Customer Reviews

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You

5 star:		(114)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

"Don't ever say 'always,'" my mother told me. So when someone says "irrefutable" I'm quick to challenge such a too-complete assertion. But the more I've read of Maxwell's "21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership," the more I think he's nailed it.

John Maxwell has been learning and teaching leadership throughout his entire career as a Wesleyan pastor and seminar speaker. He lives and breathes leadership. And in this book he has distilled the art of leadership into 21 "simple" laws. Well, not so simple, maybe, but at least understandable.

#1 "The Law of the Lid" asserts his basic premise that leadership ability determines the ultimate level of a person's effectiveness. If you have gifts and abilities, you'll make a greater impact the better leader you become. While some people may be blessed with a natural aptitude for leadership, Maxwell contends that leadership "skills" are learnable. You don't have to be a "born leader." You can apply yourself and become a much better leader than you are.

#2 "The Law of Influence." Here's another bedrock proposition: Leadership = Influence, no more and no less. Many church and secular leaders grossly misunderstand this point. They think that Leadership = Power. Maxwell argues that your leadership scope is how many people you influence, not how much organizational power you can wield from your position or office. On the basis of these two concepts, Maxwell constructs a whole philosophy of leadership. He explains the laws of "Solid Ground," "Respect," "Intuition," "the Inner Circle" and many others.

Some are especially intriguing. "The Law of E.F. Hutton," for example, is based on a TV ad campaign that ended with the motto: "When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen." Maxwell's Law #5 says you can quickly tell who the real leader/influencer in a group is, because when this person speaks, everyone at the table listens, nods, and begins to express assent. Maxwell learned this at his first church where he discovered the real leader was Claude, even though Claude wasn't even the church moderator. Maxwell then learned to influence Claude and let Claude lead the others.

You can see how practical this kind of book could be. We bumble around for much of our lives, and stumble over these "laws," trying to learn to be leaders, often not understanding what went wrong. With some clear direction -- and that's what Maxwell provides -- you'll be able to grow more quickly as a leader.

Don't expect a "spiritual" book, however. While the "laws" are solidly founded on Scriptural principles, they are expressed in a non-religious manner. For years, Maxwell has been called on by mega-corporations to teach leadership to their executives, so this and some of his more recent books are designed to be read with profit by both Christian and business audiences.

I've read a lot in the field of leadership, and in my opinion, Maxwell is tops. He's not only humorous and easy-to-read, his analysis of the essentials of leadership is brilliant. If you're a church leader, you'll want to read this, and then buy a copy for your pastor at Christmas. If you're a pastor, this is a book to absorb and then circulate among your lay leaders to raise their level of leadership. This will also be an appreciated gift to a business executive.

John Maxwell's book is by far the best leadership book I have read in the past few years. I wish I had this material available to me years ago, so that I was better prepared for the leadership challenges I would face as an officer in the US Army. I have read many leadership books the past decade in order to better develop my own skills, but none of them has put together all the pieces like John Maxwell does in this book.

Basically, the book covers Maxwell's 21 laws of leadership. Each chapter describes the law in detail, and provides many historical examples to help reinforce the principle. I think that he has done a great job of taking a lot of material and focusing in on the key points that help make a leader successful. The book's structure also allows you to put the book down for a few days, and not lose your focus or understanding when you get a chance to return to it. I particularly liked this approach since I never seem to have enough time for professional reading these days. Lastly, the material is easy to understand and apply to any leadership situation, which makes it a great resource for those leaders looking for a way to have an immediate impact on their organization.

As a military officer, I understand the principle role that leadership plays in an organization's success. During my short career (10 years), I have been in both great and lousy units. Each time, I can trace the unit's performance directly to its leader and his/her ability to influence its members to accomplish the mission and take care of its people. My personal experience only helped reinforce the material, and verified in my mind that John Maxwell is "on-target" with his laws.

I highly recommend this book for any leader. Whether you are just starting out on your career, or have been in a leadership position for years, I think this book can make an impact on your performance.

This book is a descent book on leadership, but if you are actually looking to take your first steps forward to being a great leader, this book isn't a guide to help you get there, but to tell you that you are, or aren't.

This book is more helpful in identifying and aiding people in the understanding of leadership qualities or characteristics. I wouldn't really call them 'laws', but they are characteristics that a leader must have in order to be successful to lead their organization, whatever that is.

I found the book to tell too many stories, especially where many of them were identical in their themes, but with different scenarios. I felt they concentrated too much on sports and his experiences with the church. Countless number of times he would say, 'When I was a pastor at Skyline, my church in San Diego...', and then generally lead on to some story that I felt lacked depth - although the stories did demonstrate the law in the chapter.

I think there should have been more focus on business, with only very few examples of Apple, McDonalds, etc. With over 15 examples related to sports and his church, I didn't relate very well being an entrapreneur in the high-tech field.

Needless to say, all these 'laws', (or rather leadership qualities) are indeed true and this book is a good resource for assessing yourself to see if you are the leader you thought you were. Obviously the stories are just assertion material, so the laws will uphold for anyone who wishes to start learning leadership.

As for developing skills? It's really up to you. this book will help you identify where you are weak so that you can improve, but as to what path to take for improvement, you are left alone in the dark. I would say this book is 3 1/2 stars.

1. This is a great investment of your money, because you can always refer to it and remind yourself quickly and efficiently what's important and what you must focus on. Maxwell distills what you need to know in a caring and giving manner.

2. His work will remain among the classics along with new works that should be part of your personal and professional library, which my company uses. Further recommend any hard-hitting and best-selling book on leadership, such as (1-Minute Manager) and (The Leader's Guide: 15 Essential Skills).

I have been in various professional and volunteer leadership positions for more than twenty years, but I am always looking for new ideas on how to become a more effective leader, so the 'Irrefutable' title of this book, plus the recommendation of others, caused me to plunk down a few dollars for the book.

I was fairly impressed by the first couple of chapters, and felt that the Chapter where John makes the assertion that "Leadership = Influence" was VERY insightful. In fact this chapter alone was worth the purchase price of the book.

So why do I only rate it with 3 stars(and almost rated it 2 stars)? Because of John's overemphasis in later chapters on the personality of the leader and his dismissal of 'difficult people'. Part of the extreme challenge of leadership (especially in volunteer organizations) is dealing effectively with the 'difficult people' in the organization. John blithely suggests to either 'co-op' them, replace them, or get them to quit. It should be so easy - but in reality, it is not. You cannot get people to quit or replace them in a volunteer organization without alienating them, then suffering a loss of volunteers because of their negative infuluence. John just seems to gloss over these difficulties with rose-colored glasses.

More than that, by about chapter 10, I got so naueated by his patting himself on the back, I had to put the book down. I understand the need to establish your credentials in any book on management or leadership, but he did this by chapter 2, and by chapter 10, John's examples of sucess became highly redundant and turned into - 'Look how good at it I am. Now if you only do the same as I...' That is unbridled arrogance at it's worse.

Maybe someday I will try and pick the book back up and finish it, but for now, it sits unfinished on my desk. I admit it had some early pearls of leadership wisdom, but in my opinion, John Maxwell's book is just another 'follow me' leadership book. It becomes very shallow, and leadership is a lot more complex than John Maxwell makes it out to be. 21 Irrefutable laws? Hardly.

There are many books written every year on leadership, and they all tend to have the same weakness: They focus on just part of the problem. THE 21 IRREFUTABLE LAWS OF LEADERSHIP is a valuable exception because it looks at leadership in both companies and nonprofits at the same time, drawing on appropriate lessons from both. What I particularly liked was how he provided examples of how to overcome bad sistuations as well as how to grow faster from good ones. This clearly is the most encyclopedic approach to the subject of leadership that I have had the pleasure to read. The lessons seemed right to me based on my many years of studying what makes the most successful leaders have the best results. For anyone who is a leader or aspires to be one, THE 21 IRREFUTABLE LAWS OF LEADERSHIP will be very valuable. Then you can expand your reading to get more detail in the areas where you need the most help. If you follow the principles of this book, you will avoid most of the problems that stall progress in organizations. Good luck to you!

Highly recommended: Easy to follow, very clear, strong examples. A quick summary of 10 laws.

1) Law of Influence: The true measure of leadership is influence. Influence, nothing more, nothing less. Managers can maintain direction, but cannot change it. Leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned. It must be earned. It takes hard work.

2) Law of Progress: Leadership Develops Daily, not in a Day. Leaders are Learners. The goal is to get a little bit better everyday. During the day, you will influence 4 people.

3) Law of Navigation: Leaders must see farther, see more, and see before others do. Past success and failures give experience. Leaders must be positive. You must have faith that you can take all your people all the way. If you cannot do that I your mind, then you cannot do that in real life. The Secret to this Law is preparation.

4) Law of Solid Ground: Trust is the foundation of leadership. You cannot take shortcuts. It is like pocket change. Every good decision, you add. Every bad decision, you take away. People forgive occasional mistakes, but if you lose their trust. It is finished. Leadership is strategy and character, but if you must be without one. . .it is better to not have strategy

5) Law of Magnetism: Leaders always look for good people. Make a list of the qualities you want in your people. Do you have those skills? You get (not who you want), but who you are. Different people will not attract themselves to you. If you want to attract better people, time to improve yourself.

6) Law of Connection: Leaders touch the Heart before the Hand. People do not care how much you know, until they know that you care. Relate to people as individuals not as a group. It is the leader¡¯s job to connect first. The tougher the challenge, the greater the connection. Lead yourself, use your head. To lead others, use your heart.

7) Law of Empowerment: Only secure leaders give powers to others. People can only achieve when the leader empowers others. Great things happen when you give credit to others. Must have belief in people. Not like a boss who is always micromanaging your work.

8) Law of Buy-In: People buy into the Leader, then the Vision. You are the message. Athletes are hired as promoters of products. You cannot separate the leader from the cause. Ghandi. Silicon Valley start ups.

9) Law of Victory: Leaders Find a Way for the Team to Win. What does it take to be a winner? Inability to accept defeat. Not winning is unacceptable. Great leaders are at their best when the pressure is on.

10) Law of Priorities: Leaders understand that activity does not equal accomplishment. A leader is one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells, ¡°WRONG JUNGLE.¡± 80/20 Principle

...are key virtues, and John Maxwell's "21 Laws" have both.

When this book was first recommended to me, I "read it because I had to" for my job. I felt a lot of snobbery toward it for a variety of reasons:

1. It was written by a minister, whose specialty is improving the quality of other religious ministries.
2. How could anything credible come from a source like that?
3. His speaking style is folksy and I assumed the same would be true of his writing style. It can get annoying.
4. He seems sexist to me, and that always loses my respect.
5. He fits my own stereotype of an obnoxious Civitan know-it-all; a Babbitty lower midwestern bundle of presumptions about the nature of life and leadership.

It was necessary for me to overcome my own prejudices to give his work fair hearing. If you do the same, you'll be glad.

The most revealing thing he has to say about leadership is that it is not just a path to more money. Given the commitments needed to be an effective leader, you have to choose leadership as a vocation. After you hear Dr. Maxwell describe what is required of leaders, it would be totally reasonable to choose another way to make money.

Leaders have to commit seriously to a broad set of disciplines to be effective. Some of his laws hit me so hard, after a career in health care leadership, that I felt I was waking up from a deep sleep. These stuck to my ribs:

1. Leaders cannot be microwaved; they must be "crock-potted."
2. The Law of Connection means so much; the leader walks slowly through the people.
3. Great leaders never give up, but know when to change course.
4. "The Big Mo" produces huge leaps in tanglible progress, but is a function of the foundation the leader painstakingly lays first.

Unfortunately, John's many other works never achieve the same impact that this book does, and he cannot avoid compulsive "cross selling" in this and all his other books.

I liked the book, but like others I was looking for more application than theory. If you can get past Maxwell's logic on how the examples explain EVERYTHING and determine how to apply the laws to your own situation you will do well to read the book. One reason his book doesn't explain how to apply the laws is because he has published numerous video tapes, audio tapes, and other books that you can buy which do explain how to apply them. In the video series on this book each of the "21 Laws" has references listed (which are published by Maxwell, imagine that)which cost hundreds of dollars. If you bought all of them they would cost almost $3000! He has a good system but it is very expensive. THe book is not meant to teach you everything, it is only a beginning. Learning leadership takes a lot of time and money if you are going to learn it from Maxwell.

If he put everything into one book it would be a VERY BIG BOOK and Maxwell wouldn't make as much money as he does from the complete series......

John Maxwell has done a superb job of summarizing the subject of leadership into one interesting, practical, and fairly comprehensive 233-page book. The book is simple enough for a high school freshman to study and significant enough for a business executive to ponder. Maxwell is an expert at finding the best material in the field and re-packaging it with his own master touch. He has undoubtedly become the top expert on leadership in the church and may prove to be the top teacher of leadership in the secular arena as well. In the 21 Laws, he looks at the invaluable necessity of leadership, how leadership is influence, how it involves a process and the way to create a leadership legacy. Maxwell discusses leadership qualities like vision, trust, respect and sacrifice. He also examines the skills of team building, communication, empowerment, intuition, time management and mentoring. Each of the 21 laws includes an interesting real life historical example. From the rookie youth pastor to the Fortune 500 exec, I highly recommend The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.