Leadership is the main concept in the modern business and private life. It helps to distinguish successful managers and those who needs to learn more in order to become effective. Today there are many experts in the leadership sphere. However, John Maxwell is the most experienced writer and teacher on the subject of leadership. He has lots of writings and books in which he presents wealthy information on how to become a leader and how to improve the existing personal leadership qualities. Maxwell’s leadership book series cover different issues including attitude, equipping, relationships and leadership.
Leadership 101 is a tutorial for managers-beginners who want to develop and to raise their personal leadership qualities. The book offers a concise plan for improving leadership skills.
In his writing Maxwell provides practical and personal analysis of the major ways that any person can improve leadership abilities or learn how to be an efficient leader.
A pocket-sized edition of Leadership 101 is daily available and can be carried everywhere to become a successful leader that makes daily effective decisions. The book talks about the multiple levels of influence and strengthen people's confidence. The author's interpretation of the Pareto principle in relation to the different spheres of our life is extremely interesting. For example, according to Maxwell 20 percent of our work brings us 80 percent satisfaction.
The basic idea of this book is that any man can become an excellent leader. Leadership 101 includes 10 chapters and namely: Why Should I Grow as a Leader? How Can I Grow as a Leader? How Can I Become Disciplined? How Should I Prioritize My Life? How Do I Develop Trust? How Can I Effectively Cast Vision? Why Is Influence Important? How Does Influence Work? How Can I Extend My Influence? How Can I Make My Leadership Last?
The major pros and cons of Maxwell’s book are the following:
Pros:
- The book is very easy to read as its content is interesting
- The presented tips and ideas are useful and applicable in practice
- The content of the book in many cases is based on the personal experience of some well-known leaders and companies.
- In the book there are a few interesting ideas that make a person wonder about his life in general.
As for cons, Maxwell’s Leadership 101 doesn’t have any of them. This book seemed to be extremely useful for self-development and understanding of leadership.
Maxwell emphasizes the idea that leadership improves value both personally and corporately.
The more a person improves the degree of the personal leadership skills, the more opportunities he has to impact the life. The more qualified a leader becomes the better his ability to increase the level of the team in particular and the organization as a whole.
Improving personal leadership qualities and individual effectiveness can increase opportunities of influencing on other team members and an organization. Actually, the chief way to improve the level of any company is to improve the leadership level and staff abilities. Different organizational changes need changes within the leaders because more qualified leaders can make their organizations grow.
In his book John Maxwell recognizes four major stages in development and improving of the leadership abilities:
1. I don't know what I don't know 2. I know what I don't know 3. I grow and know and it starts to show 4. I simply go because of what I know
These stages describe different levels of personal growth within the leadership framework. The first stage shows the deficit of skills or total ignorance in the leadership sphere. It’s not a secret that very often young and new leaders don’t know the major leadership principles. The second stage emphasizes an improvement in personal development and knowledge. Thus, the growth of knowledge level lets the leader to get the better understanding of leadership principles. The third stage describes the leadership increase within the leader’s life. When a leader decides to grow and to improve his leadership knowledge, everyone will begin to know. The fourth stage represents the leader carrying out the leadership work relying on his personal knowledge and growth.
Leadership depends on several factors. Leaders improve their leadership knowledge, develop their abilities and grow when they are disciplined, can create and establish priorities, develop the corporate vision and trust with the colleagues.
Discipline
Any successful leader should be disciplined; otherwise, he won’t be able to lead his subordinates. Before a person has the required leadership knowledge and has the ability to lead others, he must become trained and disciplined. The importance of discipline is extremely crucial because it helps the leader to be confident in his actions and words, to focus on the job, its results, personal and corporate success. That’s why it’s very important to develop discipline both for the personal and common profit.
Priorities
Priorities should be aimed at answering three major questions:
What are the main requirements to a person?
What may bring the largest return?
What issues may be the most profitable?
Vision
Vision plays crucial role in the development of leadership qualities as it promotes the leaders and their teams to the highest management levels. Actually, a professional leader is able to forecast the future and foresee the required steps. It helps him to gain the confidence from his team. Vision directs the leaders to their future success.
Trust
Trust lets the leader to introduce changes within the company and his team. Only a person with consistent character, self-confident and goal-oriented may gain trust. Lack of these qualities will give little chance to the leader in creating trust between the leader and the organization at a whole.
Leadership can be described as the ability to impact other people. However, leaders should develop this ability in order to be successful. In his Leadership 101 Maxwell reports that there are five main levels of impact and leadership.
Level one: Position – Rights
People often trust that the highest position in any corporation makes a person a leader. However, any position does not guarantee a person the opportunity to become a leader, but it gives them the right to gain this status. Consequently, position and leadership are not the equal concepts.
Level two: Permission – Relationships
In order to be efficient, leaders should receive permission from the other team members to lead effectively. In reality, any leader will not be successful and efficient, if he doesn’t obtain permission of his team. Permission depends on relationships that should be established and built when managers develop their leadership abilities.
Level three: Production – Result
One task is to become the leader and another one is to make people follow him. The last thing is very difficult to implement. Hence, very often people make the decision go after the leader because of his ability to achieve great results. It is obvious that if leaders can gain the high results, people will willingly follow them.
Level four: People development - Reproduction
Leaders should not only develop their personal skills and abilities, but help other people to grow. People, in their turn, may highly appreciate the leader’s attitude to them and follow them accepting leader’s goals and opinions.
Level five: Personhood – Respect
People follow the leaders relying not on the sense of respect but on their personal attitude to the leaders. Thus, personhood and respect are totally different concepts in the leadership framework.
In his book Maxwell underlines that leadership is not a complicated task as many people can think. Leadership is having a wish to develop and to grow personally and corporately. Leadership according to Maxwell is ability to influence others and to make them follow the leader. Great leaders assist their teams in development and have a strong impact on them.
Maxwell’s faith and thoughts come through his writing and are easy to understand. His Leadership 101 may be used by each person willing to grow and to use the writer’s advice in practice to live a better life.
References
Maxwell, J. (2002). Leadership 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know (101 Series). Nelson Incorporated, Thomas.
