161: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell

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1. 00:00:00 So, if you remember, I said I did not like reading the last book that we covered for
2. 00:00:07 Bookworm.
3. 00:00:08 48 Laws of Power?
4. 00:00:09 Yeah, but I'm sad to report, Joe, that I did have a chance to put it into practice.
5. 00:00:16 All right, and?
6. 00:00:18 It was helpful.
7. 00:00:20 I hate to admit it.
8. 00:00:22 It was helpful.
9. 00:00:23 All right, so I've had at least three conversations about this book since we finished the recording
10. 00:00:33 and release of that episode.
11. 00:00:36 And in every case, the person I was talking to made the comment that I don't think he
12. 00:00:42 actually recommends you do all these things.
13. 00:00:45 Yeah.
14. 00:00:46 No, I am locked in on that is not his intent at all.
15. 00:00:50 But it's just how the world works and whether you like it or not, this is what you got to
16. 00:00:54 deal with.
17. 00:00:56 And once you come to grips with that and you start to think through those laws, like,
18. 00:01:04 "Yep, this happens here and this happens here and here's how I can respond to that one
19. 00:01:11 and, "Oh, yeah, I get what they're doing now.
20. 00:01:14 Okay, yep, yep, yep.
21. 00:01:15 All right, I get it.
22. 00:01:16 I can play that game."
23. 00:01:17 So, the stuff starts to pop up all over the place.
24. 00:01:21 Yep.
25. 00:01:22 So with the day job, we have had an office that we were paying for when it used to be
26. 00:01:30 a local company.
27. 00:01:32 Now it's a distributed team and almost everybody works remote.
28. 00:01:36 So we were trying to get out of a lease and we not only brought in a new tenant, but basically
29. 00:01:46 did everything.
30. 00:01:47 However, the guy who owns the building was not being super cooperative.
31. 00:01:53 So we had to employ some of the laws of power, specifically the one about doing what's unexpected
32. 00:02:05 because the person who was negotiating the lease, I had just kind of talked to them.
33. 00:02:09 We just covered this book for Bookworm and typically they want to get everything in writing
34. 00:02:14 and they want it resolved real quickly.
35. 00:02:19 The owner was the one typically who was dragging his feet and being slow to respond and then
36. 00:02:24 all of a sudden he comes back and he's like, "Okay, so here's the deal.
37. 00:02:27 Now get out right away."
38. 00:02:28 And I was like, "Don't respond right away."
39. 00:02:32 We were shut down for the week between Christmas and New Year's anyways.
40. 00:02:37 So I was like, "Yeah, just don't even reply."
41. 00:02:39 Like, "Yeah, we're supposed to be out by January 1st, but he's the one that we're in this
42. 00:02:43 bind.
43. 00:02:44 He knows that you've already told him like you're off this week, so let's just see what happens."
44. 00:02:51 And it ended fine.
45. 00:02:54 We are out and we're saving a bunch of money.
46. 00:02:58 So that was a good resolution, but I was a little bit annoyed how practical this book
47. 00:03:07 became right after we read it.
48. 00:03:10 Yeah, this is not a book I feel like I want to follow the rules on, but when put in situations
49. 00:03:18 I don't want to be in, guess what?
50. 00:03:20 Yep, exactly.
51. 00:03:22 I guess good for you, I think.
52. 00:03:27 I guess.
53. 00:03:28 Sure.
54. 00:03:29 Certainly, congratulations.
55. 00:03:30 Thanks.
56. 00:03:33 One other thing I want to mention here before we get into the follow-up, I mentioned last
57. 00:03:38 time, but I am going to be joining the focus course, January cohort.
58. 00:03:43 So if you hear this before January 9th, you can go to thefocuscourse.com and sign up
59. 00:03:49 if that is of interest to you.
60. 00:03:51 I'll be doing one of the workshops on PKM, Personal Knowledge Management, not whatever
61. 00:03:57 Blake's going to put in the chat next.
62. 00:04:03 The real question is, do you know anything about PKM's, Mike?
63. 00:04:06 A little bit, a little bit.
64. 00:04:08 I'm getting there.
65. 00:04:09 All right, all right.
66. 00:04:10 This is why you teach it, that way you can learn it more, right?
67. 00:04:14 That's the whole point.
68. 00:04:16 Exactly, exactly.
69. 00:04:18 Probably kicking myself.
70. 00:04:20 Oh, Blake.
71. 00:04:21 Can always count on Blake, yes.
72. 00:04:26 We do only have one follow-up item here, which was for you to bite your tongue.
73. 00:04:32 Did you do that?
74. 00:04:33 I did this, and I had some weird results that I was not planning on at all.
75. 00:04:40 This is just, and it came from a series of the laws of power, which was basically don't
76. 00:04:46 share more information than required, which is kind of what you were talking about with
77. 00:04:53 the situation with the office, right?
78. 00:04:55 I don't need to say words right now.
79. 00:04:57 Let's just let it sit.
80. 00:04:59 However, I've had a couple of scenarios in the office and in family relationships and
81. 00:05:07 stuff where I just chose not to share more than I previously would have.
82. 00:05:12 And in two cases, I had a coworker and then a family member.
83. 00:05:20 Each, these are completely different situations, come up to me and ask me if everything was
84. 00:05:24 okay.
85. 00:05:25 And then wanted to make sure there wasn't something wrong.
86. 00:05:30 Like, huh, interesting.
87. 00:05:32 Like, well, in fact, there might be something wrong, but I don't know the whole story and
88. 00:05:37 I don't really feel like talking about it.
89. 00:05:39 And I don't think it's really going to help anything right now.
90. 00:05:41 So I just chose to be quiet and like, oh, so what do you think we should do?
91. 00:05:47 Like, so then it opened up this whole situation where we had a chance to talk through the
92. 00:05:53 thing that I just chose not to talk about.
93. 00:05:56 And it's like, huh, I was not expecting that.
94. 00:05:58 Now I'm sure there are some other things that have gone on because I'm not sharing as much
95. 00:06:02 in some scenarios.
96. 00:06:04 I'm not privy to that, obviously, because we stopped talking about things.
97. 00:06:10 But I was not expecting it to lead to, okay, I'm biting my tongue in this particular scenario
98. 00:06:15 because I don't want to, you know, at this point I can tell it's not going to go anywhere
99. 00:06:20 so it's not worth me expanding on it.
100. 00:06:23 And as a result of doing that, I ended up in a full, like, let's resolve this situation
101. 00:06:28 and was not planning on it.
102. 00:06:30 But I'll take it in this case.
103. 00:06:32 It's worked out for the better.
104. 00:06:33 So was not expecting that at all, Mike.
105. 00:06:36 That was complete backwards from what I was expecting.
106. 00:06:38 I thought things would just die and we'd let it go.
107. 00:06:40 But nope, we're going to confront this head on now because I didn't say something.
108. 00:06:45 So is that successful?
109. 00:06:48 I maybe, sure.
110. 00:06:50 Yep, I bit my tongue and then had to talk more because of it.
111. 00:06:53 So what do you do with that?
112. 00:06:56 I guess that's successful.
113. 00:06:58 I mean, overall, the situation is better as a result of it.
114. 00:07:02 So I guess I would say that's a success.
115. 00:07:05 But I definitely talked more than I would have had I not done this.
116. 00:07:11 So maybe.
117. 00:07:13 Do you feel the tactic from the 48 Laws of Power created more power for you?
118. 00:07:20 Did it tilt the tables in your favor by doing this?
119. 00:07:25 That's a good question.
120. 00:07:26 So did you get an advantage, I guess, would be another way to say it?
121. 00:07:30 Yeah.
122. 00:07:31 So because of the fact that I bit my tongue, did not share too much in the scenario because
123. 00:07:41 of that, it put me in a position where they then came to me to ask my opinion on the situation
124. 00:07:49 and wondering what was going on, which obviously whenever someone's coming to you in that scenario,
125. 00:07:53 like, it's on me, like, I'm in control of that situation now, whichever direction it's
126. 00:07:58 going to go.
127. 00:07:59 So I guess in that case, you could say, yeah, I put the power and tilted it into my favor.
128. 00:08:04 And I would say that was a positive in this particular case because then it meant that
129. 00:08:08 I was able to choose the narrative that those situations could follow, which I don't know.
130. 00:08:16 In both of those cases, I don't think the confrontation would have happened at all were
131. 00:08:20 it not for that case.
132. 00:08:21 So yeah, I would say as far as like a power, I hate using the term power move.
133. 00:08:28 Exactly.
134. 00:08:29 A power move.
135. 00:08:30 But that's ultimately what happened and it did tip it in my favor.
136. 00:08:35 So I guess as far as the laws of power go, me biting my tongue in that scenario did exactly
137. 00:08:41 what it was supposed to do.
138. 00:08:43 All right.
139. 00:08:44 Didn't think it would go that way.
140. 00:08:46 Maybe it was the beard that was intimidating.
141. 00:08:49 Totally the beard.
142. 00:08:51 Absolutely the beard.
143. 00:08:52 If you have no idea what we're talking about, you should join us for the live recording
144. 00:08:56 sometime because Joe has a phenomenal holiday beard going on.
145. 00:09:01 I do have a holiday beard going on.
146. 00:09:03 I got a three month beard at the moment and I suspect it's going to end up at a six month
147. 00:09:07 before we're done.
148. 00:09:08 So nice.
149. 00:09:09 Yeah, Joe decided to beard it out.
150. 00:09:13 Well, should we talk about today's book?
151. 00:09:18 If we don't, we have other issues.
152. 00:09:20 All right.
153. 00:09:22 Well, we are talking today about the 21 laws of leadership.
154. 00:09:26 Now, the laws book, very different flavor, I would argue.
155. 00:09:32 This is a classic book by John Maxwell.
156. 00:09:35 Full title is the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership, subheading, follow them and people
157. 00:09:41 will follow you.
158. 00:09:43 And this was first published 25 years ago, I believe because I have the 25th anniversary
159. 00:09:49 edition.
160. 00:09:51 And this was just released, I think, of handful of months ago.
161. 00:09:55 Now you and I have both read this book before.
162. 00:09:59 But it has been a very long time, at least for me.
163. 00:10:04 When was the last time you went through this?
164. 00:10:08 I went through this.
165. 00:10:10 It would have been about eight, nine years ago.
166. 00:10:15 It's when I went through it.
167. 00:10:18 Okay.
168. 00:10:19 Yeah.
169. 00:10:20 So that's probably about when I first read it.
170. 00:10:24 This 25th anniversary edition has a lot of additions to it.
171. 00:10:30 I don't have the old version to compare it to, but I can tell you from the preface he
172. 00:10:36 talks about how he's expounded on some of these different laws, added more context, added
173. 00:10:42 more stories.
174. 00:10:43 There's quite a bit, especially in the last half of the book it seemed, that dealt with
175. 00:10:49 these laws being applied during the pandemic.
176. 00:10:53 So I feel like this is not one of those old classic books that you have to translate.
177. 00:11:03 I feel like the updated version definitely speaks to the world that we find ourselves
178. 00:11:09 in.
179. 00:11:10 And it's kind of interesting to me, just generally speaking before we get into the actual laws
180. 00:11:14 here, that a lot of the stuff that he was talking about with the COVID-19, the tone that
181. 00:11:21 he spoke about some of these things could come off a little bit like I told you so,
182. 00:11:28 sort of a thing.
183. 00:11:30 But it doesn't read that way.
184. 00:11:32 It's not negative, controlling, corrective in any way.
185. 00:11:40 It's really just trying to inspire people, I think, to strive for these leadership principles
186. 00:11:46 and get to a high level themselves so they can make a positive impact in the lives of
187. 00:11:50 the people that happen to be following them.
188. 00:11:54 But it was interesting to me, a lot of the COVID stuff did not change these, but it just
189. 00:12:01 reinforced the importance of them.
190. 00:12:04 It's kind of like you don't recognize how important something is until you recognize
191. 00:12:08 that it's not there.
192. 00:12:10 And what we saw with COVID was a lot of people...
193. 00:12:16 I say let's just call it a leadership vacuum.
194. 00:12:20 I'm thinking of stories that people told me of their jobs going remote and they're now
195. 00:12:27 in meetings for eight hours a day because their higher ups need to make sure that they
196. 00:12:33 are communicating to the people below them, but then they still expect everyone to put
197. 00:12:37 in eight hours of additional work every day.
198. 00:12:41 And the executives feel good because they had a chance to do their stuff, but everyone
199. 00:12:45 else who actually has to do the majority of the work doesn't have any time to do it.
200. 00:12:50 And the just...
201. 00:12:51 Leadership has no concept of, well, they're just home all the time.
202. 00:12:56 Why can't they just get this done?
203. 00:12:59 Right.
204. 00:13:00 Completely ignoring many of these laws that we're going to get into.
205. 00:13:06 So I thought this was a really fun read.
206. 00:13:09 And having gone through it, it felt more timely and more applicable, I guess.
207. 00:13:15 Then even the first time that I had read it, did you feel the same?
208. 00:13:19 Yeah, and I would say that's probably because obviously life stages change things.
209. 00:13:26 And when I originally went through this, it was with a group of, I think it was 18 to
210. 00:13:30 20 men that we walked through this as part of a class at our church.
211. 00:13:35 So getting that opportunity to go through it and deep dive each of the laws, like taking
212. 00:13:40 a law per week was a very good experience.
213. 00:13:45 But at the same time, I was a new dad at the time.
214. 00:13:48 Did not have hardly anybody underneath of me as far as I was not in a leadership position.
215. 00:13:55 Though going through this, it's not required to have a leadership position.
216. 00:14:00 It's almost a non-topic, if you will.
217. 00:14:04 Like obviously, if you're given a position of leadership, this applies even more, but
218. 00:14:08 it's definitely not necessary.
219. 00:14:10 But when I went through it the first time, it definitely showed me like, "Okay, well,
220. 00:14:13 here's ways that you can be a good leader of your household."
221. 00:14:16 That was definitely my mindset when I went through it then.
222. 00:14:19 Going through it now and seeing the changes he put into the stories and the examples that
223. 00:14:25 go into each of these laws and re-wording some of the subtitles for each chapter, that
224. 00:14:32 all leads to a very different perspective to me right now because obviously still a
225. 00:14:39 dad, but I've now got one, two, three, four different teams underneath of me and that
226. 00:14:46 amounts to maybe 25, 30 people that are reporting to me mostly under volunteer positions, which
227. 00:14:52 is its own thing that he talks about a little bit here.
228. 00:14:57 That is a very different perspective to view this book through.
229. 00:15:03 I'm grateful for that because now I've got a little bit of a different mindset whenever
230. 00:15:07 I'm considering each of these laws.
231. 00:15:09 It kind of hits me a little bit harder now than what it did then because of that.
232. 00:15:15 At the same time, I know the changes that he's made to it.
233. 00:15:17 I didn't really pick up on what those were.
234. 00:15:19 That might just be a factor if it's been long enough that I don't have the other one
235. 00:15:23 forefront of mine.
236. 00:15:25 I wish I had taken the two and compared them because obviously I have the two, but I did
237. 00:15:29 not do that.
238. 00:15:31 Although you can tell which parts are new because of the, this happened after 1998.
239. 00:15:39 Obviously, this was an added component to the book.
240. 00:15:44 You can tell what parts those are.
241. 00:15:47 It is good to see that, but I also don't feel like he put this in a pigeon-holed time box
242. 00:15:52 where in 15 years it's going to be out of date.
243. 00:15:56 I don't really feel like that's true.
244. 00:15:58 I think he's got it set up pretty well for future readers.
245. 00:16:02 Agreed.
246. 00:16:04 If you had to pick somebody at the beginning here, who is this for?
247. 00:16:10 Do you have someone that fits that description?
248. 00:16:14 I ask that because I feel like the title, the laws of leadership, people can look at
249. 00:16:18 that maybe and think, "Oh, well, I'm not a sea level manager at an organization, so
250. 00:16:24 I don't need any of this stuff."
251. 00:16:25 You just shared a whole bunch of personal application as it pertained to leading your
252. 00:16:30 family.
253. 00:16:31 I think it's a lot broader than maybe people realize at first glance.
254. 00:16:37 I think you're absolutely spot on with that because I know, for me, obviously in my position,
255. 00:16:43 I'm put in a leadership position.
256. 00:16:45 I have people that report to me.
257. 00:16:48 If you're in that scenario, this is an obvious book that fits.
258. 00:16:53 But I think what people don't always necessarily connect is how even just leading yourself,
259. 00:17:01 take a single person who just moved to a new country.
260. 00:17:04 You have no friends, your family is not anywhere near you.
261. 00:17:07 Your work is something where it's just you.
262. 00:17:12 Something in that scenario.
263. 00:17:14 Even then, this does apply because this does still so much of this.
264. 00:17:21 It's about character building and it's about life building, if you will.
265. 00:17:28 It's not necessarily going to require other people to learn these skills.
266. 00:17:34 If you have any interest in becoming a person of influence of any kind, even over yourself
267. 00:17:41 and your friends, then this is going to be helpful.
268. 00:17:45 You're probably right.
269. 00:17:47 The connotation here is there's an obvious positioning.
270. 00:17:51 This is my job connotation with just the title of the book.
271. 00:17:57 That probably does it a disservice.
272. 00:18:00 It's going to have a much broader impact than what it is perceived to have.
273. 00:18:04 That would be my take on it.
274. 00:18:06 Yeah, I agreed.
275. 00:18:08 Last question before we get into the contents of the book.
276. 00:18:11 How do you feel about this title?
277. 00:18:13 The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership.
278. 00:18:17 Pretty bold claim.
279. 00:18:18 I know he put that on the original too.
280. 00:18:23 It's a tall claim.
281. 00:18:25 Obviously, he's got a lot more experience in the leadership realm than I do.
282. 00:18:30 I would have a very hard time arguing with John Maxwell.
283. 00:18:36 At the same time, I don't know what I would add or subtract from this.
284. 00:18:43 Maybe?
285. 00:18:44 I don't have enough experience to say yes or no.
286. 00:18:48 That's the problem.
287. 00:18:50 But it is a pretty tall claim.
288. 00:18:51 How many books do we read that have pretty tall claims?
289. 00:18:54 The number one book for x, y, z.
290. 00:18:58 No, there's two others that are better than this one.
291. 00:19:01 Yeah, you just typically don't think of John Maxwell as being the clickbait guy.
292. 00:19:06 Correct.
293. 00:19:07 Yeah, right.
294. 00:19:08 All right.
295. 00:19:09 Let's get into the contents here.
296. 00:19:11 There are, as the title says, 21 different laws.
297. 00:19:16 There's also an introduction and a conclusion.
298. 00:19:22 That's 23 different chapters, essentially.
299. 00:19:25 We're not going to cover all of those because this would be a very long podcast.
300. 00:19:30 We're going to cover the introduction.
301. 00:19:32 We're going to cover the conclusion and we're going to cover a sampling of laws in between.
302. 00:19:38 I want to start here with the introduction.
303. 00:19:43 This is pretty short, but I feel like there's a couple important concepts that we have to
304. 00:19:49 discuss in this introduction before we get into the rest of the material here.
305. 00:19:55 One is that nobody does all 21 of these laws well.
306. 00:20:00 He admits that even he does not do all of these all of the time.
307. 00:20:05 He shared some specifics.
308. 00:20:06 I didn't jot down any notes about which ones he specifically struggles with, but I think
309. 00:20:12 that is very freeing right at the beginning.
310. 00:20:15 The way this is positioned, the 21 irrefutable laws, he's obviously done the research.
311. 00:20:19 He's the expert.
312. 00:20:21 He's basically saying that even I don't have not mastered this stuff.
313. 00:20:26 You don't have to worry about it either.
314. 00:20:29 That's maybe taking a little bit too much from it because these are very important principles
315. 00:20:35 and they do, I believe, significantly impact the quality of the life that you have.
316. 00:20:41 I believe that where you are today is because of the decisions that you made previously.
317. 00:20:48 Seed time and harvest, all that kind of stuff.
318. 00:20:52 If you want to change your future, you got to change what you're doing today.
319. 00:20:55 Then those decisions and those actions will change your future.
320. 00:21:01 It's not just about people that work underneath you at a corporation or an organization.
321. 00:21:10 If you have any interest in personal development or personal growth, then you have to be able
322. 00:21:16 to lead yourself.
323. 00:21:17 He actually talks a little bit about that in here.
324. 00:21:20 I do think it's freeing to know that you're never going to be able to just master this
325. 00:21:27 material.
326. 00:21:30 Everyone is in the same boat, essentially.
327. 00:21:32 Everyone is striving to become better, but we're looking for progress, not perfection.
328. 00:21:39 It's also interesting how he says that all these laws stand alone so you can pick any
329. 00:21:43 one of them, which is what we're going to do for the podcast here and talk about that.
330. 00:21:48 Yes, there are interdependencies between these and they do influence each other.
331. 00:21:52 There's a lot of places where he says, as I talked about in this other chapter, however,
332. 00:21:56 each one of these, if you wanted to just take one at a time like you did with your group
333. 00:21:59 back in the day and just study that one that is totally applicable.
334. 00:22:04 If you did that, you would definitely see some benefit from that approach.
335. 00:22:09 Then he talks about how the laws are timeless.
336. 00:22:12 They're the foundation of leadership and they carry consequences with them.
337. 00:22:16 Uh-oh.
338. 00:22:18 That means that you can apply this or ignore it at your own peril.
339. 00:22:28 I think of all the books that we have read, this is the one where it is the strongest
340. 00:22:35 argument for just do these things and your life will improve out of any book that I've
341. 00:22:42 ever seen.
342. 00:22:43 Yeah.
343. 00:22:44 And like I mentioned, you don't really expect the standard productivity clickbait type stuff
344. 00:22:49 from John Maxwell, which to me is just evidence of the fact that he's lived this stuff out
345. 00:22:56 for so long.
346. 00:22:57 I don't know how old he is at this point, but he talks about a lot of different things
347. 00:23:01 that are different portions of his journey and his story in this book.
348. 00:23:08 And I'm reflecting on it now, I think that's the reason is that he isn't just saying this
349. 00:23:15 stuff because he knows this is what people want to hear or this is what's going to sell.
350. 00:23:21 This is the stuff that he's applied himself for a very long time.
351. 00:23:24 And so he's earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to that at least in my mind.
352. 00:23:30 Yeah.
353. 00:23:31 He's in his early mid-70s at this point.
354. 00:23:35 Okay.
355. 00:23:36 He's seen a lot from a leadership stance.
356. 00:23:41 But there's a couple things here in this introduction that I think you've touched on that are probably
357. 00:23:47 more important than we want to give him credit for in that not everyone does all of these
358. 00:23:54 well.
359. 00:23:55 We are human, like you were saying.
360. 00:23:57 To me, that's a pretty big deal because there are definitely some of these that and if we
361. 00:24:03 were to jump ahead to action items, we could probably pinpoint which of these ones that
362. 00:24:08 you and I struggle with because I'm betting our action items follow suit on that.
363. 00:24:15 And yet there are some of these that I know you can learn and you can get better at.
364. 00:24:21 But you and I each probably have our own.
365. 00:24:24 I know I've got a few that's like, I don't even have to think about this one.
366. 00:24:27 I just do this without thought.
367. 00:24:29 It just happens.
368. 00:24:30 I'm not even aware that I'm doing it.
369. 00:24:32 There are some of these for probably everyone.
370. 00:24:36 There's probably at least one if not multiple where you've kind of got these to where, yeah,
371. 00:24:41 this is pretty easy.
372. 00:24:43 I don't even have to worry about this one.
373. 00:24:45 But then there's going to be others like, holy cow, why is this in here?
374. 00:24:49 I don't ever want to touch this.
375. 00:24:51 Like there are definitely those as well.
376. 00:24:54 So it's one where it's good to know that even the leadership guru, John Maxwell, has
377. 00:25:00 the laws that he himself struggles with.
378. 00:25:03 So that's a little bit freeing in that sense.
379. 00:25:07 But it's also I think important to know that each of these laws have a consequence, like
380. 00:25:12 you were saying, in it's one that we don't like to talk about, right?
381. 00:25:17 If you do these things, it pretty much always, if done well, has a positive outcome.
382. 00:25:25 But if you don't follow this, it can have very negative ramifications.
383. 00:25:31 Now, the severity of that quote negative consequences is going to vary widely depending on what
384. 00:25:41 scale we're talking about.
385. 00:25:42 If you fail to follow through on a communication piece and we're talking about an international
386. 00:25:49 crisis, then that's a pretty big deal.
387. 00:25:53 If I fail to communicate, if I'm going to be home at 2 or 230, the ramifications of that
388. 00:25:59 are fairly minor unless there's some big thing going on tonight, right?
389. 00:26:03 So it's very different depending on what we're talking about.
390. 00:26:09 But regardless, there are consequences to actions, whether we like them or not.
391. 00:26:13 That's just how it goes.
392. 00:26:14 And that's ultimately what we're, what he's getting at here is like, if you follow
393. 00:26:17 them, you have this consequence.
394. 00:26:18 If you don't, you have that.
395. 00:26:21 Welcome to life.
396. 00:26:22 That's just how it is.
397. 00:26:24 Yep.
398. 00:26:25 Should we get into the actual laws?
399. 00:26:28 Sure.
400. 00:26:29 All right.
401. 00:26:30 So the first one here is actually the one that I want to start with.
402. 00:26:34 So chapter one or law number one, the law of the lid.
403. 00:26:39 And this basically in a nutshell is that how well you lead determines your effectiveness
404. 00:26:46 with others and the potential of your team.
405. 00:26:49 And the best way to visualize this is using one of these, these graphs.
406. 00:26:56 And on the Y axis, you have the leadership ability.
407. 00:27:00 And then on the right axis, you have the success dedication, he calls it.
408. 00:27:06 And what the law of the lid basically says is that if you don't develop your leadership
409. 00:27:13 ability, you have a cap on how effective or successful you can be.
410. 00:27:21 And there's a really great visual in the book of the effectiveness here.
411. 00:27:27 So the success dedication, this is, looks like an eight, but the leadership ability is
412. 00:27:34 only a one and then the box that is created by that, that plotting that on the graph shows
413. 00:27:45 your effectiveness.
414. 00:27:48 And when I first saw that, it's like, wow, so if you're dedicated to the outcome that
415. 00:27:54 you want and you increased your ability, even a little bit from one to a two, essentially,
416. 00:27:59 you've doubled your effectiveness.
417. 00:28:01 And I think that's kind of the effect that he's going for there.
418. 00:28:06 And I think this is really powerful, maybe hard to see in your own life.
419. 00:28:13 But I mean, we're both involved with our churches, right?
420. 00:28:16 There's the emphasis on discipleship.
421. 00:28:19 And if you're going to help people, you need to increase your ability in order to help them
422. 00:28:28 to develop their own ability.
423. 00:28:31 If you don't work on yourself, then ultimately you have nothing that you can contribute to
424. 00:28:38 somebody else.
425. 00:28:39 And if you try to do it, you will very quickly realize that.
426. 00:28:46 I think anyone who has tried to help somebody out or lead somebody without having the leadership
427. 00:28:56 chops to really do it effectively has maybe not recognized the amount of the damage that
428. 00:29:02 they've done.
429. 00:29:03 But at the very least, the person that you're trying to lead just disconnects and is like,
430. 00:29:08 yeah, there's nothing for me here.
431. 00:29:10 He kind of talks about that later on in some different laws.
432. 00:29:14 But essentially, your leadership ability is always the lid on both your individual personal
433. 00:29:20 and also the organizational success.
434. 00:29:23 So the quickest way to change your situation, I think, is to realize this and to work on
435. 00:29:30 developing yourself.
436. 00:29:31 Work harder on yourself than you do on your job, as Jim Rohn puts it.
437. 00:29:35 But by doing so, what that's going to do is translate into success for your job and for
438. 00:29:40 everybody that you work with.
439. 00:29:43 This is a very powerful graphic.
440. 00:29:45 I think you alluded to that.
441. 00:29:46 I think of it in terms of volume, so for the people who see volume with this chart, if
442. 00:29:54 you're a number one on leadership and your dedication to your mission is at an eight,
443. 00:30:00 think of that as like eight cubic units, if you will, of effectiveness.
444. 00:30:05 But if you elevate yourself to a level eight leader and your success dedication is still
445. 00:30:10 at an eight, that's now 64, effectiveness cubic unit thingies that I've now made up.
446. 00:30:16 So thinking about it as far as like that volume, and again, when you see it, like, oh buddy.
447. 00:30:22 Okay, so if I'm a poor leader, it doesn't matter how dedicated I am to our goal, it
448. 00:30:32 can massively increase our ability to be successful if I become a better leader.
449. 00:30:38 And that's what he's referring to as far as the lid.
450. 00:30:40 Like that's the cap.
451. 00:30:41 That's the top that you can't break unless your leadership ability increases.
452. 00:30:46 And I have to say like starting off with this is a really good way to start this book because
453. 00:30:50 whenever I saw the graph and I saw that like this is the cap, like, hmm, so I need to go
454. 00:30:56 to work on myself.
455. 00:30:58 If I want my teams to operate at a higher level of quality, then I need to increase
456. 00:31:04 me, not work on them.
457. 00:31:06 Like that it starts with me.
458. 00:31:08 And I have to be honest, Mike, that's frustrating.
459. 00:31:12 I don't want to hear that.
460. 00:31:14 That is the opposite of what I wanted to hear.
461. 00:31:17 And it's exactly why he needs to start with it.
462. 00:31:21 So okay.
463. 00:31:22 Yes.
464. 00:31:23 I'll go to work.
465. 00:31:25 Right.
466. 00:31:26 There's another book by John Maxwell that I had read a while back called the five levels
467. 00:31:32 of leadership.
468. 00:31:33 He mentions it briefly in this one, but not real in depth.
469. 00:31:38 But the big takeaway from that one is that the further you go up in terms of the levels
470. 00:31:43 of leadership, the less rights you have, the less it's about you, the more it's about
471. 00:31:49 the people that you're, you're leading.
472. 00:31:52 So you have to very quickly disconnect from the things that you are owed if you're going
473. 00:31:59 to be a good leader.
474. 00:32:01 But the story that goes along with this does a really good job of communicating the potential
475. 00:32:08 when you're able to go beyond that lid.
476. 00:32:14 All of the different chapters and laws that he uses in this book all have cool stories
477. 00:32:19 that go along with them.
478. 00:32:21 And the one in this first chapter is on McDonald's, which was founded by the brothers Dick and
479. 00:32:26 Maurice.
480. 00:32:28 But they had limited leadership.
481. 00:32:30 And so in 1954, they met Ray Kroc, who was a milkshake machine salesman with a big vision.
482. 00:32:38 And he knew that he could help catapult this thing.
483. 00:32:43 So in 1955, Ray partnered with these brothers and they started selling their franchises.
484. 00:32:48 And then in 1961, he bought the exclusive rights for $2.7 million, which sounds like
485. 00:32:54 a lot of money back in 1961 probably was.
486. 00:32:57 However, now there's 38,000 plus restaurants, which are valued at $170 billion.
487. 00:33:02 So Ray Kroc was the one who had the leadership ability to maximize the potential of this
488. 00:33:10 idea.
489. 00:33:12 And that immediately gets me thinking about all of my failed projects.
490. 00:33:17 Was it a bad idea?
491. 00:33:18 Or was it just I wasn't good enough?
492. 00:33:21 Yeah.
493. 00:33:22 Right.
494. 00:33:23 Which reminds me of another thing Jim Rohn mentions is don't wish it was easier, wish
495. 00:33:28 you were better.
496. 00:33:30 Like if something has got a bunch of potential, then if it was easy, everybody would do it
497. 00:33:38 essentially.
498. 00:33:39 Right.
499. 00:33:40 So if something has a bunch of potential, it's not it's by definition not going to be
500. 00:33:45 simple or easy.
501. 00:33:46 Otherwise someone else would just step in and capitalize on the thing.
502. 00:33:50 So the fact that it's hard, like that should inspire us if we're all trying to make the
503. 00:33:57 most of our abilities and our talents to become more than we are currently so that
504. 00:34:02 we can take advantage of those opportunities that aren't in front of us.
505. 00:34:06 I don't know.
506. 00:34:07 I don't think any of my ideas have been $170 billion ideas, but maybe.
507. 00:34:12 That is a frustrating realization though.
508. 00:34:16 If you think about past projects that you've led that were shuttered, like I have a string
509. 00:34:21 of these and you think about why did it not succeed and then ask the question what did
510. 00:34:29 I do wrong?
511. 00:34:30 Like even if it was outside of your control, what did I do that led to that failing?
512. 00:34:37 This is one of those exercises that people tell you to do that I don't ever want to do
513. 00:34:41 and I tend to avoid as much as I possibly can.
514. 00:34:45 And not ashamed to say that is just how I like I don't want to do that.
515. 00:34:50 Nobody wants to do that.
516. 00:34:51 But if you will humor yourself and indulge in the difficult work and put yourself through
517. 00:34:58 the discipline to make that process happen, it seems like there's rarely a scenario where
518. 00:35:06 you are not at some level at fault or responsible at a minimum for that failure especially if
519. 00:35:14 you were the leader.
520. 00:35:16 Which then brings the question to if you were to start over and do that now, what would
521. 00:35:22 that mean?
522. 00:35:23 What would you do different?
523. 00:35:24 How would you lead that different?
524. 00:35:25 What are the skills that you've learned that you would capitalize on?
525. 00:35:28 And then what are your remaining shortcomings?
526. 00:35:33 That's the one I don't want to know.
527. 00:35:35 But the things like the ones I'm still not good at that I need to get better at and now
528. 00:35:40 I need to do the work to get better at those.
529. 00:35:43 And that's the area where the improvement can come in.
530. 00:35:46 But none of that's a fun process.
531. 00:35:50 At least for most people.
532. 00:35:52 There are probably people out there who really love that process and I don't want to be in
533. 00:35:57 the same room with you to be completely honest.
534. 00:36:01 Well let's get into the next law here because I feel like there's a tangential connection
535. 00:36:06 here.
536. 00:36:07 The people who are really motivated to work on themselves typically have a specific direction
537. 00:36:12 that they want to develop.
538. 00:36:15 The next law however is the law of influence.
539. 00:36:21 And you may think well I really want to make the most of my development however I don't
540. 00:36:26 care what anybody else thinks and I don't really want to influence people because that
541. 00:36:30 sounds like the 48 laws of power.
542. 00:36:32 Yes.
543. 00:36:33 Right but I don't think you can disconnect these ideas.
544. 00:36:37 The true meaning of leadership is influence.
545. 00:36:40 It talks about in this chapter.
546. 00:36:41 If you do not have influence you'll never be able to lead people.
547. 00:36:45 I think that even applies personally.
548. 00:36:47 If you don't have influence you can't lead yourself.
549. 00:36:49 What do you mean you don't have influence over yourself?
550. 00:36:51 Well let's just say you read a task list every day and you've got 20 things on it and you
551. 00:36:57 only get five done.
552. 00:36:58 After a while you just don't have faith in yourself when you make that list that you're
553. 00:37:02 going to be able to follow through and do the things that you said you were going to
554. 00:37:05 do.
555. 00:37:06 Right.
556. 00:37:07 So the question is gone and it's a downward spiral.
557. 00:37:11 So I do think at the heart of it you do need to be able to have influence.
558. 00:37:18 Now there are in this chapter he talks about the five myths of leadership and then I want
559. 00:37:25 to get into like the volunteer organization stuff.
560. 00:37:27 This is the chapter that came from and you kind of mentioned this earlier.
561. 00:37:31 So five myths about leadership the management myth leading and management are the same.
562. 00:37:36 They are not.
563. 00:37:38 Leading is very different than management is kind of like the picture I get is micromanaging
564. 00:37:43 making sure that someone follows you and does something exactly the way you told them
565. 00:37:46 to do it.
566. 00:37:47 Leadership is interesting them to go make the thing happen.
567. 00:37:51 The entrepreneur myth all entrepreneurs are leaders.
568. 00:37:54 Nope.
569. 00:37:55 A lot of entrepreneurs I would argue are not.
570. 00:37:59 They can discipline themselves but they have a real hard time rallying people behind their
571. 00:38:05 cause.
572. 00:38:07 The knowledge myth neither IQ nor education determines leadership or equals leadership.
573. 00:38:15 The pioneer myth anyone out in front of a crowd is a leader.
574. 00:38:21 I guess this one it's possible to be a you could be a pioneer and you could be a leader.
575. 00:38:31 However I think you could just accidentally be in the right place at the right time have
576. 00:38:35 no leadership ability and very quickly people are going to go and follow somebody else.
577. 00:38:40 My pastor has this saying that if you actually picked up from someone like John Maxwell but
578. 00:38:45 if you are a leader and you turn around no one's following you you're just out for a
579. 00:38:51 walk.
580. 00:38:52 Then position myth leadership is not based on title.
581. 00:38:55 Let's get into the five levels.
582. 00:38:56 The title is the absolute lowest level.
583. 00:38:59 That may work in the very short term but it's not going to work in the long term.
584. 00:39:05 Ultimately you have to have this influence.
585. 00:39:09 It is not an option.
586. 00:39:11 A volunteer organization where you have no leverage how are you going to do that?
587. 00:39:15 Very carefully.
588. 00:39:17 Right because you can't tell somebody hey do what I tell you to do or you're fired.
589. 00:39:23 Right.
590. 00:39:24 They're not there for the paycheck anyways.
591. 00:39:26 They'll just leave.
592. 00:39:27 Yes.
593. 00:39:28 I do that.
594. 00:39:29 Blake had a comment in the chat.
595. 00:39:32 We're mentioning Blake a lot today but leading volunteers is like training dolphins.
596. 00:39:36 They don't like what you're doing.
597. 00:39:37 They'll just swim away.
598. 00:39:38 That's a great way to think of it.
599. 00:39:41 I will never.
600. 00:39:42 I'm going to tell my volunteers that's like you guys are dolphins.
601. 00:39:44 You guys will love that.
602. 00:39:48 This is absolutely true in volunteer organizations like take the teams that I'm over.
603. 00:39:56 There's only one one.
604. 00:39:59 One paid staff member.
605. 00:40:01 The rest are all volunteers.
606. 00:40:05 It has to be done with sensitivity to making it easy for them.
607. 00:40:12 Making it something that's fun for them.
608. 00:40:15 I don't claim to be good at that.
609. 00:40:19 I know that it's something that I've continued to work on honestly going through this book
610. 00:40:24 and realizing how many shortcomings I have in that area.
611. 00:40:28 It's something that I know I need to continually work on but it's absolutely true.
612. 00:40:32 If I'm working with a group of volunteers they need me to be the one that's got the
613. 00:40:39 mantra that we're going to preach every single time and they need to make sure that I'm bought
614. 00:40:43 in and that I'm doing my part and that I'm putting them first and leading the charge.
615. 00:40:49 All these things.
616. 00:40:50 That's something that has to happen.
617. 00:40:52 If I'm not willing to do something, why on earth would I ever expect them to do it?
618. 00:40:58 It's something that happens in paid scenarios where you've got a sea level person who's got
619. 00:41:06 the authority and can push things down on their salary or hourly people.
620. 00:41:14 They have a little bit of sway because they can control your income.
621. 00:41:18 If you can't control their income that whole incentive process is out the window and then
622. 00:41:25 relationship becomes the number one component in that mix.
623. 00:41:30 Maybe there's more than relationship but that's a very big part of it.
624. 00:41:35 Trying to make sure the influence is something that you maintain and can continue to build
625. 00:41:43 and then use wisely, that's all something that is absolutely critical in a volunteer
626. 00:41:48 organization.
627. 00:41:50 This is definitely something I need to continue to work on but that's the world I live in
628. 00:41:54 for sure.
629. 00:41:56 There's lots of ways that you can build that influence obviously and I would argue that
630. 00:42:04 the rest of the book is basically how you can do that.
631. 00:42:08 He does have a list in here about how leadership is character.
632. 00:42:11 It's who you are, relationships who you know, knowledge, what you know, intuition, what
633. 00:42:15 you feel, experience where you've been, past success, what you've done, and ability what
634. 00:42:20 you can do.
635. 00:42:21 I think that's a good encapsulation of all that kind of stuff.
636. 00:42:26 It's not built quickly.
637. 00:42:28 It's built little by little brick by brick but I guess just at this point law number two,
638. 00:42:37 the law of influence, don't write this one off as like, "Well, I don't really care about
639. 00:42:40 that."
640. 00:42:41 You need to care about that if you care at all about leadership and personal development.
641. 00:42:49 Next one I want to talk about here is chapter five, the law of addition.
642. 00:42:52 I feel like this one follows up on the law of influence because you have to add before
643. 00:43:02 you withdraw.
644. 00:43:03 This kind of reminds me of the seven habits of highly affected people back when we did
645. 00:43:09 that one.
646. 00:43:11 Stephen Covey talked about the relational bank account.
647. 00:43:14 I'm not sure if you remember that story but basically you have to make withdrawals before
648. 00:43:19 you make a deposit, sorry, make deposits before you make withdrawals.
649. 00:43:25 I'm not sure banks work that way.
650. 00:43:27 It would be awesome if they did and they kind of do in some ways but usually interest is
651. 00:43:31 paid.
652. 00:43:32 That's how credit cards work for most people.
653. 00:43:38 So that idea really resonated with me, just making the deposits and that's how I view
654. 00:43:45 the law of addition here.
655. 00:43:46 You constantly have to be making deposits.
656. 00:43:48 You have to be investing in other people.
657. 00:43:52 Leaders add value by serving others, by putting their needs and desires ahead of their own.
658. 00:43:58 He also talks about in this section that the bottom line in leadership is how far you advance
659. 00:44:05 others, how much you are able to help people.
660. 00:44:08 So the big question that I wanted to consider here, I don't have an action item with this
661. 00:44:15 but just the thing to kind of talk about in the podcast is like, are we making things
662. 00:44:22 better for the people who follow us?
663. 00:44:25 I feel like if you really are trying to maximize your personal development and you buy into
664. 00:44:30 the whole idea of leadership and you have a platform, even a small one like we have with
665. 00:44:35 Bookworm, although it's growing.
666. 00:44:37 So thank you everybody who's downloading and listening.
667. 00:44:41 But are we making things better for the people that follow us?
668. 00:44:45 I would like to say yes and I think our intention is to do that.
669. 00:44:50 However, I think as a creator, we do have to be careful.
670. 00:44:56 We have a responsibility for the stuff that we create.
671. 00:45:00 We can't just mail it in because I don't know how you feel about this but I personally
672. 00:45:09 feel you're going to download an episode and you're going to listen to an hour and a half
673. 00:45:14 of us babbling about a book.
674. 00:45:16 There should be something that you can take away from this that's going to help you.
675. 00:45:20 I view that responsibility of the people who are going to invest that much time with us.
676. 00:45:26 They got to get something for that.
677. 00:45:30 It's very easy I feel as a creator to go down the slippery slope of just creating the thing
678. 00:45:38 that is going to get the views or get the clicks.
679. 00:45:44 This is the thing that I think rubs people wrong with stuff like the part-time YouTube
680. 00:45:48 Academy and the ship 30 for 30.
681. 00:45:51 This isn't what they're saying but this is the dark side of it.
682. 00:45:54 This is the 48 laws of power in the wrong hands.
683. 00:45:59 I'm going to manipulate people for my own nefarious purposes by leveraging these technology-based
684. 00:46:06 tools that way.
685. 00:46:08 I think the people that I really enjoy following are the people who are invested in giving
686. 00:46:18 something to their audience.
687. 00:46:19 They take that responsibility seriously.
688. 00:46:22 As I was reading this I just felt like I needed to take stock of the stuff that I make.
689. 00:46:28 Am I doing right by the people who read my stuff, listen to my stuff, watch my stuff?
690. 00:46:34 I think this is something that is only going to be good if we take the time to consider
691. 00:46:42 it but it may make creators specifically feel a little bit uncomfortable.
692. 00:46:48 I don't know.
693. 00:46:49 How do you feel about that?
694. 00:46:50 I feel like there's a weighty responsibility here anytime I put something out into the
695. 00:46:55 world.
696. 00:46:56 Am I crazy for thinking that way?
697. 00:47:00 There's a side of being a creator where there's a few different mindsets behind it.
698. 00:47:07 There are some people who create because it's something on their mind and they just feel
699. 00:47:11 like they want to talk about it or make something around that idea.
700. 00:47:17 The public opinion of that really doesn't matter.
701. 00:47:20 They're not really interested in what people think of it.
702. 00:47:25 They just have this thought that they want to get out into the world.
703. 00:47:28 There definitely is that particular side of it.
704. 00:47:31 The other side of it where, and I feel like this is maybe the area where I personally
705. 00:47:36 struggle with just because of the time, but whenever you have something you've done for
706. 00:47:40 a long time, we've been doing bookworm now for what is this, six and a half years, which
707. 00:47:47 seems like crazy numbers to me.
708. 00:47:52 When you've been at it that long, sometimes what happens is, again, this is for me, it's
709. 00:47:56 easy to think through, well, this is the book I want to read, so then I'm going to pick
710. 00:48:00 that and then we're going to talk about it, but my opinion on the way that I'm presenting
711. 00:48:07 it and the things I want to bring up, I'm not necessarily doing that because I feel like
712. 00:48:11 it's something that would help our listeners.
713. 00:48:13 It's just because it's what's interesting to me.
714. 00:48:15 There's definitely a place for that type of content, but at the same time, I think that
715. 00:48:22 when we've had our routines to the point where we're able to go through this book and pull
716. 00:48:29 out the points that you really need to know when you're going through this book.
717. 00:48:33 This is something that I've processed this.
718. 00:48:36 We've been through enough books.
719. 00:48:37 This is my perspective on it, and this is what the public needs to know about this.
720. 00:48:41 When you can have that viewpoint, this is what I feel like you as a listener need to
721. 00:48:45 know about this book.
722. 00:48:46 If I'm able to get myself to that point where I can process it there, that's where this
723. 00:48:53 additive piece comes in.
724. 00:48:55 This is where I'm trying to add to the legacy.
725. 00:48:57 This is where I'm trying to add to you as a listener, and it's not necessarily about
726. 00:49:02 me anymore.
727. 00:49:05 That's a place where I struggle with it because it's easy for me to fall into the routine
728. 00:49:08 of, "Yeah, I read every day.
729. 00:49:10 That's easy.
730. 00:49:11 It's easy to connect with Mike and we'll talk about a book."
731. 00:49:13 That's simple.
732. 00:49:14 It's easy to put together an outline, figure out, "Hey, this one's interesting to me."
733. 00:49:18 It's easy to do that, but trying to process it at a bigger level where it's like, "Here,
734. 00:49:23 this is the thing you need to know about this book.
735. 00:49:25 You need to watch out for this particular viewpoint.
736. 00:49:27 Keep your eye on this when you go through it."
737. 00:49:29 Trying to get that out isn't always easy.
738. 00:49:33 I feel like when you can find creators who are able to do that type of making, if you
739. 00:49:38 will, that's the people that tend to really thrive.
740. 00:49:43 They can do, "This is my thoughts on this," but the reason I'm sharing my thoughts on
741. 00:49:47 this is because it would help you in this particular way, this XYZ arena.
742. 00:49:53 I'm sure I'm missing something in that realm, but that's how I process that.
743. 00:49:58 I think you're on the right track there.
744. 00:50:01 Let's actually talk about the next one because, again, this is related.
745. 00:50:06 The thing that makes it possible to be authentic and to do what we're supposed to do is that
746. 00:50:20 we need to make sure that we're connecting.
747. 00:50:22 Chapter 10 is the law of connection.
748. 00:50:25 One last thing from chapter 5, where we get in here, is that when you give, you receive
749. 00:50:29 back more than you give, but I think that only happens when you do it the right way.
750. 00:50:37 90% of people who take more than they give do it unintentionally, but 90% of those who
751. 00:50:42 give more than they take do so intentionally.
752. 00:50:47 We want to be the people who give more than we take, and we have to do that intentionally.
753. 00:50:53 How do we do that?
754. 00:50:54 We try to connect.
755. 00:50:57 The law of connection here, I think a lot of the application of this is kind of person-to-person
756. 00:51:01 in real life, but I was thinking about this in terms of all the stuff that we do online.
757. 00:51:07 I don't know.
758. 00:51:08 I've just been thinking a lot about over the last couple of weeks with the holiday break
759. 00:51:12 and everything.
760. 00:51:14 What do I want my newsletter schedule to look like?
761. 00:51:17 What do I want the YouTube video schedule to look like?
762. 00:51:21 What is the process for the different stages in writing, where it starts off as maybe a
763. 00:51:29 thread on Twitter?
764. 00:51:30 Then if I recognize that this is something people care about, then I turn that into a
765. 00:51:34 newsletter, eventually a blog post, video script, whatever.
766. 00:51:37 There's different stages that this stuff can go down, but I can't just pick whatever
767. 00:51:40 I'm excited about in the moment and just make that stuff.
768. 00:51:45 You can't do it in a vacuum.
769. 00:51:49 The point here, leaders touch a heart before they ask for a hand.
770. 00:51:54 That's hard to do in a podcast.
771. 00:51:58 The podcasts are great.
772. 00:51:59 I love them because that was the thing that gave me a seat at the table before I had any
773. 00:52:05 of these relationships.
774. 00:52:06 I would download podcasts and I would listen to people and it felt like I was right there
775. 00:52:11 in the middle of the conversation.
776. 00:52:14 I recognize now that there are people who have the same sort of effect when they download
777. 00:52:21 and they listen to my podcasts, whether it's bookworm, focused, whatever.
778. 00:52:29 I don't want to just let that be.
779. 00:52:32 I want to continue to think about what are other ways for people to connect with me or
780. 00:52:40 let's flip this around.
781. 00:52:41 Let's not put the responsibility on somebody else because he talks about in chapter 10,
782. 00:52:45 the law of connection, that it's the leader's job to connect, not the followers.
783. 00:52:50 I can't just sit here and be like, "Well, I wish more people would reach out to me and
784. 00:52:53 let me know what they think."
785. 00:52:55 I can create vehicles and ways for that to happen though.
786. 00:52:59 That's what I'm trying to do with the faith-based productivity community is just make a place
787. 00:53:05 where I can connect with people and I did a giveaway because I actually ended up with
788. 00:53:10 two copies of the laws of creativity and gave one away to somebody who answered a question
789. 00:53:18 like, "What's your biggest struggle with creativity inside of the community?"
790. 00:53:21 I love stuff like that where it's not just the cookie cutter stuff, it's not just the
791. 00:53:28 process stuff.
792. 00:53:30 It's the stuff that doesn't scale.
793. 00:53:35 Those are the things that people are always impressed by.
794. 00:53:37 It's like, "Wow, you did a video call and there were only a handful of people there.
795. 00:53:43 Was that worth your time?"
796. 00:53:44 Yes, it was worth my time because I gave more than I took right there.
797. 00:53:48 Every time that I do that to another point, I get back a whole bunch more by doing that
798. 00:53:53 giveaway and surprising somebody with a copy of the book.
799. 00:53:58 I got a whole bunch of people telling me what their biggest struggles of creativity were.
800. 00:54:02 I've got a year's worth of content ideas right there on what people want me to talk about.
801. 00:54:10 If I actually listen and so that's how leadership in the online space, I feel like that's kind
802. 00:54:18 of an unexplored isn't the right word.
803. 00:54:24 It's not something that natural application of these concepts though and it's not something
804. 00:54:30 that I hear a whole lot of people talk about, especially creators, which kind of bugs me.
805. 00:54:36 It's all focused on the metrics and how do I grow the audience and that always kind of
806. 00:54:40 feels selfish.
807. 00:54:42 I guess what I'm realizing I haven't gone through this book is that it doesn't have
808. 00:54:46 to be the more people that listen to my stuff, that watch my stuff, that read my stuff, the
809. 00:54:53 more opportunities I have to help them get to a place that they maybe could not have
810. 00:54:59 gotten to on their own or at least make it a little bit, the journey a little bit easier.
811. 00:55:05 I don't have it all figured out but I've made some mistakes and learned some lessons so
812. 00:55:09 maybe I can help other people avoid some of those same mistakes.
813. 00:55:14 I really just want to continue to think about this and this is one of my action items.
814. 00:55:20 It's very broad, just connect with people.
815. 00:55:22 I want to find additional ways to connect with people and it's broad on purpose because
816. 00:55:27 I feel like there's a million different ways that this could be applied.
817. 00:55:31 This is connecting with people in person, at church and at the day job.
818. 00:55:36 This is connecting with people in the faith-based productivity community.
819. 00:55:39 It's connecting with people who listen to the podcast.
820. 00:55:44 It's the question that I want to continue to think on and there's got to be additional
821. 00:55:48 ways and additional things that I haven't thought about vehicles that I could use to
822. 00:55:53 connect with people and I want to do a better job of that in 2023.
823. 00:55:57 This is where one of my, I have two action items and one of mine comes from this as well.
824. 00:56:03 It's not really tied to online but I get what you're saying as far as how do you connect
825. 00:56:08 in the online space.
826. 00:56:09 It's a very different realm.
827. 00:56:11 How do we connect with Bookworm listeners?
828. 00:56:16 There's really not real great ways to do that but so I'm sure we could do some work there.
829. 00:56:20 The way that I took this was with my volunteer teams because one of the ways that I was
830. 00:56:27 I don't really struggle to get volunteers on our tech teams and I think part of that
831. 00:56:32 is that I've actually got a waiting list right now now that I say that.
832. 00:56:37 Part of that is that we actually have a decent amount of fun on Sunday mornings when we run
833. 00:56:42 things and I try to make sure that that happens.
834. 00:56:45 I'm the guy that comes in and is like, "If you have a problem, I'm going to go solve
835. 00:56:49 it for you."
836. 00:56:51 Yet, if you don't have a problem, we're joking around and kidding and it's like, "Guys,
837. 00:56:55 you screwed up the audio delay.
838. 00:56:57 You can hear him talking before his mouth moves."
839. 00:56:59 "Oh, like kind of a weird combat movie way back going on here.
840. 00:57:07 This is kind of fun.
841. 00:57:08 It's like, I'll make those jokes and I'm not usually been out of shape over something
842. 00:57:13 that went wrong technically."
843. 00:57:14 It's like, "Well, we'll get it better next time.
844. 00:57:15 What do we need to do to improve that for next time?
845. 00:57:18 I'm not going to berate people over that.
846. 00:57:21 That's kind of my view on it.
847. 00:57:22 Let's have some fun while we're there."
848. 00:57:25 But one thing that I don't do is on a one-to-one level.
849. 00:57:29 I don't really connect with each of our volunteers personally.
850. 00:57:35 That's something that I feel like I'm missing out on.
851. 00:57:38 I can make this fun as a team and we can joke and have fun and all the things.
852. 00:57:42 That makes it a fun experience for everybody involved.
853. 00:57:46 I don't necessarily know what's going on in Steve's life that I could help him out
854. 00:57:53 with that's outside of this team.
855. 00:57:55 Maybe there's somebody else that I know on the team that could help him with something
856. 00:57:58 that's not connected to our tech roles.
857. 00:58:01 That's an area that I've kind of left untouched.
858. 00:58:05 I think that's a huge miss on my part.
859. 00:58:08 Reading this one, the tagline on this particular law is, "Leaders touch a heart before they
860. 00:58:12 ask for a hand."
861. 00:58:14 That's a really good way to say that.
862. 00:58:16 It sounds like his teams underneath of him, underneath John Maxwell are just sick of hearing
863. 00:58:20 this.
864. 00:58:21 He's like, "Okay, yeah, you say this a lot."
865. 00:58:25 But it makes a lot of sense.
866. 00:58:26 It's something that I feel like I need to make sure that I'm better at.
867. 00:58:29 I've got an action item down here to intentionally connect with every volunteer on Sundays.
868. 00:58:35 That is a very big task actually.
869. 00:58:37 That is not a simple thing because any given Sunday, that means I've got five, six, maybe
870. 00:58:43 almost seven people that I'm trying to connect one-on-one with in some way.
871. 00:58:49 I don't always have much time on Sundays to be able to do that.
872. 00:58:56 It's a fair commitment on my part.
873. 00:58:58 Probably means I'm meant to get here early in order to catch people.
874. 00:59:01 Probably means I'm meant to stay a little bit late, but that's okay.
875. 00:59:04 That's my role.
876. 00:59:05 I need to take that.
877. 00:59:08 Yes, I need to do that too, Mike.
878. 00:59:13 The next chapter that I want to talk about, chapter 11, "The Law of the Inner Circle."
879. 00:59:18 I'm curious.
880. 00:59:19 You mentioned that you want to connect with all of your volunteers.
881. 00:59:25 Any of them fall into this definition of inner circle.
882. 00:59:30 I guess I'll just frame this.
883. 00:59:32 Those closest to you determine the level of your success.
884. 00:59:36 There's a quote in here that I really like from Mother Teresa, "You can do what I cannot
885. 00:59:39 do.
886. 00:59:40 I can do what you cannot do.
887. 00:59:41 Together, we can do great things."
888. 00:59:44 This is a little bit different application of leadership.
889. 00:59:46 I think this is looking for people that can hide your weaknesses.
890. 00:59:53 This isn't directly from this book, but one of the big ideas around making the most of
891. 00:59:58 what you have to work with is to maximize your strengths.
892. 01:00:02 Don't try to develop your weaknesses.
893. 01:00:05 That's the natural thing, though.
894. 01:00:07 We don't want to appear to have any weaknesses.
895. 01:00:09 So I'll tend to focus on, "Well, I'm going to do this thing."
896. 01:00:11 Really, we'd just be better off doing the thing that we can do better than nobody else
897. 01:00:15 can do.
898. 01:00:16 So back to the original question here.
899. 01:00:19 Are you applying this law of the inner circle to any of the people that volunteer with you
900. 01:00:25 at church?
901. 01:00:26 Are there people there that you've specifically added to your team because they can do something
902. 01:00:32 that you can't do?
903. 01:00:33 Or are these all people who are, if we had an accountability chart, one level lower than
904. 01:00:38 you?
905. 01:00:39 It's kind of a mix, I would say.
906. 01:00:43 The vast majority of the people on these teams are doing a job that I can do and can do pretty
907. 01:00:50 well.
908. 01:00:51 That said, there's an entire team, our slide team.
909. 01:00:55 This is very basic.
910. 01:00:57 Sunday morning, somebody is controlling the words that go up on the screen.
911. 01:01:02 Somebody controls when to advance to the next set of slides.
912. 01:01:05 I am not the person you want to run that.
913. 01:01:07 That sounds like a very simple, easy to do thing.
914. 01:01:10 Don't screw this up.
915. 01:01:12 I am the wrong person for that because I do one of two things.
916. 01:01:17 I either know the song well enough that I'm just going along with it and I don't realize
917. 01:01:22 I'm not advancing the slides.
918. 01:01:24 I'll do that.
919. 01:01:25 The other thing that I'll do is that I will look at the screen in front of me and not
920. 01:01:30 the projectors or the TVs that we're using.
921. 01:01:33 On that screen, you can see all of the slides for the entire song, which is what you want
922. 01:01:38 because then you need to be able to jump between them if they happen to go somewhere you weren't
923. 01:01:42 ready for.
924. 01:01:44 But the problem is that my eyes will go to the next slide, but I won't hit the button
925. 01:01:48 to go to advance it.
926. 01:01:51 This is simple stuff.
927. 01:01:53 This is so easy and I cannot do this.
928. 01:01:57 I cannot do that job.
929. 01:01:59 I make sure that the people who run that set up for me know that they are doing something
930. 01:02:05 I cannot do.
931. 01:02:06 I make sure that they know that.
932. 01:02:08 That is an area where I know that they're filling a gap that I can't fill.
933. 01:02:13 I can get it done.
934. 01:02:14 It goes okay, but it's not as good as say Al on our team.
935. 01:02:19 I can't run it the way he does.
936. 01:02:22 As far as an inner circle, I feel like that's a little bit different than what we're talking
937. 01:02:25 about here.
938. 01:02:27 As far as these guys fill a role I can't do as well, but I also have, there's one other
939. 01:02:33 role with our video productions, he knows more than I do on that.
940. 01:02:38 He's better at that.
941. 01:02:39 He's definitely in that inner circle of that.
942. 01:02:43 There's maybe two or three people that would fit that title, if you will, for the inner
943. 01:02:48 circle for me in that very specific situation.
944. 01:02:53 I would say that there's probably at least two that fit that.
945. 01:02:57 They definitely do make it possible for our overall teams to do a good job.
946. 01:03:02 I could not make it happen without them.
947. 01:03:05 Yeah, I think there's different applications of the inner circle concept.
948. 01:03:13 Thinking about your position at my church, we've separated the sound and the audio stuff.
949. 01:03:21 Sound people don't really know how to do anything.
950. 01:03:23 The audio people do and the audio people think maybe they know about sound, but they really
951. 01:03:26 don't.
952. 01:03:28 That would be an example of I have this knowledge gap, so I'm going to bring another person alongside
953. 01:03:36 and fill that knowledge gap.
954. 01:03:39 You could do that in an organization.
955. 01:03:43 I guess technically you could do that in a family as well.
956. 01:03:49 I don't have a specific framing for the inner circle in mind, but I do have an action item
957. 01:03:53 here.
958. 01:03:54 I do when I think of inner circle, I think of the people that I'm going to let get close
959. 01:03:59 to me.
960. 01:04:01 When I say close, my personal confidence, I don't know.
961. 01:04:07 This is not the law of connection at this point.
962. 01:04:11 This is the people who just use the religious example of Jesus had his disciples, but then
963. 01:04:20 he had the three that came with him and they prayed on the mountain.
964. 01:04:25 That's his inner circle.
965. 01:04:28 The people that I'm going to let into my inner circle, John Maxwell talks about how you should
966. 01:04:33 have a list of things that are requirements for the people who are going to be really,
967. 01:04:38 really close to you.
968. 01:04:40 Again, I don't have a specific arena for what I want to define as this is what I'm saying
969. 01:04:48 when these people are in my inner circle.
970. 01:04:50 I guess if I had to pick one, it's really just a lot of the faith-based productivity
971. 01:04:54 stuff.
972. 01:04:55 This is my personal mission.
973. 01:04:58 This is what I feel like I'm here to do.
974. 01:05:02 The people who are going to be in my inner circle are going to be people who really resonate
975. 01:05:08 with that vision.
976. 01:05:09 They want to help me build that thing.
977. 01:05:12 That's where I feel like there is potential because I can't do all of the things and I
978. 01:05:16 can't do all of the things well.
979. 01:05:17 There are other people who can do some of this stuff better than I can.
980. 01:05:21 I do want to think about what are the requirements for these people who are going to be in this
981. 01:05:28 inner circle.
982. 01:05:29 He talks about John Maxwell in this chapter three areas.
983. 01:05:32 People need to be solid in before you bring them into your inner circle, which is who
984. 01:05:35 they are, what they do, and then how they lessen your load.
985. 01:05:39 I want to think about that and I want to come up with a list.
986. 01:05:43 I'm not sure that this list is going to have any sort of application.
987. 01:05:48 I don't think having come up with this list, I'm going to use this as like, "Well, you've
988. 01:05:52 got to meet all of these requirements."
989. 01:05:54 But really the intended benefit I think that I will get from this is just defining those
990. 01:06:00 things.
991. 01:06:01 Recognizing where I do need some help and I feel once I have those things written down,
992. 01:06:07 I will be able to more easily see who are the people who can and want to help me in
993. 01:06:15 those different areas.
994. 01:06:16 Does that make sense?
995. 01:06:17 It does.
996. 01:06:18 It does.
997. 01:06:19 Basically you're documenting how to build your inner circle.
998. 01:06:22 That's what it sounds like.
999. 01:06:24 Yes, yes.
1000. 01:06:26 I guess I'm a little bit weird because this is when I'm talking about my inner circle,
1001. 01:06:33 it's really like my life purpose, my life mission, which is all around helping people
1002. 01:06:39 make the most of the time and the talent that they've got to work with.
1003. 01:06:43 There's lots of different flavors of that and I don't have a specific organization that
1004. 01:06:50 I want to say, "This is all going to happen under this umbrella."
1005. 01:06:56 But that's kind of the perspective I'm going in with.
1006. 01:07:00 If your life theme, which is the term that I use, is not in alignment with mine and that's
1007. 01:07:12 like I guess who they are and the skills and abilities that you have to bring to the table,
1008. 01:07:19 what you do, if those don't have a way to lessen my load, then maybe you don't belong
1009. 01:07:28 at the inner circle.
1010. 01:07:29 It sounds harsh, but I think this is important.
1011. 01:07:33 There can be people who you align with.
1012. 01:07:38 People whose missions and purposes are very much in agreement with yours, but they have
1013. 01:07:45 no ability or intention of being able to lessen your load.
1014. 01:07:51 They can't add in a way that somebody in the inner circle should.
1015. 01:07:57 I guess going back, remembering the action item that I did of where I ranked everybody
1016. 01:08:03 in my life from plus plus plus to minus minus.
1017. 01:08:07 Adding in the process of some tractors.
1018. 01:08:09 Yeah.
1019. 01:08:10 The people who were the plus plus variety, those are the people that I would consider
1020. 01:08:16 for my inner circle as I'm reflecting on this.
1021. 01:08:20 But I also recognize that in that exercise, I never considered what sort of skills or
1022. 01:08:26 abilities.
1023. 01:08:27 Why am I going to these people?
1024. 01:08:28 Why do I feel like they are adding to my life?
1025. 01:08:31 I think there's value in identifying those things and maybe some partnership opportunities
1026. 01:08:35 that will arise from that.
1027. 01:08:39 I commend you for being willing to document this because that is not something I would
1028. 01:08:43 do.
1029. 01:08:46 One of the laws, we don't even have it on the list is around the law of intuition, being
1030. 01:08:50 able to feel your way through situations.
1031. 01:08:53 I've learned that my intuition level is very high.
1032. 01:08:57 Stuff like that, I just feel my way through it.
1033. 01:09:00 I'm not one to just let me document this and figure out how this could go.
1034. 01:09:06 No, these three people, done.
1035. 01:09:08 That's my view on it.
1036. 01:09:12 That's me.
1037. 01:09:13 I know that that is not normal.
1038. 01:09:15 That is not a common trait.
1039. 01:09:19 The concept of trying to document this just makes my skin crawl.
1040. 01:09:22 I don't want to do this at all.
1041. 01:09:23 But it's absolutely something I think you should do.
1042. 01:09:26 You are definitely the right person for that job.
1043. 01:09:30 Have you ever taken the Colby assessment?
1044. 01:09:32 No.
1045. 01:09:33 I think you asked me that about every third episode though.
1046. 01:09:35 You probably are a high quick start would be my guess.
1047. 01:09:38 I'm a high-fact finder.
1048. 01:09:39 But I guess what I'm saying with this action item is I don't want to create a process
1049. 01:09:42 out of this.
1050. 01:09:44 I want to write down my thoughts.
1051. 01:09:47 In the process of doing that, I believe there will be clarity.
1052. 01:09:52 But I do not want to create something that is an SOP for joining the interview.
1053. 01:09:57 Sure.
1054. 01:09:58 Yeah.
1055. 01:09:59 You basically want to think on paper about it.
1056. 01:10:00 Yes.
1057. 01:10:01 It might not be on paper, but you get my point.
1058. 01:10:05 Yep, exactly.
1059. 01:10:07 Do you want to introduce the next one I asked you before we recorded if there were a couple
1060. 01:10:12 laws that stood out to you.
1061. 01:10:14 This was one that you mentioned.
1062. 01:10:16 Yeah, so the next one up here is law 12, the law of empowerment.
1063. 01:10:20 Only secure leaders give power to others.
1064. 01:10:22 This is one that the corporate world doesn't really, in most corporate scenarios that I'm
1065. 01:10:29 familiar with, this is anti-operating procedure in that once you have power, you hold on
1066. 01:10:36 to it and you don't really hand it over to anybody.
1067. 01:10:39 This is one that if you're willing to give power to other people, they make you look
1068. 01:10:44 even better and it can go significantly better than you would expect it to.
1069. 01:10:50 I don't know that this is one that I've ever struggled with.
1070. 01:10:53 It's just one that I know that I've done naturally.
1071. 01:10:57 This is one of those, I don't even think about it.
1072. 01:10:59 It's like, "Hey, you can do this."
1073. 01:11:01 Even if you can do it only 80% as well as I do, I'm still going to give it to you.
1074. 01:11:06 Then we can work on making you better at it.
1075. 01:11:09 That's a view that I've had for a very long time and I do this in many scenarios.
1076. 01:11:13 I've empowered a lot of people to take stuff that's on my plate that they want to take.
1077. 01:11:17 Sure, absolutely.
1078. 01:11:18 Let me hand this over.
1079. 01:11:20 You can do this.
1080. 01:11:21 You have full control over it.
1081. 01:11:22 I will not going to get in your way.
1082. 01:11:25 That's a part of it that I think is easily forgotten.
1083. 01:11:29 People want to delegate something.
1084. 01:11:31 They will hand that power over.
1085. 01:11:32 We've heard this from how many places like delegation, delegation, delegation, like this
1086. 01:11:35 is something you should do.
1087. 01:11:38 Once you have it delegated and you give somebody the power to do a task, get out of their way.
1088. 01:11:44 Let them do the job.
1089. 01:11:46 They've got a quote in here from Teddy Roosevelt.
1090. 01:11:49 The best executive is the one who has since enough to pick good men to do what he wants
1091. 01:11:54 done and the self restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
1092. 01:11:59 Get out of the way.
1093. 01:12:01 Let them do their job.
1094. 01:12:04 This is a part that I know, again, I don't really struggle with this, but it's something
1095. 01:12:08 that I think is super important for leaders in general because you are going to hand things
1096. 01:12:12 off to people.
1097. 01:12:13 You have to give people power to do things.
1098. 01:12:16 If you want to be anywhere near successful, he's got stories here where people wouldn't
1099. 01:12:19 do that.
1100. 01:12:20 It gets to be painful and almost completely self-destructs if you don't.
1101. 01:12:25 Being willing to give up that power is super important.
1102. 01:12:30 Once you do that, let them do their job.
1103. 01:12:33 It's okay.
1104. 01:12:34 Let them have that power.
1105. 01:12:36 It's all right.
1106. 01:12:38 Yeah, he talks in this chapter a couple barriers to empowering others, which I think these are
1107. 01:12:45 pretty profound if you think about them.
1108. 01:12:48 Desire for job security, resistance to change, or lack of self-worth.
1109. 01:12:52 I think those are accurate and it seems kind of simple.
1110. 01:12:58 When you read those and then you think about, "Well, why haven't I empowered others?"
1111. 01:13:04 Because it disconnects somewhere there.
1112. 01:13:09 I don't have self-worth.
1113. 01:13:10 That's uncomfortable to ask yourself those questions, but I feel like that's John Maxwell
1114. 01:13:14 in a nutshell.
1115. 01:13:15 He does a really good job of challenging you that way.
1116. 01:13:18 The other thing I really like about this chapter is how to empower others.
1117. 01:13:21 There's five different steps here.
1118. 01:13:22 I had heard of four of these different steps before.
1119. 01:13:26 Maybe there were five in the previous version.
1120. 01:13:27 I just forgot it.
1121. 01:13:29 But I've heard people quote this stuff many different places, many different times.
1122. 01:13:34 Step one is I do it.
1123. 01:13:36 Step two is I do it and you're with me.
1124. 01:13:38 Step three is you do it and I'm with you.
1125. 01:13:40 Step four is you do it.
1126. 01:13:42 Then that's kind of where whenever this has been communicated to me, that's where people
1127. 01:13:46 will leave it because it's like, "There.
1128. 01:13:48 Now you're able to do the thing.
1129. 01:13:49 I can disconnect from it.
1130. 01:13:50 I can go do something else."
1131. 01:13:52 But that completely undermines the real motivation behind all of this leadership stuff.
1132. 01:14:01 Because step five is you do it and someone else is with you.
1133. 01:14:04 It's not I'm just trying to clear things off of my plate so I don't have to do them anymore.
1134. 01:14:08 I'm helping you so that you can help somebody else and we continue to pay this forward.
1135. 01:14:15 Something as simple as that last step completely changed that whole section for me.
1136. 01:14:22 Help me see it in a way that I had not before.
1137. 01:14:26 That's the part that is gold.
1138. 01:14:31 Let's go back to the slides team.
1139. 01:14:35 I do not train our slide team anymore.
1140. 01:14:38 I used to whenever I have somebody new come on, which doesn't happen very often anymore.
1141. 01:14:43 Whenever somebody new comes on, I don't do that training because there's a guy on the
1142. 01:14:47 team that I taught how to do it using those first four steps.
1143. 01:14:53 Then just based on timing, after about six months of him being in that role, someone
1144. 01:15:00 else was coming on the team.
1145. 01:15:01 I asked him to do the training because at that point he'd gotten to where he was at my level
1146. 01:15:07 or higher as far as how to do things in the program.
1147. 01:15:11 He took over on the training.
1148. 01:15:14 All because of that, it had this weird effect in that because he taught the other person
1149. 01:15:22 who was a peer how to do it, it opened this door for them to work together on figuring
1150. 01:15:28 out how to do things and how to make things happen.
1151. 01:15:30 They're doing things like, "I don't even understand what they're doing right now."
1152. 01:15:33 There's stuff that they're accomplishing very easily that I haven't gotten involved with
1153. 01:15:38 because it's their territory.
1154. 01:15:40 I know enough about the program.
1155. 01:15:41 I could go figure it out if I took the time, but I don't need to because they teach each
1156. 01:15:46 other how to do that stuff now.
1157. 01:15:48 I don't have to get involved with that.
1158. 01:15:51 It's because I gave them the power.
1159. 01:15:53 Here you go.
1160. 01:15:54 Make this do this thing.
1161. 01:15:57 I could get it done, but you have the time and the expertise and you're interested in
1162. 01:16:02 it.
1163. 01:16:03 Let me know if you need help.
1164. 01:16:05 I'll back you wholeheartedly.
1165. 01:16:08 Tell me how it's going.
1166. 01:16:10 I'll check in once in a while.
1167. 01:16:11 That's the part I haven't been doing.
1168. 01:16:15 That is really cool to see when you've got somebody on your team that can do those trainings
1169. 01:16:19 and can do the empowering of even more people.
1170. 01:16:21 It's cool.
1171. 01:16:22 I just sit back and watch and this whole thing just happens.
1172. 01:16:25 Even though that technically it started with me, but at this point, they've made it significantly
1173. 01:16:30 better than I ever could have.
1174. 01:16:33 Thanks, team.
1175. 01:16:34 If you're listening, appreciate you.
1176. 01:16:38 All right, should we go on to the next one?
1177. 01:16:42 The next one here, I guess I'll intro this too, is Law 13, which is the Law of the Picture.
1178. 01:16:49 People do what people see.
1179. 01:16:53 People think of military stuff.
1180. 01:16:54 Military comes up a lot in this book, but military is easy on this particular one because
1181. 01:17:00 it's like, "Who leads the charge?
1182. 01:17:02 Well, your commanding officer should lead the charge."
1183. 01:17:05 People just intuitively know this at this point.
1184. 01:17:08 But obviously, that doesn't happen all the time.
1185. 01:17:12 People don't always lead in that way.
1186. 01:17:15 But if you're willing to set the example and show people what you want done, that is so
1187. 01:17:21 much easier to follow than it is to take what they're telling you and then make that happen.
1188. 01:17:27 One of the examples I would have just personally on this one is I've tried to—and not everybody
1189. 01:17:32 does this, and I get it.
1190. 01:17:34 I'm not making them do this.
1191. 01:17:36 I try to make sure that our teams and especially the people who are going to be at the church
1192. 01:17:41 all day on Sunday, like the entire morning, like when you pull up to the parking lot,
1193. 01:17:46 you're getting here an hour before everybody else.
1194. 01:17:49 Park as far away from the building as you're willing to park.
1195. 01:17:53 I do this all the time.
1196. 01:17:54 I will park in the farthest spot away from the building because I know my car is going
1197. 01:17:57 to sit there all morning, and I'm not back and forth.
1198. 01:18:01 I'm fully capable of walking the entire length of the parking lot.
1199. 01:18:04 It's slick this time of year.
1200. 01:18:05 I'll take it.
1201. 01:18:06 That's fine.
1202. 01:18:07 I'll do that.
1203. 01:18:10 I've got a couple other team members that do the same thing now.
1204. 01:18:13 They park next to my car, and one of them likes to try to park in my spot, which is
1205. 01:18:18 the farthest away.
1206. 01:18:19 It's now become a thing who can park further away.
1207. 01:18:24 I took the truck one day and parked on the snowbank.
1208. 01:18:27 It's like, "Okay, this is the thing."
1209. 01:18:30 The reason for that is because there are many people who are either elderly, they have
1210. 01:18:33 kids, they should not be walking on ice.
1211. 01:18:37 They don't need to be walking the entire length of the parking lot.
1212. 01:18:40 If I can put one, two, maybe three cars as far away as we can, that means that someone
1213. 01:18:46 else can park closer and they can have an easier walk into the building.
1214. 01:18:50 That only happens because Joe's willing to walk a long distance to get to the building
1215. 01:18:56 because it's not a short track from the bottom of the parking lot to the building.
1216. 01:19:01 Having that example and showing people what you want to have happen, that makes it much
1217. 01:19:06 easier to follow.
1218. 01:19:09 Whenever I've got people who won't, my leadership that doesn't do that type of thing, it gets
1219. 01:19:14 kind of hard to follow on that.
1220. 01:19:17 It's set the better example.
1221. 01:19:20 Yeah, that's one of the things that he mentioned specifically in this chapter is the most valuable
1222. 01:19:24 gift the leader can give is being a good example.
1223. 01:19:27 Good job, Joe.
1224. 01:19:30 He also says that the people you lead are always watching what you do.
1225. 01:19:35 What's that saying more is caught than taught?
1226. 01:19:39 That is absolutely true.
1227. 01:19:40 The law of the picture here, this has multiple applications.
1228. 01:19:45 Yeah, it's the little things that you're talking about which are in service of the big vision
1229. 01:19:50 that you ultimately need to communicate.
1230. 01:19:53 Another thing he talks about here is that leaders are stewards of the vision and that
1231. 01:19:57 they understand that mission provides the purpose or the why.
1232. 01:20:01 Vision provides a picture or the what and then strategy provides a plan or the how.
1233. 01:20:06 This is something I want to spend some time thinking about because those are three different
1234. 01:20:11 ways of describing what I would have previously stated as vision.
1235. 01:20:19 You can paint a picture of the vision and that's just the what.
1236. 01:20:24 That's not going to be enough for some people.
1237. 01:20:26 Ultimately, it's the responsibility of the leader to make sure that people follow through
1238. 01:20:31 and take action on this.
1239. 01:20:32 If they have the what but they're not following through with it, why aren't they doing it?
1240. 01:20:36 Maybe they don't know how.
1241. 01:20:37 Maybe they don't know why.
1242. 01:20:39 But ultimately, if I'm going to take responsibility as the leader, it's up to me to fill in the
1243. 01:20:45 gaps there.
1244. 01:20:47 That is another key idea here which I have been thinking about a lot lately.
1245. 01:20:54 That leaders can afford to be uncertain but they cannot afford to be unclear.
1246. 01:20:59 That means that I may not know what the best thing to do is that's okay.
1247. 01:21:05 No one's going to hold that against me as a leader.
1248. 01:21:08 However, if I do know what needs to be done and I have not communicated the why, what and
1249. 01:21:13 how, that is completely on me.
1250. 01:21:16 People will notice that and they will disconnect from me as a leader.
1251. 01:21:20 They'll recognize a lack in leadership ability and they'll go find someone who has more.
1252. 01:21:27 Right?
1253. 01:21:28 So, that's something I've been thinking about.
1254. 01:21:29 I don't have an action item associated with that necessarily but obviously it's been challenging
1255. 01:21:36 me to step up my leadership and not just think that because I have communicated in a certain
1256. 01:21:42 way something that it has really been communicated.
1257. 01:21:45 I'm recognizing that I tend to look at things from one perspective and I need to consider
1258. 01:21:49 something from all the different perspectives before I try to communicate it to the people
1259. 01:21:54 who are following me whether that's at church home or the day job, whatever it is.
1260. 01:22:00 It's got to have more context.
1261. 01:22:01 It's got to have another dimension to it before people can really attach to it and follow it.
1262. 01:22:09 Yeah, and you always have to set the example right?
1263. 01:22:11 Like there's a quote from who is this?
1264. 01:22:13 Vijay Featherstone?
1265. 01:22:14 I don't know this person.
1266. 01:22:16 But the quote was leaders tell but never teach until they practice what they preach.
1267. 01:22:22 I like that.
1268. 01:22:23 I like that.
1269. 01:22:24 I like that.
1270. 01:22:25 That's well said.
1271. 01:22:26 Yep.
1272. 01:22:27 All right.
1273. 01:22:28 The last law that we're going to talk about here before the conclusion is the last law
1274. 01:22:34 in the book, Law 21, the Law of Legacy.
1275. 01:22:36 Although there are lots of great laws that we could talk about here.
1276. 01:22:41 Lots of different things that I jotted down.
1277. 01:22:43 But this one was interesting to me because he talks about the life theme.
1278. 01:22:47 He doesn't call it a life theme.
1279. 01:22:49 He says, "What is your life sentence?"
1280. 01:22:51 And I was kind of curious, Joe, do you have a life sentence?
1281. 01:22:55 I don't know.
1282. 01:22:57 I don't think so.
1283. 01:22:59 That's the frustrating part.
1284. 01:23:00 Whenever I was thinking through this, I was like, "I don't know what that would be."
1285. 01:23:04 I have these little short-term missions, like three, five years out.
1286. 01:23:09 I can kind of work towards that.
1287. 01:23:10 As far as a life sentence, I didn't really know what to put down.
1288. 01:23:14 If you asked me to write that, I don't know what I would put down.
1289. 01:23:18 Yeah.
1290. 01:23:19 Well, this is not easy.
1291. 01:23:21 I think that it's also easy to discredit this and think, "Well, I don't need to..."
1292. 01:23:27 I have a general idea.
1293. 01:23:28 I don't need to put in all the effort and the work to actually go through this.
1294. 01:23:32 I think there's a lot of value in this, however, and would advocate for everybody doing some
1295. 01:23:38 form of this.
1296. 01:23:40 My version of it, like I said, is a life theme.
1297. 01:23:44 My life theme personally is help people answer the question, "Why am I here?"
1298. 01:23:48 By inspiring and encouraging and teaching them to connect to their calling, discover
1299. 01:23:51 their destiny, and live the life that they were created for.
1300. 01:23:55 Then everything that I do, personally, professionally, all the side projects, etc., I try to filter
1301. 01:24:00 through that and make sure that it connects in some way.
1302. 01:24:05 I have noticed that maybe it doesn't affect the things that I would do, although I think
1303. 01:24:11 it actually does, but let's just assume that it doesn't.
1304. 01:24:16 You go through the life theme exercises, which I've actually got a five-step thing that I
1305. 01:24:21 give away for free inside the faith-based productivity community.
1306. 01:24:25 People want to use my version of it.
1307. 01:24:26 They can, but you don't have to.
1308. 01:24:28 I would just encourage you to think about what is your life in a sentence.
1309. 01:24:33 What is your theme?
1310. 01:24:35 We're recording this at the beginning of the year, so the yearly themes and the words for
1311. 01:24:39 the year, like this is a common idea.
1312. 01:24:42 Well, go bigger than that.
1313. 01:24:44 If you were to encapsulate your entire existence in a single sentence, what is it?
1314. 01:24:50 It doesn't have to be that forever.
1315. 01:24:52 It could just be that for this season.
1316. 01:24:53 It could change.
1317. 01:24:54 It could evolve, but I think, again, assuming that this does not at all influence what you
1318. 01:25:01 are doing, it absolutely influences the way that you do it.
1319. 01:25:05 I think it's a lot easier to bring motivation and excellence to everything that you do when
1320. 01:25:10 you recognize why you're doing it.
1321. 01:25:13 Again, you may have a general idea of why, but just my personality.
1322. 01:25:16 I found a lot of clarity comes from actually writing it down and saying, "Oh, this is how
1323. 01:25:23 it connects."
1324. 01:25:24 Well, that makes this thing that I'm doing way more valuable now.
1325. 01:25:29 I think that as it pertains to leadership, people can see that.
1326. 01:25:33 People can connect to that.
1327. 01:25:35 People can tell when you're faking it too.
1328. 01:25:39 They maybe won't know why something doesn't seem authentic, but they'll be able to smell
1329. 01:25:47 it.
1330. 01:25:50 I think this is a really cool way to end the whole book.
1331. 01:25:53 He gives a couple of examples of life sentences.
1332. 01:25:57 I would just ask people to think about this and to just consider the legacy that you're
1333. 01:26:02 going to leave.
1334. 01:26:03 He talks about the three different pictures of legacy, which is a clock.
1335. 01:26:06 What are you doing, a compass?
1336. 01:26:07 Where are you going?
1337. 01:26:08 Companions.
1338. 01:26:09 Who is going with you?
1339. 01:26:10 There's developing your leadership legacy, but this is habit number two, Stephen Covey,
1340. 01:26:17 begin with the end-in-mind sort of stuff.
1341. 01:26:19 I don't think there's anything super unique in here other than that life sentence.
1342. 01:26:24 Once you see John Maxwell's next step, I think that is like, "Well, what does this mean
1343. 01:26:29 for me?
1344. 01:26:30 What does it mean for Mike Schmitt's?
1345. 01:26:31 What is his life sentence?"
1346. 01:26:32 I'm not going to give you an action item here, but would be curious if people who do this
1347. 01:26:39 sort of thing, what sort of results they get from the process.
1348. 01:26:45 Everyone that I know that has done this sort of thing is like, "Yeah, this really helped."
1349. 01:26:48 But then I don't know.
1350. 01:26:50 I don't follow them around for years afterwards and see like, "Are you actually filtering things
1351. 01:26:55 through this?
1352. 01:26:56 Does it really affect your day-to-day?"
1353. 01:26:59 I can absolutely report back for me at it does.
1354. 01:27:03 And I think John Maxwell would say that it does.
1355. 01:27:06 But I don't know.
1356. 01:27:08 I want to see more social proof of this idea, I guess.
1357. 01:27:14 I would be curious to know what your process is that you would recommend to people.
1358. 01:27:21 You don't have this life sentence.
1359. 01:27:22 You don't know what this is.
1360. 01:27:25 What is that process that you would recommend people go through?
1361. 01:27:28 I was like, "Yeah, it's cool to say, 'Sure, you should think about this.
1362. 01:27:31 You should come up with what this is.'"
1363. 01:27:33 Great.
1364. 01:27:34 I'm a very tactical person when it comes to that.
1365. 01:27:37 That's a very vague task that you just threw out onto the world.
1366. 01:27:41 That's where I go.
1367. 01:27:43 I get that.
1368. 01:27:44 Okay.
1369. 01:27:45 Okay.
1370. 01:27:46 But you're also not wrong in making it vague either because it could potentially be very
1371. 01:27:50 different that process for different people.
1372. 01:27:53 Do you know what I'm saying?
1373. 01:27:54 It could be very different for different people depending on the way that they think.
1374. 01:27:58 They're personality styles.
1375. 01:27:59 Things can be very different in the way they come at that.
1376. 01:28:02 On a broad level, do you have a more tactical...
1377. 01:28:06 These are the three things I think you should do, that type of thing.
1378. 01:28:10 Yeah.
1379. 01:28:12 The things that I've gone through here for my process, the first step is to recognize
1380. 01:28:19 the moments of impact, the moments where you come alive, you feel energized, something
1381. 01:28:23 is more important to you than life itself.
1382. 01:28:26 So identifying what are those moments of impact for you is step one.
1383. 01:28:31 Step two is starting to think about your ideal future.
1384. 01:28:37 What does that look like in getting as specific as you can?
1385. 01:28:40 What time do you get up?
1386. 01:28:41 What are you doing during the day?
1387. 01:28:42 What kind of impact do you have in the lives of others?
1388. 01:28:47 Silly things, like how are you dressed?
1389. 01:28:48 What kind of job do you have?
1390. 01:28:49 What do you do for fun?
1391. 01:28:50 Where do you live?
1392. 01:28:51 Who's there with you?
1393. 01:28:52 That kind of stuff.
1394. 01:28:53 Then step three is to think bigger.
1395. 01:28:58 So what would you do if you had unlimited resources?
1396. 01:29:02 What would it look like if you were wildly successful?
1397. 01:29:04 That sort of stuff.
1398. 01:29:06 Kind of removing the limits of our thinking in terms of what's realistic.
1399. 01:29:10 Step four is identifying your core values.
1400. 01:29:14 What do you want others to say about you?
1401. 01:29:16 What are you passionate about?
1402. 01:29:17 What do you love doing?
1403. 01:29:18 Getting those codified for who you are.
1404. 01:29:20 And then you condense all of that stuff, all those visuals into a single sentence, which
1405. 01:29:25 I call a life theme.
1406. 01:29:28 So that's the high level.
1407. 01:29:30 And like I said, I've actually got a challenge for this in the faith-based productivity community.
1408. 01:29:34 If you like that approach and you want a little bit more detail and some examples, I'll put
1409. 01:29:38 a link in the show notes for people.
1410. 01:29:41 But that's not the only way to do it, obviously.
1411. 01:29:44 And I think the real value is just you walk away from reading a book like this thinking
1412. 01:29:49 about it.
1413. 01:29:50 Yeah.
1414. 01:29:51 Because if you start thinking about it, you'll probably see things, which is really the whole
1415. 01:29:56 idea behind those different steps is to get you to notice some of the stuff that has happened
1416. 01:30:01 in your life that was really impactful and helping you to recall that and ask why.
1417. 01:30:06 Well, thanks for that.
1418. 01:30:07 Because part of me asking that is very selfish because apparently Bookworm is more about
1419. 01:30:12 me than it is about the listener, I guess.
1420. 01:30:15 I don't know.
1421. 01:30:18 Probably not.
1422. 01:30:19 That is just me being obnoxious.
1423. 01:30:22 Part of the reason I'm asking is this is the time of year when people ask these questions.
1424. 01:30:25 One, and two, me personally, I've been working through this for a couple months now.
1425. 01:30:31 I'm on a pretty good track with what I do for work.
1426. 01:30:34 I'm on a pretty good track with what I do personally.
1427. 01:30:37 But why?
1428. 01:30:38 Why is that?
1429. 01:30:40 Why do I feel like I'm in a good spot?
1430. 01:30:42 And what is that overall mission behind it?
1431. 01:30:46 I can tell you on subscales what that means.
1432. 01:30:52 When it comes to the tech stuff I do at church, I can walk you through some of our missions
1433. 01:30:56 and what we're shooting for and why on that.
1434. 01:31:00 That's the tech department that doesn't mean it's Joe.
1435. 01:31:04 Those are two different arenas.
1436. 01:31:06 What I do and the way that I come at that can be very different than what we're doing
1437. 01:31:12 is a tech department because it would be much bigger than that.
1438. 01:31:16 That's okay.
1439. 01:31:17 But what does that mean?
1440. 01:31:18 Now, I'm saying that knowing I'm collecting a bank of these questions, knowing that at
1441. 01:31:22 some point in probably the next month, month and a half, I'm probably going to do a personal
1442. 01:31:26 retreat of some sort.
1443. 01:31:27 I know you've preached this for years.
1444. 01:31:29 I'm not putting this as an action item at this point because I'm not quite there.
1445. 01:31:34 But at some point I need to sit down, take a day or two, and just work through all these
1446. 01:31:38 questions.
1447. 01:31:39 It's going to be painful, it's going to be hard, and that's part of the point.
1448. 01:31:47 That's something I need to do and I've not taken the time to do that.
1449. 01:31:50 I feel like that's a part that I'm missing right now because it feels like, "Yeah, my
1450. 01:31:54 day to day and my week to week, great solid on that."
1451. 01:31:58 The next year, I kind of know that you get me to five years and I can make some guesses
1452. 01:32:04 three to five years, sure.
1453. 01:32:07 Ten years out, no clue.
1454. 01:32:10 But that doesn't mean that it's going to come true because you put together that ten
1455. 01:32:15 year.
1456. 01:32:16 I'm not that naive.
1457. 01:32:17 But at the same time, I don't have that overarching drive behind it.
1458. 01:32:23 Does that make sense?
1459. 01:32:25 Yes, yes it does.
1460. 01:32:27 Yeah, I don't want to spend too much time talking about this, but that is where the exciting
1461. 01:32:33 stuff happens, honestly, is the further out that you go.
1462. 01:32:36 Because five to ten years, you could pick pretty much anything and you could completely
1463. 01:32:43 change your life in five to ten years.
1464. 01:32:46 We vastly underestimate what we're capable of in the long term and we overestimate what
1465. 01:32:53 we're capable of in the short term.
1466. 01:32:57 That's really the value of having those five to ten year goals.
1467. 01:33:02 It's not really a goal.
1468. 01:33:04 It's going to change, but it is a yard marker.
1469. 01:33:08 It's a point in the horizon that you're aiming for.
1470. 01:33:11 You don't have to have the blueprint.
1471. 01:33:15 You just need the compass.
1472. 01:33:17 You got to know I'm going in this direction.
1473. 01:33:19 And then you can fill in the blanks with the details as you go.
1474. 01:33:23 So the blueprint, I love that analogy because you're not going to sit down and start building
1475. 01:33:28 a house unless you have the blueprints and you've figured out all that stuff.
1476. 01:33:32 But that is a terrible approach to project management for things that you want to do
1477. 01:33:37 by the end of your life.
1478. 01:33:39 You just got to figure out what the next thing is and then do the next thing and then
1479. 01:33:45 do the next thing.
1480. 01:33:46 You take a step forward and then the next step becomes clear.
1481. 01:33:49 Cool.
1482. 01:33:50 We should probably go on to the conclusion here.
1483. 01:33:54 And there's not a whole lot in this other than another action item here for me, which
1484. 01:33:59 is to take the leadership evaluation and notice you have this one too.
1485. 01:34:05 But there is a very cool summary here of different levels here, I think.
1486. 01:34:12 And he uses the term organization, but I think you could apply this to team, whatever
1487. 01:34:17 situation that looks like for you.
1488. 01:34:20 So personnel determine the potential of an organization.
1489. 01:34:23 Relationships determine the morale of an organization.
1490. 01:34:26 Relationships determines the size of the organization.
1491. 01:34:29 Vision determines the direction of the organization.
1492. 01:34:32 Leadership determines the success of the organization.
1493. 01:34:36 So if you've got a team and you've got all that other stuff in place, really the thing
1494. 01:34:39 that's going to make that team successful or not is going to be leadership.
1495. 01:34:43 Going all the way back to the beginning, the law of the lid, it's not just you, it's
1496. 01:34:47 everybody else that's connected to you, whether they are above or below you, I would argue
1497. 01:34:52 on the chain of command or the accountability chart.
1498. 01:34:55 We really have a moral responsibility, I feel, to maximize our leadership ability.
1499. 01:35:03 Whether or not you come from the same religious background is irrelevant.
1500. 01:35:09 If you are here on this earth and there is breath in your lungs and you care about personal
1501. 01:35:15 development at all, you care about productivity at all, Chris Bailey, author of a book that
1502. 01:35:22 we're going to be covering shortly, spoiler alert, said that people are the reason for
1503. 01:35:26 productivity.
1504. 01:35:27 I really believe that.
1505. 01:35:29 If you're just focusing on yourself, your vision is too small, your impact is going to
1506. 01:35:34 be minimal and you're not going to have any sort of legacy that you are going to leave.
1507. 01:35:39 What a miserable existence.
1508. 01:35:41 At least for me, that's not going to do it for me.
1509. 01:35:45 I want to know that I'm making a difference and yeah, 4000 weeks, like cosmic insignificance
1510. 01:35:49 theory, we're not going to be able to change the entire world, but we're going to be able
1511. 01:35:54 to change somebody's world.
1512. 01:35:56 That's what leadership is all about.
1513. 01:35:57 That's what creativity is all about.
1514. 01:36:01 It's about releasing the gifts that are inside of you and in doing so, you help somebody
1515. 01:36:09 else, but you also help yourself.
1516. 01:36:11 You get to a level that you could not have otherwise.
1517. 01:36:15 Then the people that you are trying to help, they're just along for the ride.
1518. 01:36:23 The real benefit is what it does inside of you.
1519. 01:36:26 I feel like that's really hard to add to.
1520. 01:36:31 This particular conclusion, it's not even two pages, it's like a page and a quarter.
1521. 01:36:37 In that page and a quarter, he's got this summarization of you need to be developing
1522. 01:36:42 leadership skills.
1523. 01:36:44 It does not matter if you are the leader of an organization or your family or even just
1524. 01:36:51 yourself.
1525. 01:36:53 There's a lot of character building here and forget all the influence side of it.
1526. 01:37:01 That's a very important part of it, right?
1527. 01:37:04 The skills and the character traits that you are going to build in developing the skills
1528. 01:37:09 behind these laws are worth it just in themselves, I would say.
1529. 01:37:17 He kind of sums that all up here in the conclusion very succinctly and shows like, "Here, this
1530. 01:37:25 is why you need to work on becoming a better leader."
1531. 01:37:29 Yes, if you live in a hole somewhere, it doesn't go anywhere, but very few people actually
1532. 01:37:37 are that way.
1533. 01:37:38 There are people around us and we have relationships and we are connecting with other people somehow.
1534. 01:37:46 The question is, how well and are you working towards this mission in your life to leave
1535. 01:37:54 this legacy and are you following all these laws that can help you do that?
1536. 01:37:59 That's ultimately what he's getting at.
1537. 01:38:01 The level at which you're going to have success and effectiveness is based on your leadership
1538. 01:38:05 ability.
1539. 01:38:07 That's what you need to be working on.
1540. 01:38:09 Absolutely.
1541. 01:38:10 Should we go to action items?
1542. 01:38:12 Sure.
1543. 01:38:13 All right.
1544. 01:38:15 I have three action items, the very broad connect with people action item.
1545. 01:38:24 Come up with a list of things that people in my inner circle must have.
1546. 01:38:29 The third one is to take the leadership evaluation.
1547. 01:38:32 I feel like the majority of the things that are in this book are not specific.
1548. 01:38:40 I'm going to apply this one in this specific situation.
1549. 01:38:44 There's no quick fixes here, which was a little bit surprising.
1550. 01:38:48 I feel like you go through all these different laws.
1551. 01:38:51 Each one can stand alone.
1552. 01:38:53 I went into it thinking I was going to have a ton of action items.
1553. 01:38:57 It gave me a lot to chew on, a lot to think about and a lot to process.
1554. 01:39:01 There will probably be additional action items that will follow up from that.
1555. 01:39:05 However, these are the three that were immediately visible to me after reading this book.
1556. 01:39:11 How about you?
1557. 01:39:12 Yeah.
1558. 01:39:13 I've got a couple here.
1559. 01:39:14 One's the same, taking the leadership evaluation test.
1560. 01:39:17 The other one was intentionally connect with the volunteers on Sunday, which I talked about
1561. 01:39:21 to some degree.
1562. 01:39:22 But you're absolutely right.
1563. 01:39:23 There's a lot of stuff here that if you have a specific area that you're aware of, you
1564. 01:39:28 could easily think of stuff that you need to do and then action items that you could
1565. 01:39:32 take, which is what we did with the law of connection.
1566. 01:39:36 There's so much that you could do that at some point, you shouldn't change that much
1567. 01:39:41 stuff all at one time.
1568. 01:39:43 Yeah.
1569. 01:39:44 You've got to be a little careful with it in that sense, but at the same time, this
1570. 01:39:48 is one that you're definitely going to have in the back of your head.
1571. 01:39:50 There's no way you're going to get around it, the 48 laws of power.
1572. 01:39:53 You can't forget some of that stuff.
1573. 01:39:57 Notice how it's being used.
1574. 01:39:58 This is the same way.
1575. 01:40:00 I'm sure some other people would have 50 action items, but that's too much to change
1576. 01:40:05 at one time.
1577. 01:40:06 It is.
1578. 01:40:07 It is.
1579. 01:40:08 All right.
1580. 01:40:09 Let's talk about style and rating.
1581. 01:40:13 I am a fan of John Maxwell's style.
1582. 01:40:18 I feel like this is very approachable.
1583. 01:40:23 Just about everyone should read this book.
1584. 01:40:27 I don't think there's a whole lot in here to disagree with.
1585. 01:40:33 I know that there are some specific things that maybe if you take them in isolation,
1586. 01:40:40 they can rub you the wrong way.
1587. 01:40:42 I know Blake had mentioned he wasn't the fan of the leaders creating other leaders.
1588. 01:40:47 Again, I'm giving John Maxwell the benefit of the doubt here just because I've followed
1589. 01:40:53 him long enough and he's got enough gray hairs.
1590. 01:40:57 But I can look past the words there and recognize that he's not, I believe, saying that because
1591. 01:41:05 he's trying to get a whole bunch of people to follow him and a certain number of members
1592. 01:41:11 to join his membership site.
1593. 01:41:15 I think at this point in his life, he doesn't need any of that stuff.
1594. 01:41:24 I think it's kind of cool that he's not even the CEO of his own organization anymore.
1595. 01:41:31 I feel like that alone shows that he's practicing what he's preaching here.
1596. 01:41:38 The guy who is the CEO of his organization is the guy who's on the Maxwell Leadership
1597. 01:41:43 Podcast.
1598. 01:41:44 I can't stand him on the podcast.
1599. 01:41:50 It's kind of funny.
1600. 01:41:51 I can see the character and the integrity that has been reproduced in him from John Maxwell,
1601. 01:41:58 to be honest.
1602. 01:42:01 Just taking this book in isolation, I would absolutely recommend that people read this.
1603. 01:42:07 I don't even know if it's the best John Maxwell book.
1604. 01:42:12 I mentioned previously the five levels of leadership and I remember being really impacted
1605. 01:42:16 by that one.
1606. 01:42:18 That one seems to have stuck with me more so than any of the specific laws that we covered
1607. 01:42:23 in this from the first time that we read it.
1608. 01:42:25 This is second time around, so maybe it'll land a little bit different this time.
1609. 01:42:31 However, I would just encourage people to go into this book with an open mind, willing
1610. 01:42:38 to be challenged, willing to look in the mirror and ask, "Am I lacking or wanting in any of
1611. 01:42:47 these specific areas?"
1612. 01:42:49 If you go into it looking at it like a mirror, it's going to expose some things, I feel,
1613. 01:42:57 some shortcomings and that's going to make you uncomfortable for the right type of person.
1614. 01:43:01 That is exactly why you would pick up this book.
1615. 01:43:05 For the bookworm audience, I think that there is value here for just about anyone.
1616. 01:43:13 I don't think it's a five star book.
1617. 01:43:17 Feels weird to say that.
1618. 01:43:19 It's one of those books that has been around forever and is really, really famous.
1619. 01:43:26 But I got through this one and like I said, I still don't even think this is the best
1620. 01:43:30 John Maxwell book that I've read.
1621. 01:43:31 I'm thinking of the five levels of leadership, but also leader shift was another one that
1622. 01:43:36 I read that was really good.
1623. 01:43:40 I don't know, I think this is one to put in the collection.
1624. 01:43:43 I don't know, it would be kind of fun.
1625. 01:43:45 You got me thinking you went through this with a group of people at your church.
1626. 01:43:49 That would be really fun.
1627. 01:43:50 Just tackle one at a time and talk about it.
1628. 01:43:53 But I don't know.
1629. 01:43:55 I guess just by the way this is put together, it's not going to go super deep in any one
1630. 01:44:00 of these areas and I feel like John Maxwell can do that.
1631. 01:44:04 He has shown restraint in not doing that.
1632. 01:44:08 However, at this point in my leadership journey, my personal development journey, I think that's
1633. 01:44:13 kind of the thing that I would want to see more of.
1634. 01:44:16 That's on me.
1635. 01:44:17 I got to follow this up with something else in these different areas.
1636. 01:44:21 In terms of the concept of leadership, this is probably a great entry level book.
1637. 01:44:26 One of the first ones that you should add to your library if that's something that you're
1638. 01:44:30 just getting into.
1639. 01:44:33 At this point in my life, I don't think this is a life changing book.
1640. 01:44:36 I think this is a good foundational book.
1641. 01:44:40 I'll give it 4.5 stars.
1642. 01:44:42 4.5 to John Maxwell.
1643. 01:44:45 Okay.
1644. 01:44:46 I won't tell him.
1645. 01:44:47 I'll let you tell him.
1646. 01:44:49 Thank you.
1647. 01:44:50 This is our little secret.
1648. 01:44:52 You, me and the rest of the internet.
1649. 01:44:54 Okay.
1650. 01:44:55 Sounds good.
1651. 01:44:56 As long as the internet doesn't tell him, we'll be okay.
1652. 01:44:59 The thing with this one is that it's not just a hero of the laws.
1653. 01:45:05 Good luck.
1654. 01:45:06 I don't think we mentioned this, but there are action items at the end of each of these
1655. 01:45:10 chapters.
1656. 01:45:12 I did not do any of these because I knew whenever we get books like this, this is going to be
1657. 01:45:17 a ton of work and I am not taking the time to do all of this.
1658. 01:45:22 That's exactly what this was.
1659. 01:45:24 There's a lot that you could get out of it if you do that.
1660. 01:45:26 I think there's a lot of self-reflection involved and peer reflection as well.
1661. 01:45:34 There's a lot that you can get from this.
1662. 01:45:36 I think there's a lot that can be learned from going through these laws.
1663. 01:45:42 My memory of going through this with a group of men was that we did deep dive each of these
1664. 01:45:48 topics and people had perspectives from a wide range of places.
1665. 01:45:54 I remember there was one guy talking about how certain things applied in a mechanic shop
1666. 01:45:59 in the same group with a guy who was leading, he was the chief technology officer for a
1667. 01:46:05 medical communications company, like massive company.
1668. 01:46:11 He's the lead CTO for that company.
1669. 01:46:14 Those two in the same group with me and we were talking about leadership.
1670. 01:46:17 It's just mind blowing the wide spectrum where these laws can be applied.
1671. 01:46:24 Having that experience and going through this again, obviously with you, there's a lot
1672. 01:46:28 that you can learn from this.
1673. 01:46:31 There's a lot of places where I want more depth.
1674. 01:46:34 That's just the nature of this particular one.
1675. 01:46:36 I'm sure that where I want depth on it, you probably don't.
1676. 01:46:40 Someone else who reads it once at somewhere else, it's just the way it goes.
1677. 01:46:44 Yet this is a 290 page book.
1678. 01:46:46 It's not short.
1679. 01:46:48 It felt short to me because it seemed like it went pretty quick.
1680. 01:46:52 That's just the factor of John Maxwell being a good writer in this particular case.
1681. 01:46:58 I don't feel like it's a 5.0 book.
1682. 01:47:01 I don't.
1683. 01:47:03 It's just primarily because it just seems like there's a little bit of, and there's been
1684. 01:47:10 comments in the chat about it, there's a little bit of puffing up again of himself and his
1685. 01:47:14 organizations that's brought up a lot.
1686. 01:47:18 I don't really know why that is or why that needs to be brought up.
1687. 01:47:22 Just what I know of John Maxwell having followed him.
1688. 01:47:25 That's not necessarily him saying, "Hey, look at me.
1689. 01:47:27 Look how great I am."
1690. 01:47:28 That's not it.
1691. 01:47:29 He's just using an example.
1692. 01:47:30 I will applaud him in that most of the time it seems like whenever he brings up his own
1693. 01:47:36 organizations, it's to show how he failed to lead them.
1694. 01:47:39 Did you catch that?
1695. 01:47:41 That was a lot of what he would bring up.
1696. 01:47:45 I think it's easy to discount that because he brought up his own organization talking
1697. 01:47:48 about it.
1698. 01:47:51 I have to keep that in mind.
1699. 01:47:53 Overall, I feel like this is a 4.5 book.
1700. 01:47:55 I think you nailed it on the head with that one, Mike.
1701. 01:47:59 I do think people should read it though.
1702. 01:48:01 I don't know that there's somebody that shouldn't read this.
1703. 01:48:04 I know that this is one that I continue to learn from it going through this again.
1704. 01:48:09 I know I've brought out my old one in the past just to reference it.
1705. 01:48:13 This one will take the place of that.
1706. 01:48:15 I know that it's one that I'm going to refer back to probably more now than I have in the
1707. 01:48:20 past just because I remember what all's in it now.
1708. 01:48:25 I'm getting in a position where I'm leading a lot more people and this actually matters
1709. 01:48:28 a lot more to me now.
1710. 01:48:31 I can see how this is going to be what I'm going to bring out of.
1711. 01:48:34 Take off the shelf quite a bit more than I have previously.
1712. 01:48:36 Yeah.
1713. 01:48:37 I think you're correct in that there's...
1714. 01:48:40 It's hard to think of somebody that you wouldn't recommend to read this book.
1715. 01:48:46 I can think of people where that recommendation would be pointless until they are in the right
1716. 01:48:52 space or season of their life.
1717. 01:48:54 That's fair.
1718. 01:48:55 That is fair.
1719. 01:48:56 That is fair.
1720. 01:48:57 That timing is everything, right?
1721. 01:48:58 A lot of timing.
1722. 01:48:59 Yes.
1723. 01:49:00 As long as your mindset is willing to grow, then yes, everybody could benefit from this.
1724. 01:49:05 If you think you're stuck in a hole, then no.
1725. 01:49:08 Right.
1726. 01:49:09 All right.
1727. 01:49:10 Let's put the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership on the shelf.
1728. 01:49:15 What's next, Joe?
1729. 01:49:16 Up next is a book called Iki Guy.
1730. 01:49:19 I love this.
1731. 01:49:21 I love that I looked up how to pronounce this.
1732. 01:49:23 The Iki Guy, I-K-I-G-A-I.
1733. 01:49:26 This is the Japanese secret to a long and happy life.
1734. 01:49:28 This is by Ekto Rogarcia and French Sask Morales.
1735. 01:49:33 Mariahs, something like that.
1736. 01:49:34 I'm sure I'm butchering that.
1737. 01:49:37 If you remember the old Venn diagrams that we've talked about, this is a Japanese term
1738. 01:49:42 that we don't really have an English equivalent to.
1739. 01:49:46 It's where you've got this four-circaled Venn diagram, what you love, what the world
1740. 01:49:50 needs, what you can be paid for, and what you are good at.
1741. 01:49:54 The intersection of those four circles is Iki Guy.
1742. 01:49:58 That's what it refers to.
1743. 01:50:00 Interesting.
1744. 01:50:01 And there are chapters in here that are pulling out Japanese stories and recommendations on
1745. 01:50:06 how to have a long and happy life in that little tiny subset of those four circles.
1746. 01:50:12 That's what this is about.
1747. 01:50:14 So it should be good.
1748. 01:50:15 It's kind of a short one, but it'll be good.
1749. 01:50:17 All right.
1750. 01:50:18 And then what'd you pick?
1751. 01:50:20 After that, we are going to read How to Call Me Your Mind by Chris Bailey.
1752. 01:50:25 Friend of the show, Chris Bailey.
1753. 01:50:26 Okay.
1754. 01:50:27 I forget what episode it was.
1755. 01:50:29 We covered the productivity project, I think, and we interviewed Chris.
1756. 01:50:34 Yep.
1757. 01:50:35 And he talked about how he writes all his books and text-set it with his mechanical keyboard.
1758. 01:50:40 Yep.
1759. 01:50:41 So you should go check out that episode in the meantime.
1760. 01:50:45 But How to Call Me Your Mind is his latest book.
1761. 01:50:48 It has just been released as we record this.
1762. 01:50:52 And I have read the whole thing already.
1763. 01:50:54 Oh, Cheater.
1764. 01:50:56 Yes.
1765. 01:50:57 As it could be a fun one, Chris's career trajectory, I feel, is very much in line with our own
1766. 01:51:07 evolution of the Bookworm podcast and just our thoughts on productivity.
1767. 01:51:12 I mean, his first book was The Productivity Project.
1768. 01:51:14 It was all the experiments on himself, right?
1769. 01:51:16 And then the next one was Hyper Focus.
1770. 01:51:19 And now this one is How to Call Me Your Mind.
1771. 01:51:22 And really, it's about intentionality, disconnecting from the distractions and all the noise.
1772. 01:51:30 I can tell you what it is not.
1773. 01:51:31 It is not a manual on mindfulness meditation, which is kind of what I was thinking because
1774. 01:51:37 I know Chris.
1775. 01:51:39 And I know that that's a big part of his story.
1776. 01:51:41 But there's a whole big section in here on analog versus digital.
1777. 01:51:45 And this is going to be a fun conversation.
1778. 01:51:48 So what you're saying is he listens to Bookworm and then he writes books about the themes
1779. 01:51:51 that we're currently covering.
1780. 01:51:53 So what we're doing?
1781. 01:51:55 Sure.
1782. 01:51:57 I think more we're following him than he's following us.
1783. 01:52:01 Oh, OK, OK, I got it.
1784. 01:52:02 I got it.
1785. 01:52:03 You want to frame it that way?
1786. 01:52:04 That's cool.
1787. 01:52:05 It's on how you view the world.
1788. 01:52:07 Yep.
1789. 01:52:08 Oh.
1790. 01:52:09 Genny Getbooks.
1791. 01:52:10 I do.
1792. 01:52:11 It's a little bit of a weird one to mention even, but it's called Game Bird Breeders Handbook
1793. 01:52:16 by Alan Woodard.
1794. 01:52:18 This is a weird one to bring up, but I've been going through a lot of it because I'm
1795. 01:52:22 in the middle of putting together a new quail venture.
1796. 01:52:26 I'm going to start raising quail at the house and we've got chickens and a handful of other
1797. 01:52:30 things.
1798. 01:52:31 So I wanted to put quail in the mix of that.
1799. 01:52:33 So I've been going through this book about how to manage genetics and breeding stock and
1800. 01:52:38 all sorts of stuff for quail because I'd love to raise quail, but that's eaten up the extra
1801. 01:52:44 book time I've had lately.
1802. 01:52:46 So once we get into Iki Guy, I'm probably going to have a second or third one on top
1803. 01:52:50 of that.
1804. 01:52:51 So here we go.
1805. 01:52:52 Yeah.
1806. 01:52:53 That's an oddball book for you.
1807. 01:52:54 How about you?
1808. 01:52:55 That is.
1809. 01:52:57 I am finishing up a book that I think I probably mentioned previously, but I have not had a
1810. 01:53:02 chance to finish and I am reading right now the Culture Fix by Will Scott, who is somebody
1811. 01:53:09 that I met at an organization, an organization event done in Milwaukee, an entrepreneurs
1812. 01:53:17 organization event.
1813. 01:53:18 So he works with organizations specifically on building solid culture, not just core value
1814. 01:53:29 type stuff, life theme sort of a thing.
1815. 01:53:33 He gets into like the specifics and the tactics and things like that too, but this was a book
1816. 01:53:39 that he gave me when I met him.
1817. 01:53:41 So I am going to finish this one.
1818. 01:53:44 Cool.
1819. 01:53:45 Cool.
1820. 01:53:46 That's all we got for today though.
1821. 01:53:48 So thank you to everyone who has made it to the end.
1822. 01:53:53 Thank you to the people who have joined the live recording.
1823. 01:53:56 You can do that yourself by going to youtube.com/bookwormfm.
1824. 01:54:03 Thank you specifically to the Bookworm Club Premium members who help us keep the lights
1825. 01:54:07 on by contributing five bucks a month or 50 bucks a year.
1826. 01:54:10 In addition to our gratitude, you do get a couple of perks.
1827. 01:54:14 When you join the Bookworm Premium Club, you get access to the Mind Node files.
1828. 01:54:20 I take these crazy Mind Map notes of all the books that we read and I upload those to the
1829. 01:54:24 club in both PDF and Mind Node format.
1830. 01:54:27 So you can download those.
1831. 01:54:28 You get access to Bookworm Wallpaper, which is a 4K wallpaper and a couple of gapbook
1832. 01:54:36 episodes that Joe recorded back in the day.
1833. 01:54:39 But the big thing is that you're supporting us and you're helping us to continue to do
1834. 01:54:42 this podcast.
1835. 01:54:43 So we really appreciate everyone who is willing to throw a couple bucks our way to help us
1836. 01:54:49 keep this thing going.
1837. 01:54:50 And if you are wanting to join, you can do so at bookworm.fm/membership.
1838. 01:54:57 And if you're one of these amazing people who reads along with us, pick up IkiGuy by
1839. 01:55:01 Hector Garcia and we'll cover that one with you in a couple of weeks.