Maxwell's 21 timeless laws of leadership, learned from decades of leading people and watching leaders.
Your effectiveness can never rise above your ability to lead. The McDonald brothers built a great restaurant and stalled; Ray Kroc had a higher lid and took it worldwide. Raise the lid and the whole team rises with it.
Titles, seniority, and knowledge do not make a leader. If nobody is following you, you are only taking a walk, no matter what your business card says.
No single event makes a leader. Champions are built in daily training and merely recognized in the ring - small learning and practice, repeated for years, is what builds one.
Weak leaders advance themselves at other people's expense. Real leaders ask what they can give, not what they can get - and people gladly follow leaders who make their lives better.
Character makes trust possible, and trust makes influence possible. People forgive occasional mistakes in skill, but violations of character and trust are almost impossible to recover from.
People follow a leader they feel connected to before they follow his cause. Move people emotionally, one person at a time, and they will work hard for the mission.
The rest of this summary — and the one thing to do this week — is in the PDF.
Download the free PDFMaxwell spent decades leading organizations and studying leaders, and this book distills what he learned into 21 laws he calls irrefutable. Like the law of gravity, he says, they are always at work - in every country, company, church, and team - whether you know them or not. The only choice is whether you learn them and use them, or keep breaking them and wondering why people won't follow. Each law stands on its own like a tool in a toolbox, and each is taught through stories of leaders, from Abraham Lincoln to Ray Kroc, who lived it or violated it.
The opening laws build the foundation. The Law of the Lid says your leadership ability is the cap on your effectiveness. The Law of Influence says the true measure of leadership is influence - nothing more, nothing less - not title or position. The Law of Process says leadership develops daily, not in a day. And the Law of Navigation says anyone can steer the ship, but it takes a leader to chart the course - Roald Amundsen's careful planning reached the South Pole, while Robert Scott's team paid for poor navigation with their lives.
