Developing The Leaders Around You How To Help Others Reach Their Full Potential

Rating:
Summary: Despite a glut of leadership books, this one is excellent
Review: Books on leadership are a dime a dozen these days, and often they start blending together. However, John Maxwell has put together some great insights into leadership that are often taken for granted or not well described.

The book starts with a solid question for any leader; "Am I Raising up Potential Leaders?". What makes this focus important is the fact that too often leaders focus on leading for results, not for future leadership. An important distinction.

Another aspect of the book looks at the ripple effects of leaders. True leaders are able to attract potential leaders because; Leaders think like them; Leaders express feelings that other leader's sense; Leaders create an environment that attracts potential leaders; Leaders are not threatened by people with great potential. The author lays out what happens when strong leaders are not selected. They in turn hire people with less leadership skills than they have, and so on. The organization as a whole suffers as a result of this domino effect.

Leaders who mentor potential leaders multiply their effectiveness. While this sounds simple, it is rare. "There is no success without a successor" (Page 11). Leaders take others with them, or they are not true leaders but mere managers. Delegation is the most powerful tool a leader has. (Page 159) However, if delegation is so important then why do some leaders fail to delegate effectively? Some ideas are postulated here; Insecurity; Lack of Confidence in Others; Lack of Ability to Train Others; Lack of Time; etc. In my experience the most common of these aspects is a lack of confidence, as many so called leaders never take the final step of "giving complete authority" to others. This derails success and future potential. I find that this is the most common weakness of leaders in corporate America, who in turn should not be considered leaders, but rather just people with higher titles.

Overall, this is a very good book. The author asserts that leadership is both a combination of tactical choices and personal character, with the latter being the more important. A great book, easy to read, with some assessments and other tools included. This book will benefit anyone who wants to enable success in their organization through leadership.


Rating:
Summary: A treasure trove of material
Review: I consistently find John Maxwell's material helpful in my own development. He has loads of experience and insight. The idea that people most often fail because they have not been well led is very convicting to me. It motivates me to work toward steady improvement in my leadership skills. My only criticism of Mr. Maxwell's book is that can be overwhelming--there is so much material that it can be difficult to digest. I had to go back and prioritize what I wanted to implement.

Rating:
Summary: Great Guide for Life and Leadership
Review: I really enjoyed this book, it was very well written and funny. I love the added stories and comic relief it provides. I would reccommend this to anyone who is a coach or a boss in the workplace. It is a top reference for leadership and how to be successful with it. I will use this book for a long time. The only thing that might be a concern is that the author is a preacher and he uses references to God sometimes. Might be a turn off for some, but it didnt bother me at all. He is an excellent writer and knows what he is talking about...

Rating:
Summary: Great Guide for Life and Leadership
Review: I really enjoyed this book, it was very well written and funny. I love the added stories and comic relief it provides. I would reccommend this to anyone who is a coach or a boss in the workplace. It is a top reference for leadership and how to be successful with it. I will use this book for a long time. The only thing that might be a concern is that the author is a preacher and he uses references to God sometimes. Might be a turn off for some, but it didnt bother me at all. He is an excellent writer and knows what he is talking about...

Rating:
Summary: Maxwell's Anecdotal Style Makes This an Enjoyable Read
Review: John C. Maxwell has made a name for himself as an authority on leadership, landing on bestseller lists in both the Christian and general markets. That's quite an accomplishment, and it's one he has legitimately earned. In addition to writing more than two-dozen books, he has established several organizations geared toward training and equipping leaders and has developed numerous ancillary products like tape series, handbooks and manuals, and curriculum materials. In short, he's an expert in his field and one of the best communicators out there.

That said, you should know that Maxwell mines the wealth of information and resources he has amassed and recycles it all to create new books --- which means that one Maxwell book often overlaps into another one, which overlaps into another one, and so on. Longtime readers of Maxwell are well aware of this, having discovered a significant amount of familiar material in the context of information that's genuinely new. He's often criticized for this, but he still manages to sell a whole lot of books, so I suspect it isn't as much of a problem as his critics would like to believe.

In DEVELOPING THE LEADERS AROUND YOU, Maxwell provides both inspirational and practical assistance for leaders who are committed to helping others reach their leadership potential. In trademark Maxwell style, the author gets his point across by making the most of reader-friendly features like assessment tests, charts, cartoons, sports analogies, and mnemonic devices like original acronyms (such as RISE, Rewards Indicating Staff Expectations). He also sprinkles the text with well-chosen quotations --- some profound, some funny, but all of them relevant to the topic at hand.

One of the things I like most about this book is its helpfulness to people outside of the business community. It's especially appropriate for CEOs and other leaders like pastors, but many of the principles and practical tips can be applied to people in all walks of life who supervise (or even parent) others. That's because at the heart of each principle is the priority Maxwell places on building strong relationships and learning to relate to people in a healthy and positive way. Another strength is that it is a stand-alone volume; there's no need to be familiar with any of Maxwell's previous works to benefit from this one.

Here's an example of what you can expect to find, from a chapter on a lifelong commitment to developing potential leaders. In addition to straight text, Maxwell offers a chart defining the distinctions among nurturing, equipping and developing others; three specific questions designed to determine the potential leader's motivation; an example of a practical plan for personal growth; a description of the four steps it takes for someone to adopt a new idea and adapt to new situations; several mnemonic devices, including the IDEA grid (Instruction, Demonstration, Exposure, Accountability); 10 guidelines for positive confrontation; and an analysis of the six levels of leadership growth. Clearly, this is an author who covers all the bases.

Anyone who has read Maxwell or sat through one of his many speaking engagements knows that he has a reputation for excelling in communicating his ideas. (I've actually attended several after-lunch Maxwell sessions, and I did not fall asleep. This is something of a record and high praise indeed.) With DEVELOPING THE LEADERS AROUND YOU, that reputation remains intact. His casual, anecdotal style makes this an enjoyable read --- not bad for a topic that could easily produce the opposite result.

--- Reviewed by Marcia Ford

Rating:
Summary: Developing the leaders around you/Developing the leader
Review: The basic premise of this book is that you can multiply the efficiency of your organization by devoting time to developing the potential leaders around you. The idea is that once you commit to developing potential leaders, they in turn become leaders who can develop other leaders, and as the number of leaders grows, productivity increases. The book provides guidelines as to how to identify those individuals who have the potential for leadership, and then gives instruction on how to develop them. The guidelines and instruction Maxwell gives can be summarized as follows: choose the individuals who are the most willing to grow and learn new things as your potential leaders, and grow them by investing time in them, empowering them for success by delegating wisely and providing counsel. Maxwell views the development as a nurturing process, very relationally based. His ideas are sound (though I have oversimplified them here in the interest of brevity), and his examples and descriptions thorough. There is a somewhat general nature to his examples in some cases, mostly because the book is written for leaders of all types (coaches, supervisors, CEOs, parents...) and it is meant to be universal in scope. The book does contain a wealth of information, (I must have marked 10-12 pages in order to refer to them later) and gives the reader an opportunity for self-assessment with a questionnaire. Additionally, the universal quality of his principles enables individual application to unique situations, which is perhaps the most valuable quality of this fine book.

Rating:
Summary: Representative Maxwell
Review: There is nothing original in this book but, as with other books produced by Maxwell, it is well-organized and well-written. Also timely. Maxwell focuses on three key objectives: Developing leadership within one's self (discussed in greater depth in his book Developing the Leader Within You), developing leadership within associates, and thereby maximizing the potential of all human assets within any organization, regardless of its size or nature. Maxwell has a tendency to re-cycle essentially the same ideas from one book to the next but all of them are sound. My own opinion is that the scope and depth of Noel Tichy's The Leadership Engine are greater and hence more valuable than Maxwell's in this volume. However, not damning with faint praise, this is a book which will probably be well-received by middle managers who are encouraged to read it by their supervisors. As for those supervisors, I think the severely limited time available to them for discretionary reading is best allocated elsewhere. My own recommendations to them include the aforementioned book by Tichy, Hamer's The Agenda, Buckingham and Coffman's First, Break All the Rules, O'Toole's Leading Change, Fitz-enz's The ROI of Human Capital, and The Essential Drucker.

Rating:
Summary: Effective Teamwork
Review: This book is what I consider the second step in developing an awesome team (the first being "Developing The Leader Within You"). Maxwell ignites an inner pep-rally that will motivate you to surround yourself with "leaders" to strengthen your goal as leader. As he says, "A leader thinking he's leading with no one following is simply taking a walk." So get this book and get a clue!

Rating:
Summary: Teacher & Engineer
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever read in term of the leadership development.