John C. Maxwell's Blog, page 31

Give Your Dream a Scheme

When you wish upon a starMakes no difference who you areAnything your heart desiresWill come to you.Disney offers great entertainment but lousy life lessons. You’re not going to receive a visit from a fairy godmother or find a genie in a bottle to grant your wishes.It’s not just Disney that promotes the power of wishful thinking. Motivational speakers peddle the same nonsensical notions. “If you can see it, you can be it!” “If you can believe it, you can achieve it!”People with experience in...

Give Your Dream a Beam

Where do dreams come from? What does dreaming do for a leader? How can I verify whether my dream is a worthwhile vision or a fictitious fantasy?Let’s begin to investigate these questions by defining what we mean by a dream. A dream is an inspiring picture of the future that energizes your mind, will and emotions, empowering you to do everything necessary to achieve it. Dreams inspire us because they fill us with a sense of joyful possibility. They energize us when our hope that they can come...

What Is the Most Effective Daily Habit for Any Leader to Develop?

Last year when I began writing Good Leaders Ask Great Questions, we began talking to my Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and John Maxwell Team coaches about the importance of questions, and we asked them to give me leadership questions that they wanted answered. We were flooded with questions related to self-leadership. We got more on this subject than any other. The next-largest category had less than half as many questions. Why so many? I think many people understand intuitively that if yo...

My #1 Question for the People Around Me

What’s the big deal? What I mean is, what’s the big problem that stands between you and success? Is it a person? A situation? Or is it something inside of you? Maybe an attitude or a fear? A doubt or a belief?For me, what stood between me and my goals was usually something internal. Sure, there were problems and people who made my journey challenging. But my biggest problem was usually staring at me in the mirror. Leading yourself is the most important — and the most difficult — aspect of lea...

The Most Important Person to Ask Questions

In my last post, I wrote about what I believe is the first step toward solving many of the problems we face: Asking the right questions. If you haven’t already read the post, take a minute to go back and view it here.Socrates is quoted as saying, “The unexamined life is not worth leading.” I would add that the unexamined leader is not worth following. Leaders who never take time to ask what they are doing and why they doing it are unlikely to stay on track, lead at their best, and reach their...

The Answer Is Not What You Might Think

You’ve come up against it again: that obstacle to your success or your growth as a leader that you just can’t seem to get over, under, around, or through. You’ve tried everything you know, but there it still looms, mocking you. You’re frustrated and beginning to feel hopeless that you’ll ever overcome this issue, and you don’t know where to turn next.I’ve been there. I think all of us have. Early in my career when I was confronted with a barrier to my goals, self-reliance was my guide. I work...

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

It’s often said that people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their bosses. In many cases, employee turnover is a function of poor leadership rather than the result of a mismatch between the employee and the company.Consciously or unconsciously, people ask three questions about a leader when determining how far and for how long they will follow him/her.Question #1: Do you care for me?The number one qualification to lead people is a sincere desire to help them. As the Law of Connection states,...

The Law of Empowerment

The Law of Empowerment says that only secure leaders give power to others. But what does it mean to be secure? Using the analogy of personal finance, let’s look at what’s missing from the lives of insecure leaders. This will help us better understand where security comes from and why it matters.Paupers, debtors, and hoarders lack the real or perceived financial security necessary to give generously to others.Paupers have no source of income aside from the financial assistance they receive fro...

Whom to Invite to Your Table

I am a strong believer in the power of ideas and of shared thinking. Any idea gets better when the right people get a chance to add to it and improve it. And good ideas can become great ones when people work together to improve them.What is the key to shared thinking? Asking the right people the right questions. There’s great power in doing that. As speaker Brian Tracy says, “A major stimulant to creative thinking is focused questions. There is something about a well-worded question that ofte...

Questions to Ask During a Learning Session

Larry King, who has made his living speaking to people as a television talk show host, believes that asking questions is the secret of good conversation. He says,I’m curious about everything, and if I’m at a cocktail party, I often ask my favorite question: “Why?” If a man tells me he and his family are moving to another city: “Why?” A woman is changing jobs: “Why?” Someone roots for the Mets: “Why?”On my television show, I probably use this word more than any other. It’s the greatest questio...