As you probably know, John Maxwell is one of my personal favorites in the field of developing and improving yourself as a leader. Here are some of my notes from reading his books and his newsletters over the years.
His concepts were written in a general format that applies to any area and I have adapted them to basketball coaching and basketball programs. I use all of them to measure myself, but there are several thoughts that you can share with your assistants and your players.
1. Most victories in life are achieved through small wins sustained over a long period of time.
2. Set up a thinking schedule and put it on your calendar. He suggests half a day every two weeks. I think most of us would be better suited for 20-30 minutes a day. Think on paper, at your computer, or with a digital recorder. The goal of thinking is to improve your actions and your results.
3. Most people who are successful, find that their greatest success was achieved just beyond the point where they were convinced that their idea was not going to work.
4. You measure a leader by influence, nothing more, nothing less.
5. Regardless of how well you do your job and how smoothly your program runs, there will always be conflict and there will always be tough calls to make because you can’t please everyone.
6. People have to buy into the leader first before they will buy into the vision.
7. To add growth lead followers, to multiply growth, lead leaders.
8. Your leadership ability determines your effectiveness. Measuring leadership ability on a scale of 1-10, a leader will only attract others with lower levels of leadership ability. So if a leader is a 7, she will only attract people to her organization who are 6s or less in terms of leadership ability. The more we can improve ourselves as leaders, the better leaders we will attract to our organization.
9. Your life today is a result of your thinking from yesterday.
10. What you think leads to what you believe. What you believe leads to what you expect. What you expect changes your Attitude. Your attitude changes your behavior. Your behavior changes your performance.
11. One major difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.
12. We should be talking to ourselves rather than listening to ourselves. Listening is passive and talking is active. When we are discourages, uninvited thoughts come into our minds and start talking to us and we listen to them rather than talking to them.
13. Another difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful people know that their behavior determines their feelings. Unsuccessful people allow their feelings to determine their behavior.
14. Believe in, serve, and add value to others before they do for you. People tend to move toward others who increase them, and away from those who devalue them.
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