop the next generation behind them.
That’s how Jesus built something that outlasted His physical presence on earth. He didn’t just train twelve men. He trained twelve men to train others, who trained others, who trained others.
Two thousand years later, we’re still here.
The Question Underneath Every Real Leader
Here’s the question I want to leave you with.
Are you willing to let someone do your job worse than you would do it, so that one day they can do it better than you ever could?
If the answer is no, you’ll stay needed. You’ll feel important. You’ll keep getting the calls and making the decisions and being the bottleneck everyone runs through.
You’ll never multiply.
If the answer is yes, you’ll have to let go of being the smartest person in the room. You’ll have to release control before you feel ready. You’ll have to watch your work get done in ways you wouldn’t have chosen, and trust that the values are still intact even when the methods change.
That’s the cost of building something that lasts.
Jesus paid that cost on purpose. He spent three years pouring into twelve men so He could trust them to carry the mission without Him. He didn’t try to stay indispensable. He tried to make Himself unnecessary in the right way, so the kingdom could keep moving forward.
The method works. It worked for Him. It will work for you.
Watch one. Do one. Teach one.
The only question is whether you’re willing to release the part of leadership that feels safest to keep.
Because the leader you’re building is waiting to grow.
Step into that, leader.
— Jared