With over 1,000,000 copies sold and featured as a New York Best Selling Author, Dr. Maxwell is an internationally recognized leadership expert and speaker. This book shares timeless principles on leadership that will have a positive change in your life and your career as a leader.
John C. Maxwell starts off the book by giving us the true definition of leadership. Leadership is not management. Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. Because it doesn’t matter how well you manage people if you can’t get people to listen and follow you in the first place. Leadership is also not something we’re born with. It’s a skill that we can all learn. The only problem is that most schools and colleges don’t teach us how to become a leader that others want to follow. Even at work, you might learn how to manage people or learn bits and pieces. But leadership is not specifically taught as a whole. This book is the answer. It will teach you everything about leadership from the true definition to the many must-have traits so that you can rise above being just a manager, to becoming a true leader.
Before reading the book, what I thought about leadership is managing people. Yet, it is half true. Leadership is influencing others to do things for the organization’s victory. When we are not in the position, it’s hard for us to tell how it feels to be a leader. We are just critiques to that of a leader. All we see are faults and shortcomings, we expect leaders to be perfect when we aren’t perfect ourselves. But this book actually tells us that even when we are not yet in the position, we can develop our hidden potentials. It is somewhat a book that guide us or prepare us for the future time. It is indeed difficult to lead when we know nothing about it. Yet, sometimes there are leaders who are not a leadership book reader but are also good leaders. Perhaps they learn as they do. They just face the challenges as it comes, experimenting on what ways to be done and getting what’s most effective for future use.
They say that when you are not a born leader, you cannot lead. This isn’t true because leading can be learned. Others will say that since they are longer in the organization, they can lead. But not all seniors are good leaders. There are young employees who have what it takes to be a good leader. Sometimes, they think that since they have more experience than others they can easily be a leader. And some others might think that, only when they get the position they will start developing as a leader.
And of course, on your journey to becoming a leader, Maxwell teaches us to become a better person in general. One big take away for me was the principle of how we must assume that people are naturally motivated. It follows then, that the secret to helping people stay motivated is to get rid of things in the work environment that causes them to become unmotivated.
This book Developing the Leader Within You 2.0 is way different with another book of Maxwell published in 2008. Back then, what I know about leadership is that it must come from the top. But in his book entitled “360-degree Leader”, it says that leadership must not just come from the top, in all levels of the organization everyone can be a leader. A 360-degree leader has a boss, has colleagues, and has subordinates. Meaning you are in the middle of the organization. They say that when they are not on top, they are not leader; it will lead them in doing bad things towards their leader or else not doing well for their position at all. Because they might think that if they do good, the credits will just go to the leader. And they will not be on the lime light.
All of us are leaders, even in a small setting like in the class, we are leaders. We are leading our students. If only our leaders now would possess the attitude of a 360-degree leader, Philippines would be a better country. Another question would be: is there anyone possessing it? Or it was just the ideal type of being a leader? And if there is, who has the capacity to evaluate him? Who knows that he does?
Just and fair leader is very ideal but being like that will trigger others to take advantage of us. Then what’s the right thing to do? Or another thing is, the leader may be good but his subordinates will do otherwise. This is actually the real scene in Philippine politics.
If you’re working at a job or in a career that requires strong people skills, this book Developing the Leader within You 2.0 is definitely for you. To be honest, you don’t even need to be a leader or a manager to read this book. Developing The Leader Within You reviews simple but powerful strategies that you can apply to achieve your goals in getting there a lot quicker. I would also recommend this to entrepreneurs who have employees or hire outsources. A lot of entrepreneurs have used this exact book to create a following and learned how to treat and lead them.
This book is well written since the author of this book is an expert. Who else is more knowledgeable than someone who is in the field for how many years and has taught thousands of people on the job or on leadership? Especially for PhD students like us, this book is a must read. It is worth your money and investment.