Book: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.

I was between 3 and 4 stars and decided to go with 3 for this one.

It’s a good book, I don’t have much to complain about it. Some “laws” seem to be fillers to me, but many make total sense.

I would recommend it to someone, but reading a summary first would probably give you 80% of the value the book can bring. The other 20% will be stories and examples there.

Instead of writing a big summary, I would recommend you look for one online. Just found this one that seems to be about right.

Here is my raw notes about the book:

  • Without Leadership, a person’s impact is just a fraction of what it could be
  • If a company is in a bad situation and someone is hired to improve the situation, they always fire the leaders because they were not good leaders after all
  • Not all entrepreneur are leaders
  • Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less
  • Leadership and Management are two different things. Leadership is about making other people follow you and management is about following processes
  • Knowledge is power, but the most knowledgeable person is not necessarily a leader
  • If someone thinks he leads but he has no followers, he is just taking a walk
  • To be an excellent leader, you have to work on your leadership skills every day (Larry bird did 500 free throws every day before going to school)
  • As a leader, you have to help your team to navigate to the correct destination in the best way possible. You have to have a plan for the journey and each individual.
  • To be a leader you have to add to others, not subtract. If you’re a leader, you ARE adding something or subtracting something from your followers. Are you making things better for people who follow you? You have to answer that with YES and have a good argument to back it up.
  • Trust is the foundation of Leadership, don’t lose it
  • People don’t follow leaders by accident; they follow people they respect.
  • Good leaders do what is right, even in the risk of failure and the face of great danger
  • The interests of the leaders reflect in the kind of people attracted to the company. It’s the law of magnetism.
  • It’s a good thing that people with the same level of energy attract each other. Someone with a high level of energy will find the low-level person to be very slow and the low-level person will find the high level to be insane
  • For leaders to be effective, they have to connect with people, not be indifferent
  • As a leader or Speaker, think about others, not yourself when talking to them
  • Influence people who influence others
  • Empower people to do what has to be done, even if they will do your job. Making yourself dispensable is what make you indispensable
  • People do what people see. The better the leaders’ actions, the better the people
  • Leaders should be more like tour guides than travel agencies. They have to guide their team and show how to move forward, not just send them to places he has never been
  • People buy the leader first, and then they buy the vision. If they don’t buy the leader or the vision, they will look for another leader
  • Use the Pareto Principle for your priorities. Out of 10 tasks, 2 of them will probably bring more return than others
  • If you can do something, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to do it. You can either not do it or delegate
  • There’s no success without sacrifice (time, energy, money, etc.)
  • Legacy comes when you empower people to do things without you