Alright. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So I cannot tell you how excited I am to let you know that every week on Thursdays, we are releasing what I believe is the greatest series in the history of any book written on the topic of leadership. You will now get access to either through audio or video on our channel, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership with John Maxwell himself every single week, each lesson, each law broken down by the master directly through the camera or through your headphones into your life here on the Ed Mylett show. We've structured this journey into three distinct sessions to help you master these principles. Session one is your foundation,
the internal character required to lead. Session two moves into your influence,
how you connect and how you build elite teams. And session three is about legacy,
how you multiply your impact for generations.
Leadership is a discipline. It's not a title. And in every episode, I'm giving you the rep,
one clear high stakes action for you to execute that week. To track your progress, we've created a full 21 page leadership workbook.
Just click the link in the show notes right now to download the entire playbook. It's free.
Our gift to you. Between each session, John Maxwell and I are hosting q and a sessions to solve your specific leadership struggles. Isn't that incredible? So if you want us to answer your question, here's how you do it. When you click the link to download your free workbook, you'll see a section to submit your leadership question directly to John and I. We're pulling our q and a topics directly from that list. So if you want your situation navigated by John and me, get that workbook and submit your question ASAP. We've never done anything like this on the show. I'm so excited. So I hope you enjoy it, everybody. God bless you. Max out.
My education on leaderships come from one man, and it's a book, the number one sold book in the history of leadership books, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. I everybody's a leader because leadership is in folks. There are 21 irrefutable laws of leadership, but there is one undisputed
vote of all time on the leadership topic. The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership is a book to help you really become a better leader.
So leadership is one of the most discussed topics on planet Earth. It's also one of the most misunderstood.
My education on leaderships come from one man, and it's a book, the number one sold book in the history of leadership books, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership
written by the man to my left who also happens to be my hero. We're gonna get in the nitty gritty on leadership here today, everybody, with the number one expert on planet Earth, mister John Maxwell. John, welcome back to the show.
Ed, I love you, and I always love being with you, and I love when we get to do stuff together. I do too. I do too. You
are my hero, as everybody knows,
and my first introduction to you was actually this book. Yes. Did
you write it to find me, or why did you actually write the book? I wrote it to find myself.
You know, a lot of times what we write is for ourselves, and then we say, hey. This helped me. Maybe it'll go help someone else. But
I wrote the 21 irrefutable
laws of leadership. Interestingly enough, the idea came
on a golf course. You and I love to play golf. Yeah. I was playing golf with one of my publishers.
And he said, John, I just finished reading a book on the laws of management.
And he said it was a it was a terrific book.
So I said, Victor, I wanna write a book on on the laws of leadership.
And then I began to ask myself, okay.
What really makes a law? Because, I mean, you can have a good principle. You can have a good thought on leadership,
but the this the the word law kinda gives gravitas.
It's kinda like, this is kinda bigger than a principle. Mhmm. So I, first of all, developed kind of a grid. What what what would be a law of leadership? And I it has to be obviously about leadership,
but it has to be, for example, timeless.
If it's truly a law I mean, the law of gravity is it's the law. I mean, it it doesn't come in and go out with time. So it has to be timeless. It has to be able we I have to be able to
it has to fit in every culture. It has to be fit male and female. It has to fit all of that. And and it has to it has to have
positive life change in people's lives. So I began to list what these laws were,
and literally for two years,
all I did was work with what would be a law of leadership. For two years, and I I started off with about 60. I was gonna ask you. Yeah. And and just kept whittling down whittling down. And then I would talk to people like you, and I'd say, do you think this is truly a law? And sometimes they'd strike it down. So, anyway, I I after a couple years, I got to the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership,
and so I I wrote the book.
And then for three years, I went on a book tour with it around the world because it became a bestseller the first week it came out, and it just stayed there on the bestseller list. In fact, the twenty one year of fear of laws of leadership
sells as many books today
twenty plus years later,
as it did the day the book came out. You're kidding me. I it's just it just keeps
it just keeps on going. I gotta tell you on the show, you know, I probably interviewed 800 oh, going on a thousand people.
And one of the things people ask me, what do these folks all have in common? And they all of them have something in common, but the vast majority of them have told me they've read this book. In fact, last week, the last podcast that I did was a gentleman who was the president of Tesla for ten years. And as the interview was over in passing, he asked me if I knew you because you're also his hero.
And I said, yeah. In fact, I do. I consider him one of my great friends. He said, well, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership changed my life. Yeah. I'm curious. Of all of the laws, is there one that stood out to you? I kinda know this answer, but is there one that stands out more than others, or they all like children? You love them equally. Well, I love them, but, uh, not equally.
The law of the lid, which is the first one, Ed,
I put it first,
and here's why.
If if a person buys into the law of the lid and I want us to talk about it for a moment.
If they buy into the law of the lid, they'll buy into the other 20 laws. Okay. That's a fact. And the law of the lid just says how well you lead
determines how well you succeed. In other words,
the reason I began teaching on leadership, I was in my twenties,
and I came to the conclusion that everything rises and falls on leadership. And when I came to that conclusion, I said to myself, if that is true,
then if I can teach myself, if I can teach other people how to lead well,
then it'll rise. Well, now we we're we're we're taking that lid, and it's going up. And and if I don't know it well, of course, it it it can fall. So the law of the lid basically just says
that the most important thing you can do to succeed in life is really learn how to lead. And that's true in business. That's true in government. That's true in ministry.
The ability to learn how to lead because
how well I lead not only determines how well I succeed. How well I lead determines how well the people that are on my team succeed. So let's say that between a one and a 10, I'm an average leader. I'm a five. What that means
is that my organization
will come up to my lid of leadership, and it'll be a probably a four,
but it cannot be a six or seven. Because in the history of mankind,
no organization
has risen higher than the leadership lid
of those who lead it. It just doesn't happen.
Now here's the good news. You can grow as a leader. And when I wrote the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership,
I'd already written the book developing the leader within you Mhmm. Which basically says in fact, Ed, that was the first book written that said you can develop yourself as a leader. Up until that time, two things are very significant. One is people thought leaders were kinda born. Secondly
is if you go back because I wrote that in the late nineteen nineties.
If you go back,
there were no leadership books in bookshores. Wow. They were management books.
Great point. I mean, Peter Drucker, he was a management guru, and you met but what happened, Ed, was,
um,
you can't manage speed.
And so by the late by the mid nineteen nineties,
things were happening so fast that you couldn't manage them anymore. And somebody says, we gotta get ahead of them, and that's what leaders do. They see more and before. And so, therefore, all of a sudden, leadership began to be the thing. And so I said, you can develop yourself as a leader. And then in developing yourself as a leader, I began with the lid saying to yourself, if you have a five,
you can learn leadership skills. You can go to a six.
With a lot of time working on your skills, you can get to a seven. Now every every time I raise my leadership lid, guess what I do? Now I raise the room of potential for all the people on my team. So so so when you raise your lid, you raise the lid of everybody around you. And so, therefore, the law of the lid just I just said, if people can understand it and they can really learn it and they can embrace it and they can do it,
they're not only gonna help increase their ability and and the people's ability, but also one more thing, Ed.
When I raise my lid for if I'm a five as a leader, guess who I attract?
Fours, threes, twos, and ones. Great point.
In the history of mankind, there's never been a person that is a nine and say I wanna follow a five. Very good. And so, therefore, every time I raise my leadership lead, I also raise the quality, the type of person I attract because in the 21 laws, the law of magnetism is we attract who we are,
not who we want. Very good. And so I've had people all the time. They'll say they'll say, well, I I would like to have people that, you know, hardworking,
great attitude, you know, teachable, and I'm taking my little list. When it's done, I look up and say, now are you hardworking? Are you teachable? Because if you have those qualities,
people will migrate to you. If you don't have those qualities, they won't. So that law of LID helps us draw better people. It helps us it helps us improve our leadership. It's just the it's kind of like the essential law that if you get it, then now you say, I wanna learn all the other 20. Yes. Because now they're gonna help me. What all the other 20? Why they do? They help me my list. So I gotta tell you, when we started this podcast,
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So good. Let me ask you one more question about this. Because for me, obviously, you know the impact of your work, and the fact that this is gonna be on the channel on a regular basis where people getting access to these laws is just mind blowing to me. But one of the other things that you've done for me,
you've changed the definition for me of what a leader is or looks like, meaning this. And I think a lot of people feel this way. I'd like you to speak to it. I think they think they're not a leader.
I think when they picture a leader, they're picturing someone who's the CEO of a company only. Position. Right? It's a position, or they're the head coach of the Dallas cowboys. Now that's a leader. But me, I'm not a leader. Right? They're thinking that about themselves. Of course. Who how do you know if you are one? You know, when I started off,
I knew that if I was gonna talk about leadership, I was gonna have to define what I think it is. So
after much time, a lot of time,
I came up with a conclusion that leadership is influence. Nothing
more,
nothing less.
Your ability to influence people. In fact, I love that proverb. It says, he that thinketh he leadeth and hath no one following him is only taking a walk. And I there are no kind of people taking walks. In fact, I wrote a book called the three sixty degree leader that helps a person know that you can lead from the middle of the pack. You can lead up. You can lead beside. You can lead others. And the moment that we understand that leadership is influenced, then all of a sudden,
mom at home
says, wait a minute. I'm I'm a leader. I I have influence with my family. I've got influence with my children. And the reason I wanted everybody to understand that is
in our own world,
to our own degree,
Ed,
we always influence people. The moment I feel that I can influence people Mhmm. Now it gives a gravitas for me to learn how to do it. Mhmm. And so let's get rid of the leader titles and all that, and let's just say, look. Where you are, what you're doing right now matters.
So now learn to use influence in a positive way to help people
where you are right now, and you'll begin to add value to them. And once you add value to people, then I'm I promise you, they'll follow you. That's so good. You
if someone's watching this week by week, would there be some advice you would give them if they they
watch one of the laws or listen to one of the laws? Is there something that you would recommend they do as they're doing that weekly? Some sort of daily practice? Of course. You of course, you know as well as I do, Ed. If you don't practice it, it doesn't happen. I mean, uh, action is in fact, I had somebody there. They said, now what's the best action to take? And I said, any action. Would you just get going in the game? Because you and I know that it's the action that allows us to learn.
When I start moving, I find out a lot about myself. Yeah. I find out a lot about my journey, what I'm doing. So what I tell the people is, in fact, another one of the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership is the law of process
that says leaders develop daily,
not in a day. So
as you're watching this weekly,
understand it's a process. Okay? And take one at a time and practice them.
If you practice them, you'll learn. And understand this.
The ability and the willingness to take action
will give you what you need to know that you don't know now.
The big mistake people have is they say, as soon as I figure it out, I'll do it. And I look at them and said, no. No. No. You have to do it to figure it out.
And so I would take each law, and I would practice them and take it slowly and understand.
In few months,
I can promise you, you're going to be a better leader than you are right now, and that's okay. By the way,
I'm 79.
I'm still growing every day. Mhmm. I'm still practicing every day. I'm still learning every day.
And once you begin to learn the process of growth, you develop leadership growth capacity.
And now you have the ability to learn more quicker and in greater degrees because you've increased your capacity.
So start now, start slow,
but go.
Mhmm. Trust me.
You'll begin to see growth in your life. You'll find out sooner or later that you'll not go to the next level. You'll start to grow to the next level. So good. Everybody,
there I just feel so blessed that we're doing this. Yeah. I'm so blessed that you're in my life. I'm blessed that can't believe I love you. I can't believe we're doing this on the channel Yeah. Get that they're getting access to this. It's like this is like a dream come true for me. There are 21 irrefutable laws of leadership, but there is one undisputed
goat of all time on the leadership topic. Yeah. And that is this man to my left. And so thank you so much Thank you. John Maxwell for being a part of the show. It's my joy. I love you, man. I love you too. Enjoy everybody. God bless you. Max out.