Book Review — ‘The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership’ by John Maxwell
“How many of us are comfortable in calling ourselves a leader?”
Most of us end up nodding with a maybe, at the risk of sounding smug or because we lack the confidence of the others who gave an affirmative, yes. But either way, we do so without fully understanding the word and its qualities.
‘Leader’, the word was made familiar by war heroes, politicians, and later by corporations. It is one of the elementary degrees to get but with the most challenging job profile. Over a period, I have realized that leadership is projected as something superior and beyond most of us. We tend to make it only about challenging the big things, changing the world, or start a big new wave of something, so much so that we devalue the leadership we display every day. We do not even savour the moments where we indeed were a leader.
In his book ’21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership,’ John Maxwell gives a fresh perspective on leadership by instilling a belief that anyone can become a leader as long as one decides to run it like a marathon instead of a sprint. He presents the persona of a leader through some time-tested techniques and qualities, which he narrates them as ‘Laws’. Not everyone has these 21 qualities or requires all of it to qualify as a good leader. Even one trait in a person is a start, and like with any job or work, where you get better at it by continuous practice and hard work, the same holds with leadership.
Maxwell’s book highlights, practising these laws is a safe start for someone aspiring to be a good leader as the rules are concise and extremely useful. He endorses them with true business stories and anecdotes. He has designed each chapter with pragmatic strategies and activities to assist and grow your leadership abilities. He shares industry-wide examples ranging from technology (Steve Jobs), sports (Michael Jordan), history and politics (Abraham Lincoln and George W. Bush) to religion (Mother Theresa), or retail (McDonald’s) to bring the point home. At the same time, Maxwell does not desist from highlighting stories of leaders such as Henry Ford, who fell short of expectations.
Through this book, I am developing an ability to differentiate between managing (also a leadership quality) and leading. Managers typically focus on maintaining the system, which gets mixed with leading, but leaders are the ones who bring the change. It is the difference between the two, and I relate to this well, as Anirudh stresses me to go beyond just managing people.
Following are my favourite “laws”, which I practice at my workplace to improve my leadership quotient. By highlighting these, I am not rendering others less significant:
1. Law of the lid — You are not master of all and cannot do everything by yourself. I add value to my team and self by setting tasks with them and acknowledging their growth. Challenging them in their areas of strength and working with them on their areas of weakness.
2. Leadership develops daily, not in a day — Growth in life is possible only when you are getting better than yesterday, and you are making your team smarter than yesterday. So, I focus on interactions that are value-adding for both my team and me.
3. Leaders understand the difference between activities and accomplishments — Fulfilling daily tasks and completing activities before time doesn’t qualify as leadership. I have started focusing on things that make a difference to the organization and personal growth, like reading leadership books, practising the learning by sharing them with the team and others is one of them.
4. Transformative leadership — It isn’t how far we advance ourselves but how much we grow others. I have a personal target to develop one of my team members who can replace me in my role in the next 18 months, thus making me ready for more significant responsibilities at work.
I would recommend this book and conclude my learning as:
It does not matter how a leader comes by, whether inborn or through skills. What matters is that you possess the necessary attitude and that you are willing to harness yourself for the benefit of those you lead. Fortunately, that is something each one of us can learn. There is indeed no such thing as a perfect leader or a one-size-fits-all way to lead because “Leadership is not a short distance race; it is a marathon to be run in stages throughout personal and professional life.”
