Welcome to our 2nd installment of the discussion of John Maxwell's book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. You will remember that in our introduction to this motivational we book, we talked about The Law of the Lid. Well, in Chapter 2, Maxwell states that the true measure of leadership is influence – and nothing else! He calls this concept: The Law of Influence. In a recent post, we also talked about why we need to summarise texts or information, and how we do that. As an example of how a chapter of information can be summarised, I am going to use this chapter in Maxwell's book, concentrating on listing and discussing important points and concepts that the author highlights.
Firstly, Maxwell suggests that if you want to know if you are a leader, ask yourself who is following you. This is one of the first ways we can recognize leadership, and it removes some of the popular misconceptions (false ideas) that we have around leaders. For example, what does a leader look like? Is a leader defined by the role they perform or the position they hold? The answer is: ''No, not necessarily''. Just because someone is in management does not necessarily mean they are leading. A manager can maintain (hold) a course or direction but he cannot necessarily change that direction or influence its course. Neither is leadership necessarily a title or a position. Entrepreneurs are not automatically leaders because not all of them are good with people. And a trendsetter is not necessarily a leader either. To be in leadership, you must have people following your lead and acting on your vision. It is not the position that makes the leader, it’s the leader who makes the position. Basically, if you have to tell people you're a leader, you aren’t one.
We can summarise Maxwell's qualities of a leader into seven main points as follows:
Character – who you are;
Relationships – whom you know (your followers);
Knowledge – what you know;
Intuition – what you feel, including your energy, momentum, and timing;
Experience – where you've been;
Past success – what you’ve done; and
Ability – what you can do.
Pause, for a moment to consider these points. What are the myths you may have bought into when it comes to believing the qualities that identify a leader? Have you perhaps been fooled into believing that a leader is determined by his or her appearance, or perhaps the position they hold? Finally, the last question we should ask is, if we do identify a leader, how we can measure their effectiveness.
One of the first qualifications for effective leadership, as we mentioned at the beginning, a leader must have followers. For example, many may believe the character, James Bond to be a good example of leadership? Well, actually, he isn't, because James Bond is essentially a loner. He has no one following him. Secondly, when a leader speaks, people listen. An example Maxwell uses is that of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, India. She was an elderly, small-built, soft-spoken woman. But nonetheless, when she spoke, others listened!
Can you think of other leaders that you know or that you have read of? What made them special? What was it about them that made people follow them? The truth is that when leaders speak, people listen. That is influence. The final word here comes from Maxwell himself, who sums it all up so well: ‘’He who thinks he leads but has no followers is only taking a walk”.
We hope you are finding these summaries of Maxwell's chapters helpful, and interesting. As always, give your comments, thoughts, and ideas below. We look forward to joining you for a discussion on Chapter 3 of the book: The Law of Process.
Until then, all the best from,
The Wordwise Team
Disclaimer: The reviews reflected here are only my personal opinion and do not represent the opinions of other associated parties.