“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.” — Aristotle

Now there’s a fine question to start you day with, isn’t it?  Take heart, this post just might let your inner-kid out to play and make your day more meaningful, in whatever you do.

One trap you can fall into is thinking you need a single amazing purpose to guide the rest of your life.  Another trap to fall into is thinking that there is only one way to express that purpose.

Purpose is a good thing.  It helps you make meaning and find fulfillment.  Flexibility is a good thing too.  It helps you adapt in an ever-changing world.  When you combine purpose and flexibility, you can find or create purpose as you need to, and you can express purpose in multiple ways.

Purpose is a powerful thing.  It gives meaning to your work and adds juice to your day.  If you’ve ever been “on a mission” you know what I mean.  The ability to express your purpose in multiple forms is a way to free you up and be your best in any situation.  One of the light-bulbs for me was when a friend mapped out my Golden Circle (a self-leadership tool for finding your purpose.)    Instead of lead you life with “what”, “how”, and “why”, you start with “why”, then “how”, then finally the “what”.   The ‘what” is simply a form of expression, meaning you can take your game wherever you go.  You think and act from the inside out, leading with your “why” and “how.”

Finding your purpose, making meaning, and expressing your purpose is a skill you started with as a child.

In the book, Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading , Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky share ways to find meaning and purpose in whatever you do, and express your purpose in multiple ways.

• Know that your content in life matters more than the form.  Heifetz and Linsky write, “Just as measurement will distract you from truer appreciations of life, the form of your contribution is far less important than the content.”
• Don’t get caught up in the form of expression Heifetz and Linsky write, “If the essential ingredient of meaning in life is the experience of connection and contribution, then part of the magic of life in our organizations and communities lies in the human capacity to generate many forms for its expression.  Meaning derives from finding ways, rather than any one particular way, to love, to contribute to the worldly enterprise, to enhance the quality of life for people around you.”
• Use service to others as a way to create rich and deep experiences of meaning in life.  Heifetz and Linsky write, “Fundamentally, the form doesn’t matter.  Any form of service to others is an expression, essentially, of love.  And because the opportunities for service are always present, there are few, if any reasons that anyone should lack for rich and deep experiences of meaning in life.  The most common failing, perhaps, is Lear’s failing: We get caught up in the form, and lose sight of what’s essential and true.”
• Give yourself freedom to have multiple purposes and to express a purpose in multiple forms.  Heifetz and Linsky write, “Having purposes differs from having any particular purpose.  You get meaning in life from the purposes that you join.  But after working in a particular discipline, industry, or job for twenty or thirty or forty years, you begin to be wedded to that specific purpose, that particular form.”
• Ask, “What’s worth doing today?” Heifetz and Linsky write, “Children have generative power.  They create meaning as they busily connect with whatever is happening.  But grown-ups often forget that ability.  They tend to lose that playful, adventuresome, creative generativity by which they can ask themselves: What’s worth doing today?”
• Rekindle your ability to generate new forms of expression.  Heifetz and Linsky write, “The vehicles we find for meaning obviously take some tangible form, and certainly that form matters in significant ways.  Some jobs suit your interests, personality, skills, and temperament; others do not.  The point is not to diminish the importance of finding forms and taking roles that personally gratify you, but simply to rekindle that youthful capacity to imagine a host of possibilities.  Then, when you are forced to compromise, or when you suffer a deep setback, you can recover your natural ability to generate new forms of expression. “

This post was well over due.  One of my mentors had given me the book a while back, with the ask that I help make the book more actionable and I apply the nuggets at work.  I’m still making my way through the book, and this nugget has turned out to be one of my favorite insights on finding purpose, making meaning, and staying flexible in how you express it.   It helps combine the wisdom of experience with the play of a child to play at making meaning the rest of your life, one moment or one day at a time.

Photo by Drew Coffman.

“There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.” — Winston Churchill

To predict explosive change before it occurs, you need to be able to distinguish a “spider” from a “starfish.”  A starfish can replicate and spread a fluid set of ideas, beliefs, values, and norms.  This is the hidden power behind things like Wikipedia, craigslist, Skype, and even the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Spider and starfish are metaphors for organizations.  A traditional top-down or centralized organization is like a spider, while a decentralized organization is like a starfish.  If you cut off a spider’s head it dies, but if you cut off a starfish’s leg, it grows back.  These metaphors provide an interesting lens for looking at command and control, community organizations, organizational design, and business strategy.  These metaphors also help explain why some top-down spider organizations have failed when the head of the spider was removed and why some grass-roots efforts have spread like wild-fire without a clear leader at the top. The key to creating explosive change, is creating effective starfish organizations.

In the book, The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations , Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom write about the key principles behind starfish organizations and how you can identify and distinguish a spider from a starfish.

Six Principles of Decentralization
Here are six principles of starfish according to Brafman and Beckstrom:

1. The major organs are replicated throughout each and every arm.
2. It’s easy to mistake a starfish for spiders.
3. An open system doesn’t have central intelligence; the intelligence is spread throughout the system.
4. Open systems can easily mutate.
5. The decentralized organization sneaks up on you.
6. As industries become decentralized, overall profits decrease.

Centralized (Spider) vs. Decentralized (Starfish) Organizations
Here is a summary of the key distinctions between a spider and starfish, according to Brafman and Beckstrom:

Share Values, Replicate Success
In my experience, I’ve seen several communities and groups spring up out of passion and common values.   it was the absence of centralized power and the presence of connection, values, and shared goals that spread the their success.   Because they weren’t managed top down like a business that has to make a profit, the autonomous teams thrived and drove from a fluid set of beliefs, values, and norms, and each unit had enough of the functional pieces to support the mission.

My Related Posts

• The Elephant and the Rider
• Influencer – The Power to Change Anything
• The Politically Competent Leader, The Political Analyst, and the Consensus Builder

Photo by ciel.o.

“Peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable.” – John Wooden

John Wooden was a living legend.  He was also one of the most successful basketball coaches of all time and he lived a simple life focusing on personal excellence, personal integrity, love, and balance.

When I first heard John Wooden during an interview, what struck me was the simple rules he lived by that helped him make meaning and find happiness.   It was the first time I heard somebody say that success is “peace of mind.”  His way to achieve it was simple too  – give your best where you can.

What I liked most about his approach is his pattern of focusing on what you control, and realizing that the rest is a by-product that may or may not go your way.   For example, you can play your best game, but still lose.  You can build your character, but your reputation may not match.  You can make your best plays, but that doesn’t mean the score will show it.  Rather than chase or focus on the by-products, focus on the “getting there” and playing your best game, from the inside out.

If you want to start with the personal side of Wooden, I recommend watching John Wooden’s Love Letter (4:35).

25 Lessons Learned from John Wooden
Here is my collection of lessons learned from John Wooden:

1. A doer makes mistakes.  If you’re not doing, you’re not learning.   Everybody makes mistakes.  It’s what you do with them that counts.
2. Academics are enduring.  Getting an education is a #1 priority.  Wooden made it a point to his players that they were first and foremost a student (the student part of “student athlete”).  Wooden said, “If you let social activity take precedence over the other two (education and sports), then you’re not going to have any for very long.”   Wooden also said, “Sports are kind of like passion and that’s temporary in many cases, but academics — that’s like true love and that’s enduring.”
3. Agree to disagree, but don’t be disagreeable.  According to Wooden, “We can agree to disagree, but we don’t need to be disagreeable.”
4. Be on time, no profanity, and don’t criticize.  Wooden learned this from his Dad.  He had three rules for the students he coached: 1) never be late (start on time and close on time), 2) not one word of profanity, and 3) never criticize a teammate.
5. It’s not whether you won or lost, it’s if you played your best game.   If you won, but didn’t play your best, then you didn’t really win.  If you lost, but you played your best, then you didn’t really lose.  Wooden said, “Never mention winning.  My idea is that you can lose when you outscore somebody in a game, and you can win when you’re outscored.”
6. Coach for life, not just the game.   Wooden promoted the idea of a “teacher coach.”  Wooden said that as a coach, you “teach” sports.  However, according to Wooden, a coach has to be more concerned about the overall learning, than just the sport or just winning the game.  Wooden said, “It can be done in a way that’s also helping them develop in other ways that will be meaningful forever.”  It’s about building habits and practices that support students for life.   Wooden credits the fact he was a teacher before he became a coach, helped him organize his time better and learn that he has to work with each individual a little differently.
7. Don’t let your limits limit you.   Don’t let limits get in the way.  Wooden — “Don’t let what you cannot do, interfere with what you can do.”
8. Don’t whine, don’t complain, and don’t make excuses.  This is another trio of rules Wooden learned from his Dad — “Don’t whine, don’t complain, and don’t make excuses — you get out there and whatever you’re doing do it to the best of your ability.  No one can do more than that.”
9. Everybody is unique.  As a teacher, Wooden learned early on the importance of paying attention to each individual.  He learned that he had to work with each individual a little differently, and that no two are identical.  They can be alike in many respects, but they aren’t identical.  He learned that each student or player would have different strengths and weaknesses and that he would have to vary his approach to help them unleash their best.
10. Failure is not fatal.  Keep going.  Don’t let setbacks stop you.  Carry your lessons forward, and change your approach.  Wooden said, “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”
11. Focus on character over reputation.  Your reputation may vary.  It’s your character that counts and it’s what you can control.  Wooden said, “If you make the effort to do the best of which you’re capable, trying to improve the situation that exists for you, I think that’s success and I don’t think others can judge that, and I think that’s like character and reputation.  Your reputation is what you are perceived to be, and your character is what you actually are, and I think the character is much more important than what you are perceived to be.”
12. It’s the company you keep.   Wooden enjoyed being a teacher and a coach because he felt he was in great company and he was shaping the future.  Wooden would say, “those under your supervision are the future.”  According to Wooden, “A coach is like the teacher who once was asked why she taught; they asked me why I teach and I replied, where could I find such splendid company …”  They aren’t just students or players, they are future doctors, etc.
13. It’s the journey.  It’s the getting there that’s fun.  Wooden said, “Cervantes said, ‘The journey is better than the end.’ And I like that. I think that is — it’s getting there. Sometimes when you get there, there’s almost a letdown, but it’s the getting there that’s fun.”  Wooden would say, ““I liked our practices to be the journey, and the game would be the end … the end result.”
14. Journal for reflection and growth.   According to Wooden, he journaled for all his players, and this is a difference that made the difference.   The journal is how he could focus on little distinctions and really fine tune the practices and drills to be more specific and relevant for each player.  It’s how he personalized the practices.  It’s this personalization and paying attention to strengths and weaknesses that really helped him bring out the best in each player.
15. It’s courage that counts.  Courage is what keeps you going.  Wooden said, “Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
16. Keep your emotions in check.   Wooden was strict about keeping his players’ emotions in check.  He didn’t want anybody to be able to tell whether his team had won or lost, just by looking at them.  He didn’t want his team to get overly emotional about their wins, or overly emotional about their losses.  Instead, he wanted a focus on whether they played their best and that only each person would know whether they really gave their best for the situation.
17. Make each day your masterpiece.  Wooden made the most of each day, by design.  Wooden – “Make everyday your masterpiece.”
18. Make the effort to be the best you can on a regular basis.  According to Wooden, “If you make your effort to do the best you can regularly, the results will be about what they should be, not necessarily what you’d want them to be, but they’ll be about what they should, and only you will know whether you could do that … and that’s what I wanted from them more than anything else.”
19. Never try to be better than someone else.  This is another lesson Wooden learned from his Dad – “You should never try to be better than someone else.  Always learn from others and never cease trying to be the best you can be.  That’s under your control.  If you get too engrossed and involved and concerned in regard to things over which you have no control, it will adversely affect the things over which you have control.”
20. Patience is a part of progress.   Success comes slowly.  Expect change to happen slowly and to have patience along the way.  Wooden said, “Whatever you’re doing, you must have patience” and “there is no progress without change, so you must have patience.”
21. The score is a by-product.  The score is hopefully a by-product of doing the right things.  Don’t focus on the score, focus on what you’re doing and give your best.  Wooden said, “I wanted the score of a game to be a by-product of these other things, and not the end itself.”
22. The best player is the one who gets closest to reaching their full potential.  According to Wooden, whoever gets the closest to reaching their full potential is the best player.
23. Success is “peace of mind.” Wooden had a simple measure of success – peace of mind.  According to Wooden, “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
24. Lead by example.  Wooden said that way back, during his early years of teaching, a specific saying made a great impression on him – “No written word, no spoken plea, can teach our youth what they should be, nor all the books on all the shelves, it’s what the teachers are themselves.”
25. You’re part of a team.    Wooden truly believed that the sum of the whole is more than the parts.  Wooden would say, “A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player.”

Success Defined
Some people define success in a way that’s perpetually beyond reach.  Wooden defined success in a way that’s within your grasp:

Peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable.

Pyramid of Success
John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success consists of a set of philosophical building blocks for winning at basketball and winning at life.

The building blocks of the pyramid are as follows:

• COMPETITIVE GREATNESS
• POISE, CONFIDENCE
• CONDITION, SKILL, TEAM SPIRIT
• SELF-CONTROL, ALERTNESS, INITIATIVE, INTENTNESS
• INDUSTRIOUSNESS, FRIENDSHIP, LOYALTY, COOPERATION, ENTHUSIASM

12 Lessons in Leadership
Here are John Wooden’s 12 lessons in leadership:

• Lesson #1: Good Values Attract Good People
• Lesson #2: Love Is The Most Powerful Four-Letter Word
• Lesson #3: Call Yourself A Teacher
• Lesson #4: Emotion Is Your Enemy
• Lesson #5: It Takes 10 Hands To Make A Basket
• Lesson #6: Little Things Make Big Things Happen
• Lesson #7: Make Each Day Your Masterpiece
• Lesson #8: The Carrot Is Mightier Than A Stick
• Lesson #9: Make Greatness Attainable By All
• Lesson #10: Seek Significant Change
• Lesson #11: Don’t Look At The Scoreboard
• Lesson #12: Adversity Is Your Asset

For more information on Wooden’s 12 lessons in leadership, see his book, Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization.

Top 3 Quotes
Here are my top three John Wooden quotes:

1. “Make everyday your masterpiece.”
2. “Be quick but don’t hurry.”
3. “The most important word in our language is love.  The second is balance — keeping things in perspective.”

More Quotes by John Wooden
Here are additional quotes by John Wooden organized by A-Z:

1. “A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.“
2. “A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player.”
3. “Ability is a poor man’s wealth.”
4. “Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.”
5. “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
6. “Be prepared and be honest.”
7. “Be quick but don’t hurry.”
8. “Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.”
9. “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
10. “Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.”
11. “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”
12. “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”
13. “Flexibility is the key to stability.”
14. “I liked our practices to be the journey, and the game would be the end … the end result.”
15. “I’d rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.”
16. “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
17. “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.”
18. “It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.”
19. “It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.”
20. “It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”
21. “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
22. “Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters.”
23. “Never mistake activity for achievement.”
24. “Our tendency is to hope that things will turn out the way we want them to, so much of the time, but we don’t do the things that are necessary to make those things become reality.”
25. “Sports are kind of like passion and that’s temporary in many cases, but academics — that’s like true love and that’s enduring.”
26. “Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
27. “Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
28. “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”
29. “Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”
30. “The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.”
31. “The most important word in our language is love.  The second is balance — keeping things in perspective.”
32. “The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.”
33. “There are many things that are essential to arriving at true peace of mind, and one of the most important is faith, which cannot be acquired without prayer.”
34. “There is no progress without change, so you must have patience.”
35. “Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.”
36. “What you are as a person is far more important that what you are as a basketball player.”
37. “Whatever you’re doing, you must have patience.”
38. “Winning takes talent, to repeat takes character.”
39. “You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.”
40. “You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.“

Catalog of John Wooden’s Resources
Wooden has a large collection of books and videos to draw from.  For simple scanning, I organized Wooden’s collection of resources into the following buckets: Sites, Books, and Videos..

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“Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde

A few years back I went on a tour around Microsoft, asking various executives a brief set of questions.  I wanted to know what what their day is like, what drives them, and what holds them back.  I wanted to know what do they know now that they wish they knew back then, when they first started.  Mostly I wanted the benefit of their hind-sight and school of hard-knocks.

My Question List …

Here are the questions I asked:

• What’s your story? (why Microsoft and what was your path)
• How do you manage your day?
• What’s the favorite part of your day?
• What are the keys to making things happen?
• How do you influence change across an organization?
• Why and when does change fail?
• What’s your take on thought leaders vs. people leaders?
• What is success?
• What are your key guiding principles?
• How do you build relationships that support you?
• How do you leverage your relationships?
• What limits what you can accomplish?
• What’s the secret to life?
• If you had a genie that could grant three wishes, what would they be?

These questions revealed a lot about just how human everybody is.  If you ever forget just how human we all are, just ask somebody for their life story.

What Did I Learn that I Didn’t Expect?

I found various success patterns show up time and again.  I also found the same kinds of problems show up time and again.  (I’ve addressed some of these problems in my latest book, Getting Results the Agile Way.)

What surprised me the most though, was finding out what the biggest limitation is for the people who seem to have all the money and all the power?  So, what exactly what THE single biggest bottleneck that money and power could not buy? …

… Access to the right people and access to the best ideas.

Photo by Darcy McCarty.

“The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.” –  John Mason Brown

Holding people accountable is a skill you can learn.   In a world where you get results through teams and teamwork, enforcing accountability plays a key role to success.  Even if you’re just holding yourself accountable to some results you want in your life, it helps to know the ways to enforce accountability and why there can be a lack of accountability.  A lot of it comes down to clarifying the outcome, setting expectations, and then addressing motivation, skills, and feedback.

In the book, Project Management For Dummies (For Dummies (Business & Personal Finance)) , Stanley E. Portny shares 10 ways to hold people accountable:

1. Involve people who really have authority
2. Be specific regarding end results, time frames, and expected levels of effort
3. Get a commitment!
4. Put it in writing
5. Emphasize the urgency and importance of the assignment
6. Tell others about the person’s commitment
7. Agree on a plan for monitoring the person’s work
8. Monitor the person’s work
9. Always acknowledge good performance
10. Act as if you have the authority

In my experience, that’s a pretty good list with great coverage.   To really appreciate these, you should also know why people fail to deliver based on what you expect:

• You had unrealistic expectations.
• They never really agreed to it.
• They didn’t know when it was due.
• They didn’t internalize the priority of it.
• They didn’t know what good looks like – there weren’t any tests for success.
• They have bad productivity practices and they simply lost track or got overwhelmed.

I find a healthy way to stay accountable is to check yourself against the following questions: “Who does what by when?”, “What are the tests for success?”, and “How will we follow up?”  I’m also a fan of having a shared plan in plain site so everybody can easily see what’s due when and who’s doing it.

What are the ways you hold yourself or others accountable when it counts?

My Related Posts

• Building Trust on Your Teams
• Objectives are Like Flight Plans
• How To Use a Coach Effectively

Photo by Alaskan Dude.

“Success is not a destination thing, it’s a daily thing.” – John Maxwell

When I think of leaders and leadership, I think of John Maxwell.  He is a speaker and author, and leadership is his super skill.  He leads by example but more importantly, he’s created an amazing knowledge base of leadership patterns and practices through his books and speaking engagements.

He takes up multiple shelves at the bookstore.  In fact, he’s written more than 50 books.   The beauty of his books is that he talks with you, not at at you, while at the same time challenging you to become a better version of yourself.   His books equip you with a wide range of ideas and language to help you frame out and master key areas of your life including your attitude, relationships, leadership skills, and success.  Along the way, he shares stories to bring the ideas to life and to share how he learned these lessons from the school of hard knocks and from multiple mentors.

From failing forward, to going on your success journey, to building a positive attitude, to winning with people, Maxwell covers a variety of  personal development and leadership skills that you can use in work and life.

I hope you enjoy these lessons as much as I’ve enjoyed putting them together …

25 Lessons Learned from John Maxwell
Here are 25 key lessons that capture and distill what I think are some of the most important insights from John Maxwell:

1. Leadership is influence.   Maxwell defines leadership as influence.  It’s simple, effective, and precise.  In The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Maxwell says, “True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned.  It comes only from influence, and that can’t be mandated.  It must be earned.  The only thing a title can buy is a little time – either to increase your level of influence with others or to erase it.”
2. Leadership isn’t a position, it’s a process.   Leadership starts right where you are, from the inside out.  Maxwell says,  “Most people who want to get ahead do it backward. They think, ‘I’ll get a bigger job, then I’ll learn how to be a leader.’ But showing leadership skill is how you get the bigger job in the first place. Leadership isn’t a position, it’s a process.”
3. Just do it.  Forget motivation and just do it.  Maxwell says, “The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation.   Just do it. Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation. And then, guess what?  After you start doing the thing, that’s when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it.”
4. Your attitude towards life is still under construction.  According to Maxwell, your attitude towards life is constantly being shaped by the following factors:  personality (who are you), environment (what’s around you), word expression (what you hear), adult acceptance/affirmation (what you feel), self-image(how you see yourself), exposure to new experiences, association with peers (who influences you), physical appearance (how you look to others), and marriage, family, and job (your security and status.)  Maxwell believes that your environment shapes you more than your personality or other inherited traits, and that your outward actions are a direct reflection of your self-image (we tend to act consistently with how we see ourselves.)  In Attitude 101, Maxwell says, “Whether you are eleven, forty-two, or sixty-five, your attitude toward life is still under construction.  It’s never too late for a person to change his attitude.”
5. Use principles to guide you.   Drive from durable principles instead of a bunch of rules and policies.  According to Maxwell, “policies are many, principles are few, policies will change, principles never do.”
6. Leadership is a collection of skills.  Leadership is something you can learn and improve at.  Maxwell says, “Although it is true that some people are born with greater natural gifts than others, the ability to lead is really a collection of skills, nearly all of which can be learned and improved.”
7. Build trust through competence, connection, and character.  You won’t follow somebody you don’t trust.  As a leader, you have to build trust.  Maxwell says, “There are three qualities a leader must exemplify to build trust: competence, connection, and character.”
8. Success is a journey, not a destination.   Don’t think of success as a place.  Think of it as a path.   Success is a journey you can enjoy a day at a time.  Take the right people with you on your success journey.   In Your Road Map for Success, Maxwell identifies 10 things to look for when figuring out who to invest in or who to bring with you: 1) make things happen, 2) see and seize opportunities, 3) influence others, 4) add value, 5) attract other leaders, 6) equip others, 7) provide inspiring ideas, 8.) possess uncommonly positive attitudes, 9) live up to their commitments, and 10) have loyalty.
9. Success is a daily thing.  You can be successful one day or one decision at a time.   Maxwell says, “If you can handle today correctly, tomorrow will take care of itself.”
10. Success is a decision at a time.   Maxwell says, “You don’t become a success when you get your diploma.  You became a success when you decided to go to college.  When you get your diploma you get the rewards of success.”
11. 7 Steps for success.  In Success One Day at a Time, Maxwell shares 7 steps for success:  1) make a commitment to grow daily, 2) value the process more than events, 3) don’t wait for inspiration, 4) be willing to sacrifice pleasure for opportunity, 5) dream big, 6) plan your priorities, and 7) give up to go up.
12. Look for the landmarks of success.  The highest levels of success require a series of significant trade-offs.   Maxwell identifies the following trade-offs that serve as landmarks: 1) achievement over affirmation, 2) excellence over acceptability, 3) personal growth over immediate pleasure, 4) future potential over financial gain, 5) a narrow focus over scattered interests, and significant over security.
13. Leadership is a visual thing.  The greatest leadership is by example.  Maxwell says, “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”
14. Everybody needs encouragement.  No matter who you are, you still need encouragement.  Maxwell says, “Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up.”
15. Don’t take yourself too seriously.  In Your Roadmap for Success, Maxwell says we need to be able to laugh at ourselves, “… success depends more on your attitude than it does on how important you think you are.  Life should be fun.  Even if your job is important and should be taken seriously, that doesn’t mean you should take yourself seriously.  You’ll go farther in life and have a better time doing it if you maintain a sense of humor, especially when it comes to yourself.”
16. Use failure as a springboard.  Unsuccessful people avoid taking any risks to try and avoid failure.  Successful people turn failure into feedback.  They don’t dwell on mistakes or the negative consequences of failures.  Instead, they focus on the rewards of success and on learning from their mistakes.  In Your Road Map for Success, Maxwell shares 10 ways to fail forward effectively: 1) appreciate the value of failure, 2) don’t take failure personally, 3) let failure redirect you, 4) keep a sense of humor, 5) ask why, not who, 6.) make failure a learning experience, 7) don’t let failure keep you down, 8.) use failure as a gauge for growth, 9) see the big picture, 10) don’t give up.
17. Win with people.   Growing people is the key to growing your success.  Maxwell says, “The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership” and “true success comes only when every generation continues to develop the next generation.”  In 360 Degree Leader, Maxwell says, “Great leaders don’t use people so they can win.  They lead people so they can all lead together.  If that is truly your motivation, you can become the kind of person that people want to follow – whether they are beside, above, or below you in the organizational hierarchy.”  Maxwell makes people development a priority.  To avoid spreading himself too thin, he focuses 80 percent of his time developing only the top 20 percent of the people around him.  Maxwell says, “your time is limited, and it makes more sense to help a few learn how to fly and reach their potential rather than show a big group only enough to whet their appetite.”
18. Let people fly with you for a while.  In Maxwell’s experience, the most effective way to mentor and ramp people up is the same way craftspeople have done for years: 1) do it, 2) I do it — and you watch, 3) you do it – and I watch, 4) you do it.
19. 10 principles for personal growth.  In Your Road Map for Success, Maxwell shares 10 principles for improving your personal growth: 1) choose a life of growth, 2) start growing today, 3) be teachable, 4) focus on self-development, not self-fulfillment, 5) never stay satisfied with current accomplishments, 6) be a continual learner, 7) concentrate on a few major themes, 8.) develop a plan for growth, 9) pay the price, 10) find a way to apply what you learn.
20. Don’t make happiness your measure of success.  Happiness is fleeting while success is a stable path.  In Your Road Map for Success, Maxwell writes, “The continual search for happiness is a primary reason that so many people are miserable.  If you make happiness your goal, you are almost certainly destined to fail.  You will be on a continual roller coaster, changing from successful to unsuccessful with every mood change.  Life is uncertain, and emotions aren’t stable.  Happiness simply cannot be relied upon as a measure of success.”
21. Achievement over affirmation.   Focus on achievement rather than worry about fitting in.  Maxwell says, “Affirmation from others is fickle and fleeting.  If you want to make an impact during your lifetime, you have to trade the praise you could receive from others for the things of value that you can accomplish.  You can’t be ‘one of the boys’ and follow your destiny at the same time.”
22. 4 kinds of people when it comes to relationships.  In Success 101, Maxwell says there are 4 kinds of people when it comes to relationships: 1) some people add something to life (we enjoy them), 2) some people subtract something from life (we tolerate them), 3) some people multiply something in life (we value them), 4) some people divide something in life (we avoid them.)
23. Lead yourself exceptionally well.  Leadership starts from the inside out.  Lead yourself first.  In Success 101, Maxwell identifies 7 areas that successful people must self-manage: 1) you emotions, 2) your time, 3) your priorities, 4) your energy, 5) your thinking, 6) your words, and 7) your personal life.
24. Treat people like a “10.” Who gets your better effort? … a leader who treats you as a “2” or a leader who treats you as a “10”?  Maxwell says that in his experience, people usually rise to the leader’s expectations – if they like the leader.   Treat people like a 10 if you want their best.  Maxwell says one way to do this is to focus on a skill or strength that somebody has that is a “10.”  If you can’t find a “10” in terms of skill, then rather than write somebody off, look to a non-skill area where the person can grow into a “10”, independent of skill, such as attitude, desire, discipline, and perseverance.
25. Focus on production over politics.   In the 360 Degree Leader, Maxwell says there are two ways to get ahead: production and politics.  Maxwell says avoid office politics and instead focus on production.  Maxwell says that people who rely on production: depend on how they grow, focus on what they do, become better than they appear, provide substance, do what’s necessary, work to control their own destiny, grow into the next level, base decisions on principles.  On the other hand, people who rely on politics: depend on who they know, focus on what they say, appear better than they are, take shortcuts, do what’s popular, let others control their destiny, hope to be given the next level, base decisions on opinions.  Maxwell shares 6 ways to avoid politics: 1) avoid gossip, 2) stay away from petty arguments, 3) stand up for what’s right, not just for what’s popular, 4) look at all sides of the issue, 5) don’t protect your turf, and 6) say what you mean, and mean what you say.

Success Defined
Maxwell defines success in a very simple, but elegant way that’s empowering:

“Success is … knowing your purpose in life, growing to reach your maximum potential, and sowing seeds that benefit others.”

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
One of Maxwell’s greatest contributions to the leadership body of knowledge is the identification of 21 laws of leadership:

1. THE LAW OF THE LID — Leadership Ability Determines a Person’s Level of Effectiveness.
2. THE LAW OF INFLUENCE — The True Measure of Leadership is Influence — Nothing More, Nothing Less.
3. THE LAW OF PROCESS — Leadership Develops Daily, Not in a Day.
4. THE LAW OF NAVIGATION — Anyone Can Steer the Ship, But It Takes a Leader to Chart the Course..
5. THE LAW OF ADDITION — Leaders Add Value by Serving Others.
6. THE LAW OF SOLID GROUND — Truth is the Foundation of Leadership.
7. THE LAW OF RESPECT — People Naturally Follow Leaders Stronger Than Themselves.
8. THE LAW OF INTUITION — Leaders Evaluate Everything with a Leadership Bias.
9. THE LAW OF MAGNETISM – Who You Are is Who You Attract.
10. THE LAW OF CONNECTION. – Leaders Touch a Heart Before They Ask for a Hand.
11. THE LAW OF THE INNER CIRCLE – A Leader’s Potential is Determined by Those Closest to Him.
12. THE LAW OF EMPOWERMENT – Only Secure Leaders Give Power to Others.
13. THE LAW OF THE PICTURE – People Do What People See.
14. THE LAW OF BUY-IN – People Buy into the Leader, Then the Vision.
15. THE LAW OF VICTORY – Leaders Find a Way for the Team to Win.
16. THE LAW OF THE BIG MO – Momentum is a Leader’s Best Friend.
17. THE LAW OF PRIORITIES – Leaders Understand that Activity is Not Necessarily Accomplishment.
18. THE LAW OF SACRIFICE – A Leader Must Give Up to Go Up.
19. THE LAW OF TIMING – When to Lead is As Important as What to Do and Where to Go.
20. THE LAW OF EXPLOSIVE GROWTH – To Add Growth, Lead Followers – To Multiply, Lead Leaders.
21. THE LAW OF LEGACY – A Leader’s Lasting Value is Measured by Succession.

If you’re familiar with the original 21 laws, you’ll note the following changes:

• Law 5 – THE LAW OF E.F. HUTTON -> THE LAW OF ADDITION.
• Law 13 – THE LAW OF REPRODUCTION  -> THE LAW OF THE PICTURE
• Law 16 – THE LAW OF MOMENTUM -> THE LAW OF THE BIG MO

You can explore the 21 laws in depth in Maxwell’s book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You .

The 21 Indispensible Qualities of a Leader
Maxwell identified 21 qualities of a leader:

1. CHARACTER: Be a Piece of the Rock
2. CHARISMA: The First Impression Can Seal the Deal.
3. COMMITMENT: It Separates Doers from Dreamers.
4. COMMUNICATION: Without It You Travel Alone.
5. COMPETENCE: If You Build It, They Will Come.
6. COURAGE: One Person with Courage Is a Majority.
7. DISCERNMENT: Put an End to Unsolved Mysteries.
8. FOCUS: The Sharper It Is, the Sharper You Are.
9. GENEROSITY: Your Candle Loses Nothing When It Lights Another.
10. INITIATIVE: You Won’t Leave Home Without It.
11. LISTENING: To Connect with Their Hearts, Use Your Ears.
12. PASSION: Take This Life and Love It.
13. POSITIVE ATTITUDE: If You Believe You Can, You Can.
14. PROBLEM SOLVING: You Can’t Let Your Problems Be a Problem.
15. RELATIONSHIPS: If You Get Along, They’ll Go Along.
16. RESPONSIBILITY: If You Won’t Carry the Ball, You Can’t Lead the Team.
17. SECURITY: Competence Never Compensates for Insecurity.
18. SELF-DISCIPLINE: The First Person You Lead Is You.
19. SERVANTHOOD: To Get Ahead, Put Others First.
20. TEACHABILITY: To Keep Leading, Keep Learning.
21. VISION: You Can Seize Only What You Can.

You can explore the 21 qualities in depth in Maxwell’s book, The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader : Becoming the Person Others Will Want to Follow .

Top 10 Quotes
Here are my top 10 favorite quotes by John Maxwell:

1. “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.”
2. “Do not take the agenda that someone else has mapped out for your life.”
3. “Growth inside fuels growth outside. “
4. “Learn to say ‘no’ to the good so you can say ‘yes’ to the best.”
5. “Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.”
6. “People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
7. “The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.”
8. “We all stand on the shoulders of the past generation.”
9. “We cannot lead anyone farther than we have been ourselves.”
10. “You must manage your thought life daily and then you can manage your life.”

More Quotes by John Maxwell
I’ve included some of my favorite John Maxwell quotes below.  For simple scanning, I’ve organized them using the following categories: Choice and decisions, Communication, Daily Impact, Growth, Leaders and Leadership.

Books
John Maxwell has so many books that I organized them into categories.   I organized them by the following categories: 101 Series, Power Series, Workbooks, Attitude, Leadership, Relationships, and Success.

Catalog of John Maxwell’s Resources
Maxwell has a wide range of resources, from blog posts to videos.  For simple scanning, I organized Maxwell’s collection of resources into the following buckets: Key Links, Videos, and Popular Posts.

My Related Posts

• Lessons Learned from Seth Godin
• Lessons Learned from Tony Robbins
• Lessons Learned from Guy Kawasaki

“Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.” — Tao Te Ching

Not all power is created equal.   If you know the six sources of social power, then you can influence yourself and others more effectively.

Information is the most transient form of social power.   Give away a piece of information and you give your power away.   On the other hand, knowledge and know-how is more enduring than informational power, but it’s limited to the area of expertise.  As you’ll soon see, a little know how goes a long way, in more ways than one.

In the book, Social Psychology: Theories, Research, and Applications,  Robert S. Feldman writes about the six bases of social power.

Six Types of Social Power
Feldman writes that according to French and Raven (1959), and later Raven (1974), there are six bases of social power:

1. Reward Power
2. Coercive Power
3. Referent Power
4. Legitimate Power
5. Expert Power
6. Informational Power

Here is a brief summary of each type of power:

Reward Power.  Reward Power is the ability to give rewards when others comply with your wishes.  This may not work from one setting to the next.  For example, an employee might laugh at a boss’s joke, but the boss’s neighbor might not.

Coercive Power.  Coercive Power is the opposite of Reward Power.  It’s the ability to deliver punishments.  While coercion can be effective in the short-term, it creates resentment and individuals will try to end the relationship.

Referent Power.  This is where role models come into play.  Referent Power is when somebody wants to be like you.  They identify with you.  You are their reference model.  They find you attractive in some way and they model your behavior or thinking.  Groups can also be a reference model and provide standards and norms of behavior, for example, social or peer pressure.  It’s also possible to have negative reference groups.  In this case, you want to avoid being like the group, and you modify your behavior to feel less similar to the group.

Legitimate Power.  Legitimate Power is power that comes from a position or role.  It’s positional authority.  For example, you “should” or “ought” to listen to your parents, or your boss.  The unique aspect of legitimate power is that it’s not about rational arguments — the power comes from the position or role.  Also, the role can be more important than the individual.  For example, presidents my come and go, but the role is always a powerful one.

Expert Power.  “Knowledge is power.”  Expert Power is where expertise or knowledge is the source of power. This is where credentials, awards, and know-how play a role.  You end up deferring to greater knowledge for the area of expertise, such as a doctor or mechanic.  It’s limited to the area of expertise.  For example, you won’t ask your doctor for advice on your car, just because they are a skilled physician.

Informational Power.  Informational Power is the most transitory type of power.  Once you give your information away, you give your power away.   For example, you share the secret, your power is gone.  It’s different from other forms of power because it’s grounded in what you know about the content of a specific situation.  Other forms of power are independent of the content.

My take is that Coercive Power is not sustainable and it burns bridges, Legitimate Power comes and goes with the position, and Informational Power is very fleeting.  I don’t depend on information as a source of power, so I’m always quick to give it away.

Instead, building expertise and rewarding people are firm and worthy ways to improve your influence, and the beauty is rewards can be as simple as acknowledgement or appreciation.

The next time you find yourself following the crowd or following a leader, check yourself and ask what their power is coming from.  If you find yourself in a leadership position, practice self-awareness and know what you draw your power and influence from.  The next time you find yourself holding onto information because you think it gives you power, recognize that this is a fragile base.

Photo by travisd666.

“What do I say when it’s all over … And sorry seems to be the hardest word.” — Elton John

Mistakes happen.  People fall down.  What’s important is how you get back up.  This is really geared towards leaders and pro-active repair, but I think the frame below is useful in many everyday situations.  It’s powerful because you’re owning your mistake, you’re acknowledging it, and you’re finding a way forward.  What you resist persists, and dwelling doesn’t help.

In the book, Power Thinking: How the Way You Think Can Change the Way You Lead , John N. Mangieri, Ph.D., and Cathy Collins Block, Ph. D., write about proactively repairing when things go wrong, as a more effective way to think and act.

4 Steps to Practice Repair
Mangieri and Block share the following steps for proactive repair:

1. Find out what went wrong.
2. Apologize for negative outcomes that your decision or behavior caused.
3. Explain why you made the decision (or took the initial, ineffective action.)
4. State what you want to achieve in the future with a new decision or action.

I think an important addition is empathic listening — listen until the other person feels heard, and don’t get defensive.

When do you use these steps? According to Mangieri and Block, “as soon as a leader’s self-respect diminishes, indicating that a decision or behavior just enacted was not effective or proper.”

Mangieri and Block say that it’s about acknowledging what went wrong, and co-creating the future:

Repair occurs whenever it is necessary to enact a thoughtful action to remedy the damage or ill will that a past decision or action created.  Repair begins by acknowledging the negative consequence your actions caused (by saying, for example, “I am aware that my decision angered and frustrated many of you”).  Then you state that you want to avoid such detrimental effects in the future.  Openly ask for others to offer suggestions that can ensure that such decisions or action will not occur again, and state an action that you are going to take to ensure that it does not.

From what I’ve seen, even if you fumble with the words, if it’s from the heart, that’s what matters.

In the end, the most important thing is — it’s got to come from the right place.

Photo by Leonid Mamchenkov.

There are more books coming out every year than I can read in a lifetime.  One of the ways I filter for great books is, I ask the most effective people I know, which books had a significant impact on how they think, feel, or act.  I like to find the books that really made a difference, not just in theory, but in practice.

Recently, I reached out to several Microsoft leaders, past and present, and up and down the ranks.  The beauty of Microsoft is the extremely high concentration of smart people and  I like to leverage the collective brain.  In this case, I posed a simple question to find out which business books actually made a difference:

“What are the top 3 books that changed your life in terms of business effectiveness?”

I ended up with a really eclectic set ranging from parenting guides to changing the world.  The top 3 business books that showed up multiple times were: Blue Ocean, Good to Great, and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.  This actually didn’t surprise me.  I’ve been using Blue Ocean at work on a regular basis and Good to Great was a core part of the culture of the Microsoft patterns & practices team (the team I’m on.)

Here are 36 best business books that influenced the Microsoft leaders that I reached out to:

1. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
2. Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value (J-B Warren Bennis Series)
3. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
4. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
5. Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
6. Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time
7. First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently
8. Fortune’s Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street
9. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.)
10. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
11. How To Win Friends and Influence People
12. Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance (Essential Knowledge Resource)
13. Jack: Straight from the Gut
14. Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading
15. Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box
16. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
17. Memoirs of Hadrian
18. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
19. Pasteurs Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation
20. Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too
21. The Soul Of A New Machine
22. Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle
23. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
24. The One Minute Manager
25. The Art of Happiness, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Handbook for Living
26. The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm
27. The Art of Leadership
28. The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
29. Art of War
30. The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered
31. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (J-B Lencioni Series)
32. The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business (Collins Business Essentials)
33. Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization
34. Unleashing the Idea Virus (Hardcover w/Dust Jacket)
35. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
36. Winning with People: Discover the People Principles that Work for You Every Time

One of the most helpful frames we’ve found at work for focusing meetings or presentations is:

1. Know – What do you want them to know?
2. Believe – What do you want them to believe?
3. Do – What do you want them to do?

For example, when our patterns & practices team at Microsoft would prepare to give a business review, the team building the slides would brainstorm on the 3 questions above.

I’m a fan of question-driven approaches, and the technique above has proven very effective for focusing a room of passionate people.  Really, you can think of it as creating “shared goals”, just with more precision and focus.  The goal of course, in our case, was “tell an effective story” about what our group does and why execs or business leaders should care.

Personally, I found the simple frame to work for just about any meeting where I need to “sell” an idea or get folks on board.

Photo by Reinante El Pintor de Fuego.