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The 21 Most Powerful Minutes In A Leader's Day Revitalize Your Spirit And Empower Your Leadership

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John C. Maxwell has written a book here that will deepen your appreciation for The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and encourage you to live those laws in practical, yet spiritually-significant ways. Whether you are a parent, pastor, priest, lay leader of a Sunday School, head of a nonprofit foundation, CEO of a business, or simply work at your career, you will find important insights here from the greatest leaders and failures in the Bible.

The book is organized around the 21 irrefutable laws. Each chapter describes a way to use the material for 5 days during a week. You have a study lesson for 4 days, including a daily meditation question, and then a 5th day for taking action. Each lesson can be pursued in a few minutes. After 5 months, you will find yourself living closer to the ideal as a leader. Think of this as a handbook for implementation that includes all the theory you need, as well. Even if you did not read the earlier book from 1998, you can read, understand, and apply the lessons from this one.

Let me briefly summarize the laws and the Biblical analogies for you:

The Law of THE LID -- Leadership ability determines your effectiveness (compares Saul and David)

The Law of INFLUENCE -- True measures of influence are important(Joshua)

The Law of NAVIGATION -- Chart the right course (Nehemiah)

The Law of E.F. HUTTON -- When the real leader speaks, people listen (Samuel)

The Law of RESPECT -- People naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves (Deborah)

The Law of INTUITION -- Leaders evaluate everything with a leadership bias (Jethro)

The Law of MAGNETISM -- Who you are is who you attract (Elijah)

The Law of CONNECTION -- Touch a heart before you ask for a hand (Rohoboam)

The Law of THE INNER CIRCLE -- A leader's potential is determined by those closest to her or him (David)

The Law of EMPOWERMENT -- Only serious leaders give power to others (Barnabas)

The Law of REPRODUCTION -- It takes a leader to raise up a leader (Moses and Joshua)

The Law of BUY-IN -- People buy in to the leader, then the vision (Gideon)

The Law of VICTORY -- Leaders find a way for the team to win (Josiah)

The Law of THE BIG MO -- Momentum is the leader's best friend (Solomon)

The Law of PRIORITIES -- Activity is not necessarily accomplishment (Peter)

The Law of SACRIFICE -- Give up to go up (Moses)

The Law of TIMING -- When is as important as what to do and where to go (Esther)

The Law of EXPLOSIVE GROWTH -- To add growth, lead followers . . . to multiply growth, lead leaders (Paul)

The Law of LEGACY -- Lasting value is measured by succession (Jesus)

As a lifelong student of leadership (especially among CEOs of public companies), I heartily endorse these principles. They will be very beneficial in encouraging lasting growth that will also nurture the souls of those who serve in these families, religious groups, organizations and enterprises.

Even if you are not a particularly religious person, I think you will find it enjoyable to revisit these well-known stories from the Scriptures. Each chapter refers you to the relevant Biblical texts if you would like to read them directly.

If you are a religious person, you will probably also enjoy using the prayers that are outlined in the chapters to help you find guidance.

To give you a flavor of the book's organization, let's look at the Law of THE LID. For the first day, you focus on the principle that every person has the potential to be a leader. For the second day, you focus on that idea that every leader has lids. On the third day, you think about the idea that some lids can be lifted by leaders. On the fourth day, you concentrate on the concept that some lids have to be lifted by someone other than the leader. Also, few leaders let that happen. Then on the fifth day, you have actions to take in each of these four areas. The ideas are very powerful and the implementation steps are simple and useful.

I heartily encourage you to pursue this book and its lessons! You will find the improvements within yourself and around you to be irresisibly good!

You get used to seeing these types of books, which are frequently given as gifts by people who have no idea what you really like or need to read. Which is where I got this. But it's not bad.

Take Hudson Armerding's book "Leadership," and fuse it with Roger Ailes's book "You are The Message: Getting what you want by being who you are" and cut it up into templated nuggets keyed to periodic readings, and something like this is what you might get. The difference, qualitatively, is that Maxwell has really worked his leadership examples from the Bible, and for the most part keeps them in historic context while pulling out lessons for contemporary application. In the flyleaf/back pages, you can see how he is hawking the same things on a web site and on a tape series, to transform these lessons into sermons for ministers who need a little defibrillation.

Having read James MacGregor Burns on "Leadership" some years ago, and being impressed ever since (although bothered by the weird Oedipal analyses Burns applied to guys like Gandhi, Martin Luther and others), Maxwell is refreshingly Biblical without being too preachy. Non-Christian or Non-Jewish readers should be able to see things in here other than some former Bible-college student constantly telling us how he revitalized the three churches he pastored before becoming a fund raising consultant and a leadership conference organizer. The book gets beyond that and stays on point.

This is a sign that Christian business/leadership writing is coming into its own. Looking at a lot of other leadership books which grope for an over-arching metaphor drawn from polar expeditions, evolution (yawn) or other meta-physics, makes you realize that the ancient lessons recorded in the Bible can be just as gripping. I would think other faith traditions could do the same, hopefully also getting past the jingoistic level of "Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun."

I led a group from my company through this 21 week study of leadership. Very informative and thought provoking. If you decide to lead a similar group, I recommend you also read The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership at the same time. It will provide you a good deal of additional discussion ideas.

I approached this book with some caution: leadership advice drawn from Biblical texts is an idea that has been done many times before, and often very badly. John Maxwell, however, has done a tremendous job of drawing meaningful conclusions from the Bible without being either condescending or heavy-handed. The insights he draws from many of the stories (I especially admired those of Solomon, Esther, and Moses) are often new and valuable.

Having said that, this is hardly "Leadership from Dummies." The value of the stories is inspirational and illustrative, but not directly applicable to work and life. I think Maxwell was unnecessarily concerned about this, and as a result built each story around a series of steps and meditations for the readers. I would worry less about what, exactly, you should do to integrate the leadership skills of Moses (for example) into your daily life than simply to take value and meaning from the story.

The 21 Most Powerful Minutes book is the much needed biblical support for Maxwell's excellent work, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Though it doesn't stand on its own in communicating leadership principles, it makes an excellent devotional reading to correspond with deeper study of the 21 Laws or 21 Qualities books.

|-POSITIVE-|
I think this is a great book if you never read a book on leadership, or if you never read any of his other books. Actually, having read at least 4 other books on leadership written by this same author, this one is one of his better books. I think this book will go well with his other book, "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership."

Some of my favorite quotes from this book,
* If you reproduced yourself in another leader, would you be pleased with the results?
* Don't wait until you hold a leadership position to begin building your inner circle
* People teach what they know, but they reproduce what they are.
* Do no limit your people, lift them.
* Your inner circle should make you more complete

|-NEGATIVE-|
Oh how I hate it, I read 5 of his books on leadership, and they all share very similar information. If you read his other books, you probably will not find many new ideas here.

Whether of not you have heard of John C. Maxwell or his "21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership", you can get a great deal from this very interesting book.

This book is a 21-week course that involves you for 21 minutes each day in reading, thinking, and deciding how to act on these principles. Each principle is given five days. The first day of each week starts with a series of scripture readings that present a story that will be used to illustrate the principle and introduces both the story and the take on the principle for the week. Days 2-4 examine various aspects of the story and ask you a question to ponder. Day 5 is more about action. After summing things up, you get the opportunity to go to the book's website and take a brief assessment to make sure you are clear about the points you have been studying that week. Maxwell provides points for prayer, a section that asks you questions that provoke you to consider how you are going to live this principle, and finally it asks you to choose two people so you can teach them what you have spent a week learning.

The book is much more about you thinking, pondering, and deciding than it is about laying out a path for you to follow. I very much appreciate its overtly religious lessons and scripture readings. A very good and useful book for everyone (unless being around scripture and prayer drives you crazy).

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

This book is etremely well written and inspirational. It is part bible study and part leadership. Each chapter contains recommended reading from the bible and talks about different characters in the bible and how they demonstrated leadership qualities or a lack thereof. There are also thought provocing questions for journaling at the end of each chapter. A very good read and one of those read slow, think about how you can apply it and write down your ideas book.

I read John Maxwell's 21 Laws of Leadership book several years ago, and also bought his study guide DVDs at one of his seminars. This book is a fabulous complement to those because it's both a quick refresher and an extremely helpful daily devotional. I have other devotionals but many of them are inspirational only -- this one is different because it teaches valuable leadership lessons with values-based biblical stories in a quick way. I look forward to reading the next lesson each morning. I'm using this more like a study guide than a devotional. You'll find it difficult not to share the lessons with family, co-workers, or any other leadership group you're involved with whether it be business, networking or your church. The stories make the lessons easy to remember and share. Maxwell also adds additional scriptures to some of the lessons so if you want to spend a bit more time studying, you can read this simultaneously with your Bible. I like this devotional because I feel like I'm getting two things accomplished at the same time -- not only am I continuing to develop my leadership skills but I'm reading relevant scriptures as well. This may be a book that I use for the first 21 weeks of every year, as the lessons are timeless. Excellent book for use by leadership coaches. As someone else mentioned, you can use this devotional along with the 21 Laws of Leadership book if you want more content for studying and reference but you don't have to -- you can learn the lessons while using this as a standalone book/study tool.

I received the two books I ordered way before the selected earliest date given. We needed these books for a Small Group and they came just in time and you could not beat the price, I paid more in shipping and handling.