summary and notes on law of connection

A brief summary of the "law of connection" as detailled in the book "The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership" by John C. Maxwell.

To lead yourself, use your head; to lead others, use your heart. Heart before the head.

When speaking engage on a human level, don't give dry facts.

You must move people with emotion before you can move people to action.

Touch people's hearts before you ask them for a hand.

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Even in a group, you have to relate to people as individuals. Focus on talking to one person

Guidelines for connecting:

1) connect with yourself
Be confident, people don't heed the call of an uncertain trumpet.
Be yourself.

2) communicate with openness and sincerity

3) know your audience
What do they care about (instead of what you care about)

4) live your message
Practice what you preach

5) go to where they are
Physical location, but also culture, background, education, language, etc.
Adapt to the other.

6) focus on them, not yourself

7) believe in them
Do you communicate because you have something of value to say, or because you believe the other has value to add?
People care less for what they see in us than for what we can help them see in themselves. Everyone wants to grow.

8) offer direction and hope
Give people hope and you give them a future.
Do more than help others get to where they want to go.

Successfull leaders are initiators when it comes to connecting. They do not expect followers to connect to them because "they are the boss".

review: 21 irrefutable laws of leadership

If I were to compile a list of 21 skills that:

1) I have little or no natural talent for
2) I am not currently good in (having not developed these skills actively)
3) I have never considered very important

then this list would look very similar to the skills listed in the book "The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership" by John C. Maxwell.

I love it! I'm like a sailor lost at sea who sees an unfamiliar coastline looming on the distant horizon. Land ahoy indeed!

Every single chapter in this book offers an opportunity for me to learn and grow. It's as if John Maxwell wrote down a self improvement program specifically tailored to me.

In the appendices, there's a questionnaire allowing you to quantify your leadership ability. I filled it in and identified the skills that I'm best in:

1) law of empowerment: delegating work to others, making sure they can do it, and then getting out of the way.
2) law of victory: doing whatever it takes to win
3) law of priorities: making sure you are doing only the important stuff
4) law of connection: keeping it human
5) law of solid ground: be open and truthfull always

In the coming weeks/months, I'm going to be focusing on developing these skills into strengths as the basis for my leadership. Of course they're only 5 of the 21 but as the book itself also mentions, always focus on the 20% that gives 80% of the rewards.