The Law of Buy-In

John C. Maxwell

• Verlag: HarperCollins Leadership
• Jahr: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781400275731
• Thema: Theologie & Religion
• Thema: Christliche Kirche

The first time Judy Estrim started up a company, it took her six months to find the money. The second time it took her about six minutes. What made the difference? The Law of Buy-In.

THE LAW OF BUY-IN

People Buy into the Leader, Then the Vision

In the fall of 1997, a few members of my staff and I had the opportunity to travel to India and teach four leadership conferences, something we’ve done many more times in the last decade. India is an amazing country, full of contradictions. It’s a place of beauty, with warm and generous people. It has a strong emerging economy. Yet at the same time millions and millions of its inhabitants live in the worst poverty imaginable. It was there that I was reminded of the Law of Buy-In.

I’ll never forget when our plane landed in Delhi. Exiting the airport, I felt as if we had been transported to another planet. There were crowds everywhere. People on bicycles, in cars, on camels and elephants. People on the streets, some sleeping right on the sidewalks. Animals roamed free, no matter where we were. And everything was in motion. As we drove along the main street toward our hotel, I also noticed something else. Banners. Wherever we looked, we could see banners celebrating India’s fifty years of liberty, along with huge pictures of one man: Mahatma Gandhi.

OBSCURE BEGINNINGS

Today, people take for granted that Gandhi was a great leader. But the story of his leadership is a marvelous study in the Law of Buy-In. Mohandas K. Gandhi, called Mahatma (which means “great soul”), was educated in London. After finishing his education in law, he traveled back to India and then to South Africa. There he worked for twenty years as a barrister and political activist. And in that time he developed as a leader, fighting for the rights of Indians and other minorities who were oppressed and discriminated against by South Africa’s apartheid government.

By the time he returned to India in 1914, Gandhi was very well-known and highly respected among his countrymen. Over the next several years, as he led protests and strikes around the country, people rallied to him and looked to him more and more for leadership. In 1920—a mere six years after returning to India—he was elected president of the All India Home Rule League.

The most remarkable thing about Gandhi isn’t that he became a leader in India, but that he was able to change the people’s vision for obtaining freedom. Before he began leading them, the people used violence in an effort to achieve their goals. For...