Lessons from John C. Maxwell: More on Thinking and Influence

Oct 14

I just spent the last few days attending John C. Maxwell’s conference, “Day to Grow.” Below are a few points that I wrote down that I wanted to share with you.

On Thinking Time

The speakers at this tremendous event echoed a lot of what we have been discussing lately – the value of thinking time. They pointed out how good leaders see more and see things before others do. They have a responsibility to adjust their gaze and attention to see more broadly, anticipate challenges, and take advantage of opportunities first. And to do this effectively, leaders cannot be in the day-to-day grind of working IN the business consistently. Good leaders, as we have discussed repeatedly, carve out protected time to think. John Maxwell shared that his time to think is from 4:30-6:30am daily. Malcolm Gladwell shared from stage that he doesn’t allow his wife (or anyone) to call him from 8am-Noon. They each have clear times to think and work ON their business every day where they don’t allow any disruptions.

On Reading for Growth

You must feed the areas where you want your instincts to grow. If you want to be a more instinctual leader in a certain area – maybe relating to your industry knowledge or perhaps a particular skill – you need to feed that area of your life. One of the lead coaches at the Maxwell Group, Chris Robinson, shared that he reads for two things:

· he reads to further develop the purpose he has for his life, and

· he reads to solve problems in his business.

Reading intentionally is important for leaders. This intentionality is what fuels growth in the areas of your life and your work where you instinctually want to be better.

On Influence

It is no surprise, especially during the highly politically-charged climate of our nation during the current presidential election cycle, that an audience member asked John Maxwell for advice on how to influence someone with such starkly different views. John replied very quickly, “The way you influence someone is first by valuing them.” The reason why we are currently struggling to unify as a country and why leaders cannot rally people together is because of their focus on attacking the differences they have. Conversely, if we made the effort to first truly listen to the other person, appoint them with inherent value, love them as an equal fellow citizen of our country and humanity, we would find it so much easier to discuss differences. When you love someone, you can have a difference of opinion and it is okay. That is what we are currently missing – we have differences and it is not okay. We are choosing first not to love each other prior to discussing our differences. Remember that our differences don’t inherently preclude our fellow citizens from love. So, make the choice to value your counterpart first if you wish to win any influence.

To expand upon this point, Malcom Gladwell shared that people today generally don’t realize that we overestimate how different we all are. If you assembled a group of people and had them list out the twenty things they love most in this world, Gladwell bet that 15-17 of those 20 items would actually all be the same. We are all human, living in society together, after all. But the media has done a great job of focusing on those three things we don’t commonly love, making them a more contentious point of discussion than really warranted. If we just took a moment to raise more awareness around those 17 things we all love – no matter our political leanings – we could actually devote more energy to loving each other better. And if we loved and valued each other more, our influence would undoubtedly expand.

On Achieving Success

Chris Robinson acknowledged that it is hard to learn and hard to achieve success. So, he challenges all of his coaching clients to just pursue a very simple two-step process: learn a little, and then do a little. If you can just follow that two-step process and do it over and over again, you will continue to achieve higher and higher levels of success. Leadership, in essence, is teaching others how to think so you can achieve what you want. As you teach your team to think, encourage your people to learn a little every day and do a little every day. If you, your team, your company just continue doing this over time, you will eventually have learned a lot and done a lot. And that is how you continue to achieve higher levels of success.