I’ve read a lot of business books over the years. Yet somehow I’ve never been exposed to John Maxwell’s work.
I think It’s because, for a long time, I was mostly interested in the hard skills. I liked finance and accounting type work. Leadership was an afterthought.
Today the soft skills like leadership, networking, and sales are the only subjects I like to read about.
Through a Church small group this fall, I got a lot of exposure to Maxwell’s wisdom. I decided to attend his John Maxwell LIVE event to hear it straight from the man himself.
He was impressive. The whole event was impressive. I learned a lot and took pretty good notes. I’ve summarized what I found to be the high points. If you’re familiar with Mr. Maxwell’s work, I’d love to hear your recommendations for which books are must reads!
John Maxwell Session
- Surround yourself with great people. We all know this is a key to success. But what is the key to getting around these top notch people?
- Become a great person yourself. Working on yourself isn’t a fun answer. However, developing your own character and leadership skills is the way to get around others who are excellent in these areas.
- We attract who we are, not who we want. Become like the people you want to hang around.
- Rule of Five
- This is a well known example about chopping down a tree.
- Know what you want to accomplish
- Have the right tool
- Stay focused
- Be consistent
- Don’t quit
- Here’s how Maxwell’s team uses it
- I think creating your own rule of 5 is powerful. I don’t know mine, but have been mulling it over since I left the conference.
- this was probably the largest take away of the day for me.
- This is a well known example about chopping down a tree.
Patrick Lencioni Session
- Two requirements for success
- Smart – This is a fairly low bar. Almost everyone is smart enough to be successful
- Healthy – This is more of a challenge, and is the focus of Lencioni’s work. Companies like Southwest, Chickfilla, etc. have developed extremely healthy cultures that drive their success.
- Two types of trust
- Predictive trust – When you know someone for a long time and are able to predict how they’ll act. This is how I usually think of trust.
- Vulnerability based trust – When people are able to be vulnerable and trust that they will not be ostracized because of it. This is what makes teams great. People need to be heard. They need to be able to give feedback, and communicate problems.
Round Table With Maxwell, Lencioni, and Pastor Chris Hodges
- On Failure
- Don’t count your losses, count your lessons.
- Fear of failure could be a pride issue. I’d never thought about it that way, but it makes sense. Often times, pride is really the only thing on the line when we’re faced with risks.
- God made us so that scar tissue is way stronger than regular tissue.
- Pastor Chris on growth
- He operates the church so that it will:
- Always have more money than it needs to run.
- Always have more leaders than it needs to run
- Creating this margin has allowed the church to be extremely opportunistic in their growth. As Pastor Chris put it, “You’d be surprised how much of this growth has come from walking through door’s God opened, as opposed to strategic planning.
- This type of growth is obviously very effective. Highlands has been one of the largest and fastest growing churches in the world over the last decade and a half.
- He operates the church so that it will:
- No annual goals for number growth
- Goals are always a challenge for me
- All three of these highly successful leaders said they do not write annual goals focused around sales % increases or any similar metrics.
- This was mind blowing!
- I’m positive they track these numbers and are aware of them. However, they do not make that the focus point for their annual goals.
- It seemed like their goals flowed more from their vision, and values than a growth mandate.
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