Posts by The John Maxwell Company
Making a Splash in a Way That Inspires Others
A boat skimming over the surface of a lake leaves a wake, or trail of waves, behind it. In like manner, people traveling through life leave a legacy; their influence ripples out through their relationships. Or, think of a diver plunging into a swimming pool from a platform high above the water. Regardless of how…
Read MoreSeeing Opportunities and Making Them Stick
A man and his dog returned home from a walk through the woods covered in cockleburs. The tiny burs had clung to the man’s pants and the dog’s fur, and it took a long while to disentangle them all. The man, Swiss engineer George de Mestral, was impressed by how easily the burs had latched…
Read MoreThink Big, Start Small
Imagine walking along an outdoor trail during the middle of a pitch-black night. You’re a few hundred feet from your campground, and you have only a small flashlight to illuminate the path in front of you. Provided you know which way to go, it would be foolish to sit down and wait for the sun…
Read MoreHow Do I Go High as a Leader? With a Little Help from My Friends
Leaders are never self-made. If you want to go to the highest level, you can only do so with the help of others. The people closest to you determine your success or failure. Among the many decisions leaders make, one of the most important involves choosing the right companions. Making the Band As a budding…
Read MoreThink You’re Ready for Success? Prepare To Be Disappointing
Leaders who transform their neighborhoods, businesses, and communities have an unshakable sense of purpose. They are motivated by a bold and compelling vision that consumes their thoughts and fills them with passion. Such a vision demands sacrifices, unconventional choices, and tradeoffs that won’t always make sense to the leaders’ biggest fans: their friends and family.…
Read MoreWHY FOLLOW A DREAMER?
Many young, aspiring leaders have bold vision, exude passion, and abound with self-confidence—and yet no one follows them. Not only do they lack influence, people find them downright annoying. Consider the biblical character, Joseph. As a teenager, he dreamed of greatness and spoke nonstop to his eleven brothers about his grandiose vision of leading them…
Read MoreKeeping Between the Ditches
Have you ever driven a car with terrible alignment? Even on a perfectly straight highway, the vehicle will drift into a ditch unless the driver constantly compensates for its misalignment. As part of normal driving, the springs in a car’s suspension system gradually stretch out, and the vehicle’s highly calibrated internal components get knocked off-kilter.…
Read MoreLive Like a King
Crowns and scepters, thrones and palaces, rulership and riches—these are the words we associate with medieval royalty. Celebrity and ceremony, elegance and style, popularity and paparazzi—these are the words we associate with modern royalty. Tattered cloth and shepherd’s staffs, a stable and manger, humility and servanthood—these are words we associate with the newborn king celebrated…
Read MoreFrom Tasting Luxury to Stopping Suffering: A Journey of Generosity
When bestselling French author Dominique Lapierre visited India to work on a new book, he wanted to travel in style. So he purchased a silver-and-black Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, and had the luxury car shipped to him in Mumbai. He crisscrossed the Indian subcontinent in the vehicle while researching and writing Freedom at Midnight. The book’s…
Read MoreAbundance: A Generous Helping
What makes a person generous? The answer is abundance. However, we misunderstand abundance if we think of it in terms of “having a lot.” In fact, as Ken Stern of The Atlantic reported in March 2013: “One of the most surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity in America is that the people who can…
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