MARTINEZ, Alexis Paula

4LM3
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The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
John Maxwell

Every great leader must exemplify certain characteristics that will influence people
to follow their vision. These characteristics do not always come natural to every
leader but these traits can be learned and should be used to their maximum need
in order to bring about success. In John C. Maxwells The 21 Irrefutable Laws of
Leadership, he presents 21 laws that can transform a soon to be leader into a
great leader. Maxwell exudes on the Law of the Lid. Leadership is the lid that
determines a persons level of effectiveness.

Your leadership ability always

determines your effectiveness and potential impact of your organization. The

greater the impact you want to make, the greater your influence needs to be.
Whatever you will accomplish is restricted by your ability to lead others.
The Law of Influence: Leadership is influence. Some people assume that just
because one person has a title or high position, that person must be a good
leader. That is not always true; titles dont hold much value when it comes to
leading. True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned. Maxwell
attributes five common myths about leadership.
1) The Management Myth
2) The Entrepreneur Myth
3) The Knowledge Myth

4) The Pioneer Myth

5) The Position Myth
The Law of Process: To become an excellent leader, you need to work on it
everyday. The ability to lead is a collection of skills which can be learned and
improved. Successful leaders are learners. The process of learning is an ongoing
process, a result of self-discipline and perseverance. The goal each day is to get a
little better and build on the previous days progress. Maxwell believes there are five
phases of leadership growth.
Phase 1: I Dont Know What I Dont Know few think of themselves as leaders and
as long as a person doesnt know the importance of leadership he isnt going to
grow.
Phase 2: I Know That I Need to Know at some point we discover we need to learn
how to lead.
Phase 3: I Know What I Dont Know if we dont get better at leadership, our
careers will eventually get bogged down. In this phase you develop a plan for
personal growth on areas you need improvement.
Phase 4: I Know and Grow and It Starts to Show when you recognize your lack
of skill and begin the daily discipline of personal growth, exciting things start to
happen. You start becoming an effective leader but you have to think about every
move you make.
Phase 5: I Simply Go Because of What I Know your ability to lead becomes
almost automatic. You develop great instincts that result in incredible payoffs.
But the only way to get there is to obey the Law of Process and pay the price.
The Law of Navigation:
for the journey.

In order to be successful in leading, one must prepare

Before good leaders take their people on a journey, they go

through a process in order to give the trip the best chance of being a success. For
leaders to become good navigators, they need to:
Draw on Past Experience every past success and failure youve experienced
can be a valuable source of information and wisdom. Success teaches you what
youre capable of doing and gives you confidence.
Examine the Conditions Before Making Commitments No good leader plans a
course of action without paying attention to current conditions. Good navigators
count the cost before making commitments for themselves and others.
Listen To What Others Have to Say Navigating leaders get ideas from many
sources. They listen to members of their leadership team. They spend time with
leaders of other organizations who can mentor them. They always think in terms
of relying on a team, not just themselves.
Make Sure Their Conclusions Represent Both Faith and Fact A leader has to
possess a positive attitude. You have to be able to see the facts realistically.
Balancing optimism and realism, faith and fact can be very difficult.
The Law of Addition: By having a servant attitude, a leader can add values to
the lives of others.

The interaction between every leader and follower is a

relationship, and all relationships either add to or subtract from a persons life.
Leaders should strive to add value to everyone they interact with, adding value
requires a leader to come out of their comfort zone and if done long enough you
will begin to multiply it through others. Adding value helps lift others up, helps
others advance, makes them feel a part of something bigger than themselves, and
assist them in becoming who they were made to be. Maxwell developed four
guidelines - three, which are fundamental, and one that is based off of his faith.

The three fundamental guidelines to adding value to others are: truly value others,
make ourselves more valuable to others, and know and relate to what others
value. The last guideline, which is based off Maxwells faith, is: Do things that God
values.
The Law of Solid Ground: Trust is the foundation of leadership. It is the glue that
holds an organization together. The Law of Solid Ground means a persons
character makes trust possible and trust makes leadership possible. By
consistently exemplifying competence, connection, and character a leader can
build trust amongst his followers. One way to achieve the Law of Solid Ground is
to build character. A persons character quickly communicates many things to
others. The most important values in character are to communicate consistency,
communicate potential, and to communicate respect.
The Law of Respect: People follow individuals who leadership skills and qualities
they respect and followers are attracted to people who are better leaders than
themselves. There are six ways that will help leaders gain others respect:
1) Natural Leadership Ability if you possess it, people will want to follow you.
They will become excited when you communicate vision.
2) Respect for others when leaders show respect for others especially for
people who have less power or a lower position than theirs they gain respect
from others. If you continually respect others and consistently lead them well, you
will continue to have followers.
3) Courage Good leaders do whats right, even at the risk of failure, in the face
of great danger and under the brunt of relentless criticism. A leaders courage
gives his followers hope.

4) Success When leaders succeed in leading the team to victory, then followers
believe they can do it again. As a result, followers follow them because they want
to be part of success in the future.
5) Loyalty When leaders stick with the team until the job is done and look out for
their followers best interests even when it hurts them personally, followers will in
turn learn to respect them.
6) Value Added to Others Followers value leaders who add value to them and
their respect for them carries on long after the relationship has ended.
The Law of Intuition: Every person possesses intuition, and every leader must
draw off his or her intuition. Leaders must always be a step ahead of their best
people, or theyre not really leading.

If a leader wants to succeed they must

maximize every asset and resource they have for the benefit of their organization
and need to be familiar with their own strengths and weaknesses along with their
current state of mind. Leadership intuition has three different levels: those who
naturally understand leadership, those who can be nurtured to understand
leadership, and those who will never understand leadership. Leaders who
naturally understand leadership understand people and can move them from one
point to the next.
The Law of Magnetism: If you have heard of the saying, Birds of a feather
flock together, then you will understand Maxwells Law of Magnetism. Who you
are is who you attract. A persons generation, attitude, background, values,
energy, giftedness, and leadership ability are all characteristic of magnetism that
can influence a follower to follow. The better leader you are, the better leaders
you will attract.

The Law of Connection: A leader must connect with the ones they want to
influence. For leaders to be effective, they need to connect with people. A leader
needs to first connect with themselves, communicate with openness and sincerity,
know the audience, leave a message and practice what they preach, adapt to
others and not expect them to adapt to you, focus on others and not themselves,
believe in other people and believe they have value, and finally offer direction and
hope because when an leader gives hope, they are using hope as a motivator
which in turn will give the followers a future. The purpose of the Law of Connection
is not to convince others, it is to connect with others. The result of the connection
is to see a change in the way processes function, gain loyalty, and maintain the
followers you have while gaining at the same time.
The Law of the Inner Circle: A leader cannot be successful by himself; it takes a
team to bring success alive. When a leader looks to practice the Law of the Inner
Circle they must establish their vision with intentions of success, as well as bring
success to the people who follow. A leaders team should have qualities of having
high ability to influence others, be able to bring something to the table, hold a
strategic position in the organization, add value to the leader themselves and the
organization, and have a positive impact on other members in the team.
The Law of Empowerment: If a leader wants to be successful, they have to be
willing to empower others and help those other people reach full potential. The
purpose of empowering is not to knock others down so youre the only one
standing, but to encourage others by giving them power and helping them to
succeed.
The Law of the Picture: In order to apply the Law of the Picture a leader needs to
make them responsible for helping their followers to take action, be stewards of the

vision, and live the vision so the picture can come to life. A good leader needs to
always be aware that their followers are watching so the better a leader acts, the
better their people will act. It is also important for a leader to teach what is right
because it is easier than doing whats right, by teaching what is right they will learn
what is right. A leader needs to also work on changing themselves before trying to
improve others, and always remember the most valuable gift a leader can give is to
be a good example.
The Law of the Buy-In: A follower will look for another leader when they dont like
the leader or vision. They will change their vision if they like the leader but not the
vision and they will buy into the vision and leader if they like them both. The reality
of the Law of Buy-In is that a leaders success is measured by their ability to
actually take people where they need to go.
The Law of Victory: Good leaders find a way for their teams to win. Any team,
business, or organization can be victorious as long as they have three components
that contribute to a teams dedication to victory. There needs to be a unity of
vision, because teams succeed only when the players have a unified vision. A
leader needs to be dedicated to victory and raising players to their potential. It
takes a leader to provide motivation, empowerment, and direction in order to win.
The Law of the Big Mo: Maxwell believed that momentum is a leaders best
friend simply because many times momentum is the only thing that makes the
difference between losing and winning. When a leader has momentum on their
side, obstacles appear small and can be conquered. If a team or organization
wants to succeed they need to know that momentum is a great exaggerator, its
like a magnifying glass; it makes things look bigger than they really are. Momentum
makes leader look better than they really are, momentum changes a persons

perspective of their leader and people tend to forget about the mistakes the leaders
have made.
The Law of Priorities: Good leaders need to keep prioritizing. Busyness does not
equal productivity.

Activity is not necessarily an accomplishment. Prioritizing

requires leaders to continually think ahead, to know whats important, to know

whats next, and to see how everything relates to the overall vision. Prioritizing
causes us to do things that are at the least uncomfortable and sometimes
downright painful. A leader needs to be able to think outside box and see the
situation for the reality is really is.
The Law of Sacrifice: A leader must give up to in order to go up and the heart of
good leadership is sacrifice. If a leader wants to become the best leader they can
be, then they need to be willing to make sacrifices. A leader should know that
without sacrifice there is no success. Effective leaders sacrifice much that is good
in order to dedicate them to what is best. Because the heart of leadership is putting
others before you, leaders are often asked to give up more than others. As a
person moves up in leadership they take on more responsibility and have fewer
options. They keep making sacrificing and the higher the level of leadership, the
greater those sacrifices will be. Leadership success requires continual change,
constant improvement, and ongoing sacrifice.
The Law of Timing: Timing is often the difference between success and failure in
an endeavor Maxwell believes every time a leader makes a move there are four
outcomes: The wrong action at the wrong time leads to disaster, the right action at
the wrong time brings resistance, the wrong action at the right time is a mistake,
and the right action at the right time results in success. Along with these outcomes
leadership also requires understanding, maturity, confidence, decisiveness,

experience, intuition, and preparation. It is important for a leader to know that the
right action at the right time will bring success to your team, department, or
organization.
The Law of Explosive Growth: Every leader needs to continually work at being
persistent with those following who have potential to become great leaders
themselves.

Becoming a leader who develops leaders requires an entirely

different focus and attitude from simply attracting and leading followers. It takes a
different mind-set. The challenges that most established leaders face is finding a
new leader and new leaders are hard to find, leaders are hard to gather, and good
leaders are hard to keep.
The Law of Legacy: Every great successful leader should leave a legacy behind
in which their followers should continue to add value and multiply towards.
Success doesnt count for much if you leave nothing behind. In order for a leader to
leave a legacy for future generations they first need to know the legacy they want
to leave behind, a leader should live the legacy they say they believe, choose
someone who can carry on their legacy, and make sure as a leader they pass the
baton on to someone. The best leaders lead today with tomorrow in mind by
making sure they invest in leader who will carry their legacy forward because a
leaders lasting value is measured by succession.