There is only one real irrefutable law of leadership: Anyone who doesn’t already have what it takes to be a good leader will not know what it is they need in order to become a good leader.
And the obvious corollary: anyone who already is a good leader does not need leadership training and would be better off spending this time productively… doing something. Like have a sex change operation if you are a woman, because Maxwell doesn’t ever refer to a good leader as “she” or “her”.
Here it is — in the simplest possible terms: all “leadership training” sounds great in the workshop and works perfectly as long as you don’t let reality intrude. That’s all there is to it. The minute you leave the seminar and immerse yourself into the real world again you will find that your problems are no simpler and the answers are no clearer. And if you had weaknesses as a leader before the seminar, you will have the same weaknesses afterwards. I guarantee that.
However, a considerable number of people make a considerable amount of money trying to persuade middle managers and executives otherwise.
Almost without exception, none of these “leaders” have any real-world accomplishments: they are all preachers, essentially, or what they used to call “snake-oil salesmen”: glib speakers who charm and amuse you and persuade you that you can purchase that glib goodness itself and take it back to your place of employment and do magical things that you could never have done otherwise.
Not only are they unashamed of their lack of real world accomplishments — they sometimes seem to revel in it.
Have any of these geniuses ever actually accomplished anything in the real world? You would think a few would– just for PR value. Just to convince us that someone, somewhere actually used these principles in a real workplace with real problems and actually succeeded because of them. Just to show us that some people care about whether or not people who preach a lot of leadership actually know what they’re doing, in the real world.
Come on– do it! Just to prove– and here’s the most important thing– that the examples given in these workshops and presentations are not simplistic and unrealistic. In other words, nothing like the real problems real leaders will face in a real world.
Not one.
Well…. if you include celebrities like football coaches and Oliver North… But that sort of proves the point, doesn’t it? How wonderful it would be if you could run your company like a football team? Your team accomplishes exactly what your individual players are capable of accomplishing, and you get to credit yourself with some abstraction called “leadership” that miraculously appropriates your players’ talents.
How wonderful if you are a successful athlete– born with a gift– and people will pay to hear you talk about how you invented the gift, nurtured it, developed it, with your hard work and determination. What you have with these people is an attempt to cash in on their celebrity.
Maxwell gives Churchill as an example of a great leader. Why? Because he stood up for democracy and human rights? No. Because he defied the most efficient and powerful military machine in Europe? No. Because he was determined to win. Well, so was Hitler, and so was Custer, and Marc Antony, and Lee.
John Maxwell is at his most offensive when he tells you that the only way to cultivate effective leadership in your church is… surprise! By buying more and more John Maxwell books and video tapes. No– wait– even better! By subscribing to his various leadership clubs so that you receive something in the mail every month– along with expensive ongoing subscriptions.
It is a tribute to Maxwell’s charm, I guess, that he can get away with these blatantly self-serving stratagems in front of an audience that has paid to hear him speak! Wow. That is leadership!
It is even more wildly amazing that while telling this audience that leaders can’t be herded like cats because they think for themselves and ask critical questions and think outside the box…. he insists they all need to buy his tapes and books and videos, and they all nod obediently and scribble down the names of the stuff they need to buy from John Maxwell to realize their potential.
The real purpose of all this stuff? To make you feel entitled to your position. To give you the illusion of authority and influence. To convince you that you are really more necessary and more valuable than the people who actually produce products and ideas but don’t know how to suck up to those in authority.
The results from all this “training”? Mission Statements that consist of a platitudinous enunciation of the obvious, and Strategic Plans (a redundancy: a “plan plan”).
And I imagine that most of them probably do. They reach their potential. Just as you will and I will.
John Maxwell does not take questions. Real world issues must not intrude, because they introduce complexity that reveals the utter uselessness of most of his “wisdom”. John Maxwell does not take questions, but he probably could– because this audience does indeed look like sheep.