The Aspen Tree Leadership Strategy

Just read an interview with Leighton Ford about the "Aspen Tree" theory of leadership development.

In it Dr. Leighton Ford - a Canadian from Chatham, ON who worked for many years with Dr. Billy Graham and is married to his sister - likens the best kind of leadership to "aspen tree" leadership versus "banyan tree" leadership. I'll let him explain:





Paul Hebert, who was a veteran missionary in India, said, “We’ve got a lot of banyan tree leadership in India.” What he meant by that -- like the great spreading banyan tree that’s in India and Florida and other places -- it takes up so much space that it doesn’t let the sunlight through, to filter through, to nurture little seedlings. So not much grows under the banyan tree. He said, “We’ve had a lot of leadership like that in India.” And, of course, in other parts of the world too.

I thought about that and I thought, “Yeah, there are a lot of big leaders that take up a lot of oxygen and space when they walk into a room, and they’ve got a very important place.”

The aspen tree grows its roots underground, and you don’t see most [of them]. You see the top of an aspen tree. The largest aspen tree in the world has 44,000 trunks in Colorado, and it grows up from underneath. So there are two different approaches, I think, to leadership. Some people -- my brother Billy Graham has been a large tree, but he’s also nurtured other, younger leaders.

I think that, to me, that’s very important, that the aspen tree -- we don’t always have to be seen. We don’t always have to be visible. Some of our best work and leadership in ministry may take place out of sight, almost underground, and then it springs up to let others grow, let their beauty shine forth.

And here is the video about it: Leighton Ford: Leadership like the aspen tree | Faith & Leadership

Wikipedia details that Aspen trees grow in clonal colonies - they send out their roots underground and sprout seedlings up from them - and as a result are able to survive the ravages of fire, drought and erosion and 1 such colony in Utah is estimated to be 80,000 year old.