It’s been more than forty years since I realized that everything rises and falls on leadership. From that time, I’ve worked to become a better leader. Along the way I recognized that leadership is influence, so bettering my leadership meant increasing my influence capacity.
In the 1970s, I heard Earl Nightingale say, “If a person spends one hour a day, five days a week for five years studying a single subject, he or she will become an expert on that subject.” My first response was, “Wow! It will only take me five years to become an expert on leadership!”
I made leadership study my focus. After five years, I learned two things: First, I could improve as a leader. Second, I couldn’t become an expert in leadership in only five years. I was nowhere near my capacity. And the more I learned, the more I understood how much I didn’t know. That continues to this day. But that just motivates me to want to learn more! Self-awareness gives me a greater sense of anticipation for further growth.
It’s true that I’ve been given recognition in the area of leadership. In 2014 the American Management Association identified me as the number one leader in business. That same year Business Insider and Inc. magazines called me the most influential leadership expert in the world. But I don’t in any way feel like an expert. What I feel like is a leadership layerer. That may not even be a real word, but it describes what I do. Every time I learn something new, I add it to what I already know about leadership and apply it to my life. And I keep doing that month after month and year after year. Continuous growth in leadership is my goal, with new learning superimposed over the old, which creates greater depth.
Let me give you an example. When my publisher invited me to revise The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership for the tenth anniversary of its publication, I happily said yes. I thought it would be a quick process where I would just tweak a few parts of the book, and the mission would be accomplished. I was wrong. When I reread the book, I got discouraged. In the ten years that had passed, I had learned so much more about leadership. I had grown and changed. My leadership had gotten deeper. But the book had stayed the same. What I expected to be minor tweaking became a major revision. I changed 70 percent of the book. I put many more layers of leadership learning on top of what I had previously written.
That was my first conscious realization that new learning creates layers on old ones and compounds greatly when I connected it with what I already knew. That has led me to establish the habit of connecting new learning with past learning. Remember the illustration I shared in the chapter on creative capacity, where creativity connects knowledge? That’s how I also think about learning and wisdom. Learning gives you new dots; wisdom connects them. Keep making those connections over time, and it compounds in layers.
I’m continuing to grow in the area of leadership. In chapter 3 I mentioned that the John Maxwell Company does an executive leadership event each year called Exchange. The 2015 edition was held in San Francisco, and one of the keynote speakers was Liz Wiseman, former Oracle executive and current president of the Wiseman Group in Silicon Valley. Liz is also the author of several books, including Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter.
At Exchange, Liz spoke on “the Five Disciplines of a Multiplier.” When she described multipliers as “leaders who are genius makers who bring out the intelligence in others,” I was intrigued. As she talked about each of the five disciplines of a multiplier, I have to admit that I got excited, because I felt as if she was describing me.
• The Talent Magnet attracts talented people and uses them at their highest point of contribution. (I thought, Yes, I do that.)
• The Liberator creates an intense environment that requires people’s best thinking and work. (I thought, Yes, I do that, too.)
• The Challenger defines an opportunity that causes people to stretch. (I totally do that.)
• The Debate Maker drives sound decisions through rigorous debate. (I love doing that.)
• The Investor gives other people ownership of the results and invests in their success. (Wow. I do that, too. That’s a 100 percent match!)
Boy, did I feel good! I began to wonder if Liz would want to put my picture on the cover of her book so that her readers could see what a multiplier looked like.
But before I could offer to let her take my picture, she started talking about how multipliers unwittingly diminish other people:
• The Idea Guy intends his ideas to stimulate ideas in others, but the result is that he overwhelms others, who often shut down. (Oh no! I do that.)
• Always On: intends to create infectious energy and share his point of view, but the result is that he consumes all the emotional space, and other people tune him out. (Uh-oh. Another one.)
• The Rescuer intends to ensure that people are successful and protect their reputation, but he makes people become dependent on him, which weakens their reputation. (That’s three that I do.)
• The Pacesetter intends to set a high standard for quality or pace, but people become spectators or give up when they can’t keep up. (I’ve done this more times than I’d like to admit.)
• The Rapid Responder intends to keep the organization moving fast, and does, but the result is that the organization moves slowly because there is a traffic jam of too many decisions or changes. (Yep. That one, too.)
• The Optimist intends to create a belief that the team can do it, but people wonder if he appreciates how difficult the journey is or acknowledges the possibility of failure. (That one, too.)
Wow. As she described and explained the diminishing tendencies of these kinds of leaders, I was humbled. In less than ninety minutes, I went from the top of the world to the bottom of the barrel. I had no idea that my strengths had such strong diminishing qualities in them. Reality set in. Before we even left San Francisco, I brought together several members of my inner circle, admitted that I possessed every one of the the diminishing qualities Liz had shared, and asked them to help me. Since I would not be able to work on all six areas at once, I asked them which one I should start changing. Together they agreed: I needed to temper my optimistic tendency. For the next several months, that was what I worked on. I still have a long way to go, but I’m improving.
The best part? I know it’s helping me to become a better leader. It’s adding a new layer to my insight and experience. And that will increase my leadership capacity.
My desire is for your leadership capacity to increase as you read this chapter. If you’ve read some of my other books on leadership, you may be wondering what I plan to teach. I’m going to teach you from the new things I am learning now. Some of what I’m going to share is new thoughts layered on on older thoughts. Some are old thoughts that have spurred new thoughts. I hope all of them increase your capacity as they have increased mine.
Recently during an interview, I was asked, “John, what is the main difference in how you lead today at almost seventy versus how you led in your thirties and forties?” My immediate response: “Today I continually ask questions as I lead.”
Communication is the language of leadership. Journalist and author William H. Whyte said, “The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it.” For years I had the illusion that as long as I was talking and giving direction, communication was happening. As a young leader, I loved to give answers. I wanted my team to be impressed with what I knew, and I was mostly interested in getting things done. Before, I was focused on vision. I thought leadership was about me and what I wanted. Today, I want my people to know me, and I want to know them.
Early in my career, my communication wasn’t very interactive either. I never wanted to do Q & A. I wanted to teach others what I knew and what I felt was important. Today, I encourage Q & A. Why? Because it’s the quickest and easiest way to connect with the audience and meet their needs. For years I had been giving answers to questions nobody was asking!
Slowly I learned that leadership was a two-way street. It took time for me to discover what I later called the Law of Communication: leaders touch a heart before they ask for a hand. For years I bypassed the heart and went straight for the hand. But everything changed when I began asking more questions and started giving less direction. I became intent on focusing on others. Questions are the keys that unlock the door to another person’s life, and I began using them to learn about people.
I also ask questions because it helps me find the right people. I didn’t know I needed to do that when I was younger. Now I know that to find the people who want to help you as a leader, you need to ask questions and actively listen. Today when I meet someone, my first thought is to wonder what questions I can ask to get to know them and connect with them.
Questions open up doors and allow us to connect with others. They place value on the other person. And they give us a different perspective. Before we attempt to set things right as leaders, we need to see things right. The highest compliment you can give someone is to ask them their opinion.
However, none of that works if you don’t listen. If questions unlock the door, listening keeps the door open. Questions start the conversation, but listening encourages it to continue. Listening shows that I want to understand someone before I try to be understood by them. Questions + Listening = Quality Conversation. Quality Conversation = Quality Leadership.
I had to learn how to listen, because I was too intent on talking. Today, I usually ask the other person to talk first and share with me everything they want me to know. I listen intently, keeping my eyes focused on them. I don’t interrupt, and I try to give them all the time they need. Why? I want them to feel understood. When they stop, I’ll even ask, “Is that everything you wanted to say? If there’s anything else, go ahead and share. I have time.” Only after they’re done will I begin to talk.
Almost all of my leadership cues come from listening to others. To find and understand people, I ask questions, and I listen. Only then can I lead them effectively.
By its nature, leadership is about creating change. As a leader, you are inviting people to change their focus, change their energy, change their skills, and sometimes even their direction in life for the sake of the team and the accomplishment of the vision. How do you get people to trust you for so many changes? The foundation of trust needs to be built on good relationships, and good relationships start with good connection. As I explain in my book Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, connection best occurs on common ground.
If you’re a task-oriented person, connecting may be something you have to work at to achieve. If you’re a people person, building the relationships may come naturally. But making the transition from relationship building to movement requires what I call a leadershift. That “shift” is the transition from connecting with people to helping them make the changes necessary for the benefit of the team.
As a young leader, this transition was a challenge for me. I was good only at the relational part. I thought friendship was leadership. The good news was that people liked me. The bad news was that they didn’t always follow me. I couldn’t get them to move from where we were to where we needed to go.
Recently at a mentoring session sponsored by the John Maxwell Company, coach Matthew Mitchell of the University of Kentucky Lady Wildcats asked me, “John, as a coach, when do I push them and when should I be patient with them?” That’s a question that every leader asks himself. My answer is that you push team members in areas of choice, such as attitude, responsibility, and work ethic. But you need to be patient with them in areas related to their background, experience, and skill.
Patience is often required when your team members come from a difficult background. Perhaps they haven’t had the same privileges or opportunities that others on the team have had. Lack of experience also requires patience. For example, in college basketball you cannot expect a freshman to make the same caliber of decisions that seniors are making. And less-skilled players require more patience than those with greater skills. The greater the skill, the greater the push. The lower the skill level, the greater the patience.
One of the keys to helping team members make successful changes is to set expectations for them up front. It increases the odds of positive change later in the relationship. As Stephen M. R. Covey says in The Speed of Trust, “It is important to focus on a shared vision of success up front. This is a preventative measure. When expectations are not clearly defined up front, trust and speed both go down. A lot of time is wasted due to leaders not clearly defining expectations. Failure to clarify expectations leaves people guessing. When results are delivered they fall short and are not valued.” I call this the Expectation Principle: setting expectations on the front end increases the odds of meeting expectations on the back end.
I want to walk you through the six steps I use to set expectations. I believe they will set you up for success as you connect with people and then invite them to change.
The greatest gift a leader gives team members is their belief in them, letting them know that they are valued. It’s wonderful when the people value the leader, but it’s more wonderful when the leader values the people. Why? For me as a leader, it shows that I care. And the more that I value you as a person, the more I will pour into you. Value assessment determines investment. If I as your leader don’t value you, I will try to manipulate you for my advantage instead of investing in you for your advantage.
So in setting expectations for people, I clearly communicate how much I value them as individual people, not as players. And that means I care enough for them to confront them. I value them too much to allow them to remain the same. Once they know that my expectation for them is birthed out of how much I value them, the environment has been set for the next step.
As I’ve said, how we as leaders see others determines how much we will invest in them. But how they see themselves determines how much they will invest in themselves. Again, value assessment determines investment. The value you place on yourself determines the level of your commitment to yourself and others. Self-worth is foundational to belief. The moment that your belief in yourself goes up, so can your commitment to help yourself.
If the people on your team don’t believe in themselves, as the leader you need to try to help them find that belief. You need to encourage them. You need to speak positive words of affirmation. You need to teach them. And you need to help them put wins under their belt. Does that always work? No. But if their self-worth never rises, neither will their performance.
In 2012 I wrote a book called The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. The very first chapter contains the Law of Intentionality: growth doesn’t just happen. If we want to grow, we need to set targets and take action. If we want our people to grow, we need to help them do the same.
As a leader setting expectations for people, you must be ready to answer two questions: What do you want them to know, and what do you want them to do? As a leader, you want your people to grow, and you want them to know it on the front end. And if they know you will hold them accountable for it, the chances of it happening increase dramatically. One of the greatest mistakes leaders make is sharing expectations without later including accountability.
It is impossible to get better without making changes. No one has ever stayed the same, while at the same time rising to a higher level. Being willing to change is one of the prices we pay to grow.
Good leaders help people recognize and accept that price. They help team members understand that the longest distance between two points is often a shortcut, and that there are no cut-rate methods of growth. They also hang in there with the people who are willing to make those necessary changes to improve and grow. Leaders can’t make the changes for them, but they can show them what needs changing, assist them, and encourage them.
Recently I was teaching the Expectation Principle to a group of executives. I placed my hand on one executive’s back and held it there while I taught. I wanted people to have a visual image of how leaders need to maintain their connection with the people they lead. They must always feel the gentle pressure of the leader reminding them to keep moving forward. Why? Because the moment we remove our leadership hand off most people’s backs, their tendency is to settle. When it comes to expectations, leaders can never think, Set it and forget it. People rarely lead themselves forward or correct themselves when they get off track.
If you’re a parent, how many times have you had to repeat yourself to your kids? Dozens, hundreds, thousands? The consistency of the connection directly affects the consistency of the effort. When we stay connected as leaders, two things are being communicated. Team members are continually reminded of the effort needed to meet expectations. And the leader knows exactly how they are responding, so that if there is resistance, it can be addressed immediately.
My friend Kevin Turner, former COO of Microsoft and currently the CEO of Citadel Securities, says, “People want to be judged by their intentions, not by their actions.” I think that’s true. They also want to be empowered. But often what they need most is accountability. Keeping your connection constant and gently nudging them forward provides both encouragement and consistent accountability.
If you have expectations for your people but they don’t embrace them, they will never succeed. When you ask people if they will help you to help them, you are able to measure their level of participation and commitment. By getting them to declare the ways that they want help to grow and change, you obtain their full buy-in. And if they don’t follow through, you can hold them accountable for what they declared they would do. You don’t want to spend your time on the type of person that I’ve heard called an ask hole—someone who asks for advice but then never follows it. You want to spend time on people who want to change.
One of the most valuable things you can do to increase your leadership capacity is to be authentic and transparent with people, and to share your story, especially before you challenge them to attempt something difficult.
I’ve already explained that it’s important for leaders to ask themselves, “What do I want them to know, and what do I want them to do?” I would also add one more question that leaders need to ask: “What do I want them to feel?”
As leaders, our focus is often on the vision, the agenda, the project, our culture, or the next task. All are important, and we need to communicate about them. But I believe a leader’s story has great potential to change lives and prepare people to act—as long as that story is an honest one filled with openness and vulnerability.
Too many leaders think they have to project a perfect image to have leadership credibility. They think they always have to put their best foot forward. What they don’t understand is that their best foot is a flawed foot. They miss the power of their own stories of imperfection. A leader’s story of struggle, growth, and improvement can inspire people and change lives.
That takes courage. Rollin King, founder of Southwest Airlines, once stated, “We adopted the philosophy that we wouldn’t hide anything, not any of our problems, from the employees.” People respect leaders who tell the truth but who still hold fast to the vision and keep leading the team forward.
I experienced the impact of being transparent with members of the team when I invited experienced coaches who are part of the John Maxwell Team to be catalysts for transformation in the country of Paraguay. As I mentioned in chapter 5, the goal would be to train seven hundred thousand leaders in five years. My desire was to ask more than two hundred coaches to give up a week of their time, pay all their own expenses, travel to Asunción, and work twelve hours a day for a week training roundtable facilitators.
But before extending the invitation to them, I first shared the weight of that vision, which I had been feeling intensely and continually. The president of the country had invited me to come. The expectations were high. I knew the journey would be long and hard. The odds of transforming an entire nation were very low. I had never led at this level before, and there were lots of unknowns before us. I knew I was in over my head, and at my age I was uncertain about whether I could finish that project. But I shared all of that with them, and told them that I felt I had no choice. I felt compelled. I was going to lead this project and would rather fail in attempting something big than succeed at something smaller. But to do it, I needed their help. So I asked, “Who will carry this weight with me?”
Two hundred fifty coaches stretched to the challenge and said yes—to making cultural adjustments, to giving time and money to be a part of this vision, to carrying the weight that gives the mission integrity. The result? In early 2016, the coaches traveled to Paraguay, and in less than a week, they trained more than seventeen thousand leaders to facilitate roundtables, which mobilized seventy thousand people to learn values and intentional living in those roundtables. Transformation has begun.
If you’re a leader, seeing the vision is not enough. You must also feel that vision. If you only see it, you may become distracted and lose sight of it. But when you feel it, the vision cannot be easily dismissed. The weight of the vision prompts two indispensable qualities in a leader: consistency and intensity. If you rise to the challenge and carry the weight of the vision, it will mature you as a leader. Then, if you are transparent about what you feel about the vision, followers will be inspired to embrace it.
The last thing I want to share with you to increase your leadership capacity is a lesson I learned and started practicing in 1976. For forty years I have been continually building more layers on this leadership truth, and I believe if you build on it, you will become a better leader. You need to shift your leadership from me to we.
In the beginning of my career, my leadership was all about me. All I did was wonder, Does this person want to hear my vision? Does she want to help my team? Does he want to help me? What can they can do for me? That changed when my attention began to focus on equipping and empowering others. And for the last twenty years I have focused on serving others and intentionally adding value to them.
I want to encourage you to make that same shift from me to we, if you haven’t made it already. Why? I believe these three factors will make you want to change:
My dreams are bigger than I am. Your dreams are bigger than you are. Every worthwhile dream is greater than the individual who initially holds it. When we recognize that truth, it motivates us to ask others for help.
Also, as much as I enjoy mobilizing a team to achieve a dream of my own, I really love to help others achieve theirs. And I’ve discovered that I can often offer insight on what other leaders need to achieve a dream and am able to help them with it. As a speaker, I’m sometimes in a unique position to do for others what they cannot do for themselves, such as lifting leaders up in front of their people. I love doing that.
Recently I had a chance to do that with Rick Hendrick, the owner of Hendrick Automotive Group and Hendrick Motorsports. I was doing some training for him on behalf of the John Maxwell Company. As part of the training, I also conducted an interview with Rick, during which I took notes. I wanted to lift Rick up in the eyes of his team. So at the end of the session, I told the hundreds of leaders who worked for him that I wanted to share what I had learned and gotten out of the interview that day.
A hush fell over the audience. I knew they were surprised. Mr. Hendrick had brought me in to teach them because I was considered a leadership expert, yet I was sharing what I had learned from their boss. Through this, I was able to let them know how much I respected and admired Rick, and they loved it. It made them want to work just that much harder for him.
I define maturity as unselfishness. It’s being able to see things from other people’s perspective because you value them. It means building ladders so that others can climb, not fighting to climb the ladder yourself. Being a ladder builder means that my success comes from helping others be successful. I may be able to help someone climb all the way up to the top, or I may be able to help someone go up only a rung or two. That doesn’t matter. I help people climb as far as they can, and the moment I can’t help them climb another step, either because they’ve passed me by or they need a different kind of expertise, I move myself out of the picture.
I recently did this with someone I greatly respect. She wanted to know why I was taking a step back, so I told her, “If I start to benefit more than you do in this partnership, I won’t continue in it.” I want to add more value to others than they’re adding to me. At the least, I want it to be balanced, but ideally, I’d like to be adding more.
Adding value to others has always been a greater desire in me than making money. Probably that’s because I started out as a pastor, and I never considered money to be a good measuring stick for my achievements. But no matter what you do professionally, you should judge your success by how much you are able to help others. In the end, life is about people. Never forget it. Take care of your people instead of taking care of your career.
Mark Cole, the CEO of my companies, recently taught a lesson that he said was influenced by working with me for more than a decade. He called his talk “John Maxwell’s Life of Compounding Interest of People.” In it, he taught three things:
1. Never focus on making money—focus on making people.
2. Never focus on starting companies—focus on starting people.
3. Never focus on growing production—focus on growing people.
I don’t believe I can take credit for it, but I certainly agree with it.
If you are willing to do the work to increase your leadership capacity, and you’re willing to do it for the sake of others and your ability to add value to them, you will find your life to be greatly rewarding. I know I have. And the people I invest in remind me of why I keep doing it. As I write this, I’m holding in my hand a pen that has the words “You highlight our lives” on it. It was given to me by my staff. That’s what I want to keep doing. Adding highlights to others’ lives. I want my life to add value to others.
For my sixty-ninth birthday, my friends John and Celeste Li surprised me with an intimate dinner with a few friends. Everyone was so kind, and we had a wonderful time. At one point, Frank Bantz stood and made a toast. He later gave me a copy of it. Here’s what he said,
Our lives are like a breath that we already know,
However your shadow has caused so many to grow,
To live life raising leaders is a calling indeed,
The seeds you have planted grow with astonishing speed.
Your best writing and wisdom are yet to be done,
This next season of life will be incredibly fun,
So as you embark on your sixty-ninth year,
The Lord has new plans as you continue to draw near.
I don’t know how old you are. Now that I’m almost seventy, everyone I meet seems to be younger than I am. But regardless of what your age is, I want to ask you a question: What do you want your life to stand for? As you grow old and draw near to the end of your life, what kind of impact do you want to make on the world? I hope you’ll choose to add value to people. And I hope you’ll choose to become a leader of higher capacity. The more influence you develop, the greater the positive impact you’ll be able to make.
1. How much time and effort do you spend on increasing your leadership capacity? What kind of priority has that been to you up until now? If you’re willing to make it a higher priority, what will you do to increase it?
2. How well do you do at connecting with people and challenging them? Are you better at one than the other? How can you improve the one you don’t do as well?
3. What changes should you make and what specific action could you take to put others ahead of yourself, especially in your leadership?