April 3, 2020

5 Levels of Leadership & Why Experience Isn’t The Best Teacher| John Maxwell on The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish

Check out The Knowledge Project Episode Page & Show Notes

Key Takeaways

• Leadership is influence and everybody has influence, therefore, everyone is a leader in one form or another
  • “Leaders are not made in a day, they’re made daily”
• “You can’t grow yourself unless you know yourself” – John Maxwell
  • You have to be aware of who you are and what you could become
• Success is all about Me but Significance is all about We
  • Success: Improving your life
  • Significance: Improving the lives of others
    • “I know a lot of successful people that aren’t happy. I mean, they have a lot of stuff, but they’re not happy. I’ve never known a person that committed to significance which is adding value intentionally to others on a consistent basis…that wasn’t happy.”  – John Maxwell
• Successful people do four things really well: 
  • 1) They have good relationships: “People won’t go along with you if they aren’t getting along with you” – John Maxwell
  • 2) They can mobilize teams and empower their people
  • 3) They maintain a positive attitude during tough times
  • 4) They influence others and know how to lead people
• Experience isn’t the best teacher–if experience were the best teacher, then everybody would be getting better as they got older 
  • A lot of people go through experiences and they learn nothing
    • “I think evaluated experience is the best teacher. I think after the experience, we pull ourselves away and ask ourselves what did I learn from that?” – John Maxwell
• “To have all wins and no losses, would be a person that, in the long run, would lack character. Character is literally birthed out of adversity and you really never know much about a person till you watch them go through adversity.”  – John Maxwell

Intro

• John Maxwell (@JohnCMaxwell) is an author, speaker, coach, and world-renowned leadership guru
  • He’s written, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Developing the Leader Within You, Failing Forward and many other books
• Host: Shane Parrish (@ShaneAParrish)

Books Mentioned

• There are five levels to leadership, John talks more about this in his book, The 5 Levels of Leadership 
• John’s newest book is called The Leader’s Greatest Return: Attracting, Developing, and Multiplying Leaders, and talks about the importance of investing in their people

Leadership Advice

• Leadership is influence and everybody has influence, therefore, everyone is a leader in one form or another
  • When you learn about leadership, you increase your ability to lead people successfully
• There are five levels to leadership, John talks more about this in his book, The 5 Levels of Leadership
  • Level 1 is position: people follow you because of your job title
  • Level 2 is permission: people give you permission to lead because they like you
  • Level 3 is production: people follow you because you produce results and have a credible track record 
  • Level 4 is people development: you develop other leaders who do great things and these leaders follow you
  • Level 5 is pinnacle: these leaders often transcend their position and  their organization, and people follow them because of what they represent
• Leadership is a verb, not a noun
  • “You can’t grow yourself unless you know yourself” – John Maxwell
    • You have to be aware of who you are and what you could become
      • “Leaders are not made in a day, they’re made daily”
• John’s newest book is called The Leader’s Greatest Return: Attracting, Developing, and Multiplying Leaders, and talks about the importance of investing in your people
  • If you want your company to grow, you have to invest in the people around you

Lead Yourself Before Leading Others

• Before you can help others become a great leader, you must first become a great leader yourself
  • “If I can’t lead myself well, why would I want someone else to follow me” – John Maxwell
• Self-confidence can and should be developed
• Improving your life is a process: “There’s no quick way to the top and it’s an uphill steady climb”  – John Maxwell
  • Every day is an opportunity to get better, consistency compounds but it takes time
• Replace the confidence given to you by affirmations with accomplishments and you will be much more confidant 
  • “The more I tell a person how good they are without them proving it to themselves, the more those words lack meaning and lack influence” – John Maxwell

Success, Significance & More

• Success is all about Me but Significance is all about We
  • Success: Improving your life
  • Significance: Improving the lives of others
    • “I know a lot of successful people that aren’t happy. I mean, they have a lot of stuff, but they’re not happy. I’ve never known a person that committed to significance which is adding value intentionally to others on a consistent basis…that wasn’t happy.”  – John Maxwell
• Successful people do four things really well: 
  • 1) They have good relationships: “People won’t go along with you if they aren’t getting along with you” – John Maxwell
  • 2) They can mobilize teams and empower their people
  • 3) They maintain a positive attitude during tough times
  • 4) They influence others and know how to lead people

Experience Isn’t The Best Teacher

• Experience isn’t the best teacher–if experience were the best teacher, then everybody would be getting better as they got older 
  • A lot of people go through experiences and learn nothing
    • “I think evaluated experience is the best teacher. I think after the experience, we pull ourselves away and ask ourselves what did I learn from that?” – John Maxwell
      • Reflection turns experience into insight
• When your child experiences failure, ask them: what do you love and what did you learn?

Life Advice

• You’re blind to your blind spots, you need others to help you see them
  • “You’re totally surprised when all of a sudden you see something that you never saw before. And one of the greatest things we could do for others is to come alongside them and help them with those areas.” – John Maxwell
• Failure is not the opposite of success, they go together–”In all success, there’s quite a bit of failure…the value of failing is learning” – John Maxwell
  • You test, you fail, you learn, you improve, and test again
    • Whenever you look at someone successful, you’re seeing the end result and not the process it took to get there
• Be growth-oriented, not goal-oriented
• Have the mindset that life is difficult and everything worthwhile in life is uphill
  • No one has ever become successful and said that it was easy
    • John wishes everyone could watch a video of him speaking when he was first starting his career because they would see how bad he was in the beginning
      • “To have all wins and no losses, would be a person that, in the long run, would lack character. Character is literally birthed out of adversity and you really never know much about a person till you watch them go through adversity.”  – John Maxwell
• Your mistakes and failures make you more human and relatable to other people
• If you want to live a fulfilled life, get over yourself and help others
  • “It’s not about me, it’s about others…you’re not only your brother’s keeper, you’re your brother’s lifter” – John Maxwell

Knowledge Project : author, leadership, life advice, success
Notes By Alex Wiec