The Complete 101 Collection

John C. Maxwell

• Verlag: HarperCollins Leadership
• Jahr: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781400203963
• Thema: Business
• Thema: Leadership

Get everything you need to start your successful leadership journey through the 101 series compiled into one collection by John C. Maxwell.

As the founder of EQUIP and the John Maxwell Company, bestselling author, speaker, and leadership expert John C. Maxwell is responsible for helping train more than 5 million leaders worldwide.

In The Complete 101 Collection, he has combined his introductory works on eight core fundamentals every professional needs such as:

• Attitude
• Self-Improvement
• Leadership
• Relationships
• Success
• Teamwork
• Equipping
• Mentoring

Whether one is needing a refresher course on these basic but essential principles or even mentoring a young leader to develop in business and leadership within their own lives, this concentrated collection of briefcase-sized leadership books is the starting point you need to sharpen these crucial bedrocks for leaders in any industry or environment.

SUCCESS

WHAT EVERY LEADER NEEDS TO KNOW

© 2008 by John C. Maxwell

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Published in association with Yates & Yates, www.yates2.com

Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

Portions of this book have been previously published in Your Road Map for Success, Failing Forward, The 360º Leader, Winning with People, The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, and The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player by John C. Maxwell.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Maxwell, John C., 1947–
Success 101 : what every leader needs to know / John C. Maxwell.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4002-8023-0
1. Success in business--Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title.
HF5386.M4449 2008
658.4'09--dc22
2008026082

CONTENTS

PART I: THE RIGHT PICTURE OF SUCCESS

1. What Is Success?

2. What Direction Should I Go?

3. What Role Does Failure Play in Success?

4. How Do I Get Started?

PART II: THE CORE QUALITIES FOR SUCCESS

5. How Well Do I Work with People?

6. Do Others Find Me Trustworthy?

7. How Skilled Am I in My Work?

8. Do I Keep Going When Others Don’t?

9. Am I Striving to Keep Learning?

PART III: SUCCESS AT THE NEXT LEVEL

10. Am I Willing to Do the Tough Jobs?

11. Am I Ready to Step Up My Game?

12. Am I Ready to Lead at the Next Level?

PART I
THE RIGHT PICTURE OF SUCCESS

I

WHAT IS SUCCESS?

You cannot achieve what you have not defined.

The problem for most people who want to be successful is not that they can’t achieve success. The main obstacle for them is that they misunderstand success. Maltbie D. Babcock said, “One of the most common mistakes and one of the costliest is thinking that success is due to some genius, some magic, something or other which we do not possess.”

THE TRADITIONAL PICTURE OF SUCCESS

What is success? What does it look like? Most people have a vague picture of what it means to be a successful person that looks something like this:

The wealth of Bill Gates,

the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger

(or Marilyn Monroe),

the intelligence of Albert Einstein,

the athletic ability of Michael Jordan,

the business prowess of Donald Trump,

the social grace and poise of Jackie Kennedy,

the imagination of Walt Disney, and

the heart of Mother Teresa.

That sounds absurd, but it’s closer to the truth than we would like to admit. Many of us picture success as looking like one other than who we are—and we especially can’t be eight other people! And more important than that, you shouldn’t want to be. If you tried to become just like even one of these other people, you wouldn’t be successful. You would be a bad imitation of them, and you would eliminate the possibility of becoming the person you were meant to be.

THE RIGHT PICTURE OF SUCCESS

So how do you get started on the journey toward success? What does it take to be a success? Two things are required: the right picture of success and the right principles for getting there.

The picture of success isn’t the same for any two people because we’re all created differently as unique individuals. But the process is the same for everyone. It’s based on principles that do not change. After more than thirty-five years of knowing successful people and studying the subject, I have developed the following definition of success:

Success is . . .

Knowing your purpose in life,

Growing to reach your maximum potential, and

Sowing seeds that benefit others.

You can see by this definition that success is a journey rather than a destination. No matter how long you live or what you decide to do in life, you will never exhaust your capacity to grow toward your potential or run out of opportunities to help others. When you see success as a journey, you’ll never have the problem of trying to “arrive” at an elusive final destination. And you’ll never find yourself in a position where you have accomplished some final goal, only to discover that you’re still unfulfilled and searching for something else to do.

Another benefit of focusing on the journey of success instead of on arriving at a destination or achieving a goal is that you have the potential to become a success today. The very moment that you make the shift to finding your purpose, growing to your potential, and helping others, successful is something you are right now, not something you vaguely hope one day to be.

To get a better handle on these aspects of success, let’s take a look at each one of them:

KNOWING YOUR PURPOSE

Nothing can take the place of knowing your purpose. Millionaire industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, the founder of Kaiser Aluminum as well as the Kaiser-Permanente health care system, said, “The evidence is overwhelming that you cannot begin to achieve your best unless you set some aim in life.” Or put another way, if you don’t try actively to discover your purpose, you’re likely to spend your life doing the wrong things.

I believe that God created every person for a purpose. According to psychologist Viktor Frankl, “Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life. Everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus everyone’s task is as unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.” Each of us has a purpose for which we were created. Our responsibility—and our greatest joy—is to identify it.

Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you identify your purpose:

For what am I searching? All of us have a strong desire buried in our hearts, something that speaks to our deepest thoughts and feelings, something that sets our souls on fire. Some people have a strong sense of what that is when they’re just children. Others take half a lifetime to discover it. But no matter what, it’s there. You only need to find it.

Why was I created? Each of us is different. No one else in the world has exactly the same gifts, talents, background, or future. That’s one of the reasons it would be a serious mistake for you to try to be someone other than yourself.

Think about your unique mix of abilities, the resources available to you, your personal history, and the opportunities around you. If you objectively identify these factors and discover the desire of your heart, you will have done a lot toward discovering your purpose in life.

Do I believe in my potential? You cannot consistently act in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself. If you don’t believe that you have potential, you will never try to reach it. And if you aren’t willing to work toward reaching your potential, you will never be successful.

You should take the advice of President Theodore Roosevelt, who said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” If you do that with your eyes fixed on your life purpose, what else can be expected of you?

When do I start? Some people live their lives from day to day, allowing others to dictate what they do and how they do it. They never try to discover their true purpose for living. Others know their purpose, yet never act on it. They are waiting for inspiration or permission or an invitation to get started. But if they wait much longer, they’ll never get going. So the answer to the question “When do I start?” is NOW.

GROWING TO YOUR POTENTIAL

Novelist H. G. Wells held that wealth, notoriety, place, and power are no measures of success whatsoever. The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have been and what we have become. In other words, success comes as the result of growing to our potential.

It’s been said that our potential is God’s gift to us, and what we do with it is our gift to him. But at the same time, our potential is probably our greatest untapped resource. Henry Ford observed, “There is no man living who isn’t capable of...