A Coach's Diary

"Your success stops where your character stops. You can never rise above the limitations of your character." - John Maxwell In his book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership , leadership expert John Maxwell says the first and most important law of leadership is The Law of the Lid. We all have the potential to do great things in life, but we also have lids that put a cap on our potential and hold us back. The Law of the Lid states leadership ability is the lid that determines a person's level of effectiveness. The lower your ability to lead, the lower the lid on your potential, but the higher the lid, the greater your potential. If your leadership lid is a 5, your effectiveness can never be greater than a 4. If your leadership lid is a 10, then your effectiveness can be as high as a 9. The most important person we lead is ourselves, so one of our jobs in life is to figure out what lids are holding us back, face them, and then lift them so we can become the best we can ...

A Leader's Lasting Value Is Measured By Succession What do you want people to say at your funeral?  A leader's lasting value is measured by succession. Every person leaves some kind of legacy.  We have a choice about legacy we will leave, and we must work and be intentional to leave the legacy we want. 1 - Know the legacy you want to leave 2 - Live the legacy you want to leave To have any credibility as a leader, you must live what you say you believe. There are 7 major areas of influence in society: religion, economics, government, family, media, education, and sports.  I am constantly striving to reach and gain credibility in more of the others.  I try to do that by building bridges, relating to people on a heart-to-heart level, and seeking ot give more than I receive. John Maxwell 3 - Choose who will carry on your legacy Things eventually go away, but legacy lives on forever through people.  Succession is one of the key responsibi...

To Add Growth, Lead Followers; To Multiply Growth, Lead Followers Leaders are naturally impatient; they want to move fast and to see their visions fulfilled.  They delight in progress.  Good leaders quickly assess where an organization is, project where it needs to go, and have strong ideas about how to get it there.  The problem is that most of the time the people and the organization lag behind the leader.  Because of that, leaders always feel a tension between where they and their people are and where they ought to be.  I have experienced this tension my entire life. If you develop yourself, you can experience personal success. If you develop a team, your organization can experience growth. If you develop leaders, your organization can achieve explosive growth. You can grow by leading followers.  But if you want to maximize your leadership and help your organization reach its potential, you need to develop leaders. Leaders Who Develop Lea...

When To Lead Is As Important As What To Do And Where To Go It has been said that managers do things right while leaders do the right things.  The Law of Timing says that leaders do more than that - they do the right things at the right time.  Understand the importance of timing in how you act and interact with those you lead. Timing is often the difference between success and failure in an endeavor.  Be proactive as a leader and be ready to take on the necessary action without a delay. If you stay ready, you won't have to get ready. When the right leader and the right timing come together, incredible things happen.  Leaders have to have a good sense of timing and must follow through at critical, important moments.  "There comes a special moment in everyone's life, a moment for which that person was born.  That special opportunity, when he seizes it, will fulfill his mission - a mission for which he is uniquely qualified.  In that moment,...

A Leader Must Give Up To Go Up To be great at anything, you have to be willing to make sacrifices.  Greatness as a leader is no different.  As a leader, you have to often sacrifice many of your individual wants and needs for what's important for the group.  You have to learn how to put others in front of yourself.  That sacrifice often means giving up your time, your resources, or doing some of the things you like to do for entertainment such as TV and social media, but the higher you move up, the more you have to devote your time to growth, the more time you have to be willing to sacrifice. The heart of a good leadership is sacrifice. If you desire to become the best leader you can be, then you need to be willing to make sacrifices in order to lead well.  If that is your desire, then here are some things you need to know about the Law of Sacrifice. There Is No Success Without Sacrifice For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and...

Leaders Understand That Activity Is Not Necessarily Accomplishment To be a successful leader, you must understand the importance of prioritizing your time to leverage your strengths to increase your effectiveness.  A great way to prioritize your time is to apply the Pareto, 80-20 principle, to your life.  It is also important to prioritize your pleasures and make sure that you find time to recharge and refuel your passions by doing the things that you love. When we are busy, we naturally believe that we are achieving, but activity does not alway mean achievement. Leadership requires us to set our priorities, and sometimes those priorities take us out of our comfort zone.  But, leadership has nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with progress. "A leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells, 'Wrong jungle!'" - Steven Covey - Define reality Every year, Maxwell spends about two weeks in Decemb...

Momentum Is A Leader's Best Friend Many times, momentum is the only thing that makes the difference between losing and winning.  When you have no momentum, even the simplest tasks seem impossible.  Small problems look like insurmountable obstacles.  Morale becomes low.  The future appears dark.  An organization with no momentum is like a train at a dead stop.  It's hard to get going, and even small wooden blocks on the track can keep it from going anywhere. Momentum is like a magnifying glass; it makes things look bigger than they really are.   Momentum is the Great Exaggerator Success is exaggerated by momentum.  When you have momentum, you don't worry about small problems, and many larger ones seem to work themselves out.   Momentum Makes Leaders Look Better Than They Are Momentum makes everyone's perspective of leaders.  Young leaders often get less credit that they deserve.  I often encourage young leaders just not to ...

Leaders Find a Way for the Team to Win As a leader, people trust you to lead them to success.  Sure, they might appreciate everything you do for them, the relationships you build, and the value you add to their lives.  But, a very important measurable is your ability to lead them to victory. Victorious leaders have one thing in common: they share an unwillingness to accept defeat.  The alternative to winning is totally unacceptable to them.  As a result, they figure out what must be done to achieve victory.   Three Components of Victory 1 - Unity of Vision A team doesn't win the championship if its players are working from different agendas. 2 - Diversity of Skills Every person has something unique to contribute.  Don't look for people who are always just like you - appreciate the individual gifts of others and look to grow them and utilize them for the betterment of the team. 3 - Dedication to Victory and Individual Growth You've got...

People Buy In To The Leader, Then The Vision The Law of Buy In states that before you can lead people, you have to get them to buy in to you as a person.  You have to get them to believe that you have the ability to add value to them as people first and then get them to believe that you have the ability to lead the group to success.  Once you get that buy in, then you give yourself a chance to lead them to success.  If you try to lead before you get the buy-in, they will never fully trust or follow you.  Sell yourself and build relationships first, then look to lead by adding value. When Maxwell performs leadership seminars, he says that he is often approached during a break by someone who gives a brief description of an evolving vision, and ask him, "Do you think my people will buy into my vision?"  His response is always the same: "First tell me this.  Do you people buy into you?" People don't at first follow worthy causes.  They follow worth...

People Do What People See The Law of the Picture is based on the idea that people do, not what you tell them, but what they see you do.  You can talk a great talk, but people follow your walk.  To follow the Law of the Picture, you must identify how you want to live your life, what you want to be remembered for, and what virtues and what example you want to set for your followers in the area of character.   Its starts with leading from the front.  Your followers must realize that you are always willing and able to do everything that you are asking of them.  Military Legen Dick Winters, known for being "the best combat leader in World War II," had a philosophy of "officers go first."  Whenever his troops needed to assault an enemy position, Winters was in front leading the charge.  He once summed up his approach to leadership saying,  "I may not have been the best combat commander, but I always strove to be.  My men depended on me to ca...

Only Secure Leaders Give Power To Others If leaders want to be successful, they have to be willing to empower others. The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it. Theodore Roosevelt To lead others well, we must help them to reach their potential.  Scarcity mindset is one in which we feel a need to fight others to make it to the top.  In reality, if you give some of your power away to others, there is still plenty to go around. Leading well is not only about enriching yourself - its about empowering others.  We have to shift leadership models away from 'position power' to 'people power' which is giving people leadership roles so that can contribute to their fullest capacity.  When you don't empower others, you are creating a barrier that, if it remains long enough, the people will give up and stop trying, or they will lea...

A Leader's Potential Is Determined By Those Closest To Him Nobody does anything great alone.    No leader can do everything great, so its important to have great people around you who can compliment you.  Mother Theresa once said, "You can do what I cannot do.  I can do what you cannot do.  Together we can do great things." The leader finds greatness in the group, and he or she helps the members find it in themselves. Warren Bennis 1 - Do they have influence with others? 2 - Do they bring a complimentary gift to the table? 3 - Do they hold a strategic position in the organization? 4 - Do they add value to me and to the organization 5 - Do they positively impact other inner circle members? There are three kinds of people in an organization when it comes to leadership: 1 - those who get it almost immediately and they're off and running with it; 2 - those who are skeptical and not sure what to do with it; and 3 - another third who start...

Leaders Touch A Heart Before They Ask For A Hand When it comes to working with people, you have to engage them on a human level - to make a connection with them.  The heart comes before the head.  You can't move people to action unless you first move them with emotion.   Great leaders work at connecting with others all of the time, whether they are communicating to an entire organization or working with a single individual.  The stronger the relationship you form with followers, the greater the connection you forge - the more likely those followers will be to want to help you. "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." Even in a group, you have to relate to people as individuals.   "I have seen competent leaders who stood in front of a platoon and all they saw was a platoon. But great leaders stand in front of a platoon and see it as forty-four individuals, each of whom has aspirations, each of whom wants to live, each o...

Who You Are Is Who You Attract Who you attract is not determined by what you want.   It's determined by who you are.   You draw people to you who posses the same qualities you do.   Its important to identify important qualities that you would like in the people on your team. My People Would Have These Qualities: -  Energy and enthusiasm -  Passion -  Competitive -  Visionary -  Appreciate 'The Law of Process' -  Desire to grow Then, identify which of these qualities that you possess.  If you possess theses qualities, then you will continue to attract these kinds of people.  If there is a disparity between these qualities and who you are, you know where you need to begin to work to improve the type of people you are attracting. Attitude is one of the most contagious qualities a human being possesses.  People with great attitudes tend to make people around them feel more positive, while people with negative attitu...

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - John Maxwell Chapter 8 - The Law of Intuition Leaders Evaluate Everything With a  Leadership Bias Leaders know have to read their instincts and follow their intuition in making decisions.  Sure, they pull together facts and do their research, but at the end of the day, they always trust their instincts in their areas of strength.  Leaders look at things differently than others do - they look at everything through a leadership bias.   People are intuitive in their area of strength. Leaders make decision based on their instincts and intuition.  They make decisions based on facts plus instinct plus other intangible factors, such as employee morale, organizational momentum, and relational dynamics.   Colin Powell says that his practice is to make a leadership decision after gathering only 40 to 60 percent of the information has been obtained, and then he uses his experience to m...

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - John Maxwell Chapter 7 -  The Law of Respect People Naturally Follow Leaders Stronger Than Themsleves Followers are more attracted to leaders who are better leaders than themselves.  Leaders think in terms of the direction they desire to go and who they want to take with them.  Followers can sense a strong sense of conviction from a leader and are attracted to that.   To become a leader of leaders, you must gain respect. Ways You Can Gain Respect 1 - Natural leadership ability 2 - Respect for others 3 - Courage 4 - Have success 5 - Loyalty 6 - Add value An easy way to measure your level of respect is to look at who you attract. "One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you." - Dennis A. Peer -   You should also see how your people respond when you ask for commitment or change. When people respect you as a person, they admire  you. When they r...