The Law of Victory

Lesson 15 from The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

John C. Maxwell

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781400275748
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Operations

What saved England from the Blitz, broke apartheid's back in South Africa, and won the Chicago Bulls multiple world championships? In all threee cases the answer is the same. Their leaders lived by the Law of Victory.

THE LAW OF VICTORY

Leaders Find a Way for the Team to Win

Have you ever thought about what separates the leaders who achieve victory from those who suffer defeat? What does it take to make a team a winner? It’s hard to identify the quality that separates winners from losers. Every leadership situation is different. Every crisis has its own challenges. But I think that 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.

THIS WAS HIS FINEST HOUR

Crisis seems to bring out the best—and the worst—in leaders because at such times the pressure is intense and the stakes are high. That was certainly true during World War II when Adolf Hitler was threatening to crush Europe and remake it according to his vision. But against the power of Hitler and his Nazi hordes stood a leader determined to win, a practitioner of the Law of Victory: Winston Churchill, the British prime minister. He inspired the British people to resist Hitler and ultimately win the war.

Long before he became prime minister in 1940, Churchill spoke out against the Nazis. He seemed like the lone critic in 1932 when he warned, “Do not delude yourselves . . . Do not believe that all Germany is asking for is equal status . . . They are looking for weapons and when they have them believe me they will ask for the return of lost territories or colonies.” As a leader, Churchill could see what was coming, and he was trying to prepare the people of England for what he saw as an inevitable fight.

In successive years, Churchill continued to speak out against the Nazis. And when Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, Churchill said to members of the House of Commons:

For five years I have talked to the House on these matters—not with very great success. I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf . . . Now is the time at last to rouse the nation. Perhaps it is the last time it can be roused with a chance of preventing war, or with a chance of coming through with victory should our effort to prevent war fail.¹

Unfortunately, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the other leaders of Great Britain did not make a stand against Hitler. They were not prepared to do what it took to achieve victory. And more of Europe fell to the Nazis.

By mid-1940, most of Europe was under Germany’s thumb. But then something happened that probably changed the course of history for the free world. The leadership of England fell to the sixty-five-year-old Winston Churchill, a courageous leader who had practiced the Law of Victory throughout his life. He refused to buckle under the Nazis’ threats. For more than a year...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• THE LAW OF VICTORY
• NOTES
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR