The Toughest Person To Lead Is Always Yourself

John Maxwell

• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781400275366
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Smart leaders learn from their own mistakes. Smarter ones learn from others' mistakes—and successes.  John C. Maxwell wants to help you become the smartest leader you can be by sharing Chapter 2, The Toughest Person To Lead Is Always Yourself, of Leadership Gold with you. After nearly forty years of leading, Maxwell has mined the gold so you don't have to. Each chapter contains detailed application exercises and a "Mentoring Moment" for leaders who desire to mentor others using the book. Gaining leadership insight is a lot like mining for gold. You don't set out to look for the dirt. You look for the nuggets. You'll find them here.

THE TOUGHEST PERSON TO LEAD IS ALWAYS YOURSELF

During a Q&A session at a conference, someone asked,“What has been your greatest challenge as a leader?” I think my response surprised nearly everyone in the auditorium.

“Leading me!” I answered. “That’s always been my greatest challenge as a leader.”

I think that’s true for all leaders regardless of who they lead and what they accomplish. We sometimes think about accomplished leaders from history and assume that they had it all together. But if we really examine their lives, whether we’re looking at King David, George Washington, or Winston Churchill, we’ll see that they struggled to lead themselves well. That’s why I say that the toughest person to lead is always yourself. It’s like Walt Kelly exclaimed in his Pogo cartoon strip: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”¹

Acknowledging that leading myself is a challenge brings back some painful memories. Many of my leadership breakdowns have been personal breakdowns. In a leadership career that has spanned almost four decades, I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but I have experienced only four major leadership crises. And I’m sorry to say that all of them were my fault.

The first occurred in 1970, just two years into my first official leadership position. After two years of work, I had won over many people and there was a lot going on. However, one day I realized that my organization had no direction. Why? Because I lacked the ability to prioritize correctly and bring focus to my leadership. As a young leader, I didn’t yet understand that activity does not necessarily equal accomplishment. As a result, my people, following my example, were wandering in the wilderness for sixteen months. In the end, I didn’t really l...