To See How the Leader Is Doing, Look at the People

Lesson 9 from Leadership Gold

John C. Maxwell

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2012
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400275434
• 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 9, To See How The Leader is Doing, Look At The People 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.

TO SEE HOW THE LEADER IS
DOING, LOOK AT THE PEOPLE

In the mid-1970s, I attended a conference where Lee Roberson was a speaker. He made a statement during a session that inspired me and changed my life. Roberson said, “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” By that he meant that leaders inevitably make things better or worse for the people who follow them. Wherever you have a good leader, the team gets better, the organization gets better, the department or division gets better. And wherever you have a bad leader, everyone that leader impacts has a tougher time. Leadership makes every endeavor either better or worse.

The moment I heard that statement, I understood intuitively that it was true. That statement soon became my theme. It has been a major inspiration and motivation for me for more than thirty years. It has been the foundation of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, including the Law of the Lid, which states, “Leadership ability determines a person’s level of effectiveness.” And it has influenced how I see everything that happens around me.

THE LEADER IS RESPONSIBLE

The more you understand leadership, the more you see how leaders impact things around them. A few years after I heard Roberson speak, along with millions of other Americans I watched Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan debate prior to the 1980 presidential election. Most people agreed that the debate turned on a question that Reagan asked the American people. He said,

Next Tuesday is Election Day. Next Tuesday all of you will go to the polls and stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision it might be well if you would ask yourself, “Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go buy things in the store than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago?” If you answer all those questions yes, why, then I think your choice is very obvious as to who you’ll vote for. If you don’t agree, if you don’t think that this course that we’ve been on for the last four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four, then I could suggest another choice that you have.¹

Why would that question...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT
• CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• TO SEE HOW THE LEADER IS DOING, LOOK AT THE PEOPLE
• NOTES
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR