From Mentorship to Multiplication

When I look back over my life, I can trace many of the defining moments in my personal and professional journey back to people who were willing to invest in me.

In high school, there was Ryan, a college student who took the time to hang out with me on weekends. While many of my friends were going to parties, Ryan and I would sit together and study the Bible. When I went to college, Brandon led my discipleship group. He challenged me to go on a mission trip—a challenge that would eventually lead me to spend two years serving overseas as a missionary.

While I was living in China, Cameron met with me every week. He would share with me the things he was learning in seminary, and those conversations eventually influenced me to pursue my own master's degree in missions and leadership. During seminary, I worked for Dale. He challenged me to grow my business skills and helped me see something I hadn't fully understood before: pursuing God's calling in my life didn't necessarily mean working in vocational ministry. I could live out that calling through my work and leadership in the marketplace.

Then I came to Chick-fil-A, where George became another important mentor in my life. He challenged the way I thought about leadership and helped me continue growing into the leader I wanted to become.

Different people. Different seasons. Different lessons. But they all had something in common: they took the time to invest in me.

So when I eventually became a Chick-fil-A Owner/Operator, I knew developing others had to be an important part of the kind of leader I wanted to be. So many people had invested in me. How could I not invest in others?

The Beginning of CLIMB

I began meeting with Team Members and leaders and sharing many of the lessons I had learned over the years. As I did, I began noticing recurring themes. Eventually, I organized those lessons into a curriculum I could use when mentoring others. I called it the CLIMB Mentorship Program.

The name was inspired by a quote from Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy:

“No goal is too high if we climb with care and confidence.”

Those two words—care and confidence—captured what I wanted mentorship to accomplish. I wanted to invest in people with genuine care and intentionality while helping build their confidence by giving them the skills, wisdom, and opportunities they needed to become effective leaders.

At first, I simply mentored as many people as I could. Maybe two, three, or four people throughout a year. And I loved it.

But eventually, I realized something:

If I wanted the impact to multiply, I couldn't be the only mentor.

From Addition to Multiplication

There is a passage in 2 Timothy 2:2 that has deeply shaped the way I think about leadership development. Paul tells Timothy to take what he has learned from Paul and entrust it to reliable people who will then be able to teach others.

Look closely and you see four generations of development:

Paul → Timothy → reliable people → others.

Paul wasn't simply developing followers. He was developing someone who could develop someone who could develop someone else. That's multiplication.

And it completely changed how I thought about our mentorship program.

Instead of asking, “How many people can I mentor?” I started asking, “How many mentors can I develop?”

We began training and empowering people who had gone through CLIMB to turn around and mentor the next group. Instead of just individual mentorship relationships, we began creating entire classes of mentors and mentees.

Two mentees became four. Four became eight. Eight became sixteen.

And it kept growing.

The Impact of Multiplication

We recently welcomed our 17th CLIMB Mentorship class. When this class graduates, 157 Team Members will have completed the mentorship program across our Chick-fil-A restaurants.

Think about that for a moment. If I had continued mentoring only two or three people personally each year, I might have invested deeply in 15 or 20 people over the past decade. And that would have been worthwhile. But because we chose to multiply mentors instead of simply adding mentees, that impact has reached more than 150 people within our organization alone.

And it doesn't stop there. We've also shared the CLIMB Mentorship Program with dozens of other Chick-fil-A restaurants, giving other leaders tools they can use to invest in and develop their own teams.

That's the power of multiplication.

One person investing in another person can change a life. But one person teaching another person how to invest in others can change generations. That's true in business. It's true in ministry. It's true in parenting. And it's true in leadership.

Someone invested in Ryan. Ryan invested in me. Brandon invested in me. Cameron invested in me. Dale invested in me. George invested in me. And now I have the privilege—and responsibility—to take what others have entrusted to me and give it away.

Jack Welch once said:

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”

I would take that one step further.

Leadership isn't just about growing others. It's about growing others who will grow others.

Because the greatest measure of our leadership may not ultimately be how many people we personally influence. It may be how many people are being influenced by people we once took the time to invest in.

Don't just mentor. Multiply.