Bookworm Transcripts

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So, if you remember, I said I did not like reading the last book that we covered for

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Bookworm.

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48 Laws of Power?

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Yeah, but I'm sad to report, Joe, that I did have a chance to put it into practice.

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All right, and?

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It was helpful.

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I hate to admit it.

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It was helpful.

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All right, so I've had at least three conversations about this book since we finished the recording

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and release of that episode.

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And in every case, the person I was talking to made the comment that I don't think he

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actually recommends you do all these things.

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Yeah.

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No, I am locked in on that is not his intent at all.

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But it's just how the world works and whether you like it or not, this is what you got to

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deal with.

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And once you come to grips with that and you start to think through those laws, like,

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"Yep, this happens here and this happens here and here's how I can respond to that one

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and, "Oh, yeah, I get what they're doing now.

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Okay, yep, yep, yep.

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All right, I get it.

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I can play that game."

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So, the stuff starts to pop up all over the place.

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Yep.

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So with the day job, we have had an office that we were paying for when it used to be

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a local company.

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Now it's a distributed team and almost everybody works remote.

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So we were trying to get out of a lease and we not only brought in a new tenant, but basically

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did everything.

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However, the guy who owns the building was not being super cooperative.

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So we had to employ some of the laws of power, specifically the one about doing what's unexpected

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because the person who was negotiating the lease, I had just kind of talked to them.

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We just covered this book for Bookworm and typically they want to get everything in writing

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and they want it resolved real quickly.

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The owner was the one typically who was dragging his feet and being slow to respond and then

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all of a sudden he comes back and he's like, "Okay, so here's the deal.

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Now get out right away."

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And I was like, "Don't respond right away."

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We were shut down for the week between Christmas and New Year's anyways.

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So I was like, "Yeah, just don't even reply."

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Like, "Yeah, we're supposed to be out by January 1st, but he's the one that we're in this

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bind.

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He knows that you've already told him like you're off this week, so let's just see what happens."

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And it ended fine.

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We are out and we're saving a bunch of money.

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So that was a good resolution, but I was a little bit annoyed how practical this book

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became right after we read it.

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Yeah, this is not a book I feel like I want to follow the rules on, but when put in situations

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I don't want to be in, guess what?

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Yep, exactly.

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I guess good for you, I think.

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I guess.

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Sure.

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Certainly, congratulations.

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Thanks.

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One other thing I want to mention here before we get into the follow-up, I mentioned last

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time, but I am going to be joining the focus course, January cohort.

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So if you hear this before January 9th, you can go to thefocuscourse.com and sign up

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if that is of interest to you.

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I'll be doing one of the workshops on PKM, Personal Knowledge Management, not whatever

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Blake's going to put in the chat next.

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The real question is, do you know anything about PKM's, Mike?

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A little bit, a little bit.

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I'm getting there.

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All right, all right.

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This is why you teach it, that way you can learn it more, right?

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That's the whole point.

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Exactly, exactly.

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Probably kicking myself.

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Oh, Blake.

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Can always count on Blake, yes.

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We do only have one follow-up item here, which was for you to bite your tongue.

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Did you do that?

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I did this, and I had some weird results that I was not planning on at all.

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This is just, and it came from a series of the laws of power, which was basically don't

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share more information than required, which is kind of what you were talking about with

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the situation with the office, right?

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I don't need to say words right now.

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Let's just let it sit.

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However, I've had a couple of scenarios in the office and in family relationships and

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stuff where I just chose not to share more than I previously would have.

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And in two cases, I had a coworker and then a family member.

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Each, these are completely different situations, come up to me and ask me if everything was

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okay.

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And then wanted to make sure there wasn't something wrong.

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Like, huh, interesting.

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Like, well, in fact, there might be something wrong, but I don't know the whole story and

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I don't really feel like talking about it.

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And I don't think it's really going to help anything right now.

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So I just chose to be quiet and like, oh, so what do you think we should do?

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Like, so then it opened up this whole situation where we had a chance to talk through the

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thing that I just chose not to talk about.

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And it's like, huh, I was not expecting that.

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Now I'm sure there are some other things that have gone on because I'm not sharing as much

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in some scenarios.

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I'm not privy to that, obviously, because we stopped talking about things.

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But I was not expecting it to lead to, okay, I'm biting my tongue in this particular scenario

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because I don't want to, you know, at this point I can tell it's not going to go anywhere

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so it's not worth me expanding on it.

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And as a result of doing that, I ended up in a full, like, let's resolve this situation

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and was not planning on it.

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But I'll take it in this case.

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It's worked out for the better.

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So was not expecting that at all, Mike.

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That was complete backwards from what I was expecting.

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I thought things would just die and we'd let it go.

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But nope, we're going to confront this head on now because I didn't say something.

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So is that successful?

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I maybe, sure.

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Yep, I bit my tongue and then had to talk more because of it.

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So what do you do with that?

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I guess that's successful.

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I mean, overall, the situation is better as a result of it.

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So I guess I would say that's a success.

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But I definitely talked more than I would have had I not done this.

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So maybe.

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Do you feel the tactic from the 48 Laws of Power created more power for you?

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Did it tilt the tables in your favor by doing this?

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That's a good question.

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So did you get an advantage, I guess, would be another way to say it?

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Yeah.

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So because of the fact that I bit my tongue, did not share too much in the scenario because

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of that, it put me in a position where they then came to me to ask my opinion on the situation

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and wondering what was going on, which obviously whenever someone's coming to you in that scenario,

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like, it's on me, like, I'm in control of that situation now, whichever direction it's

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going to go.

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So I guess in that case, you could say, yeah, I put the power and tilted it into my favor.

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And I would say that was a positive in this particular case because then it meant that

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I was able to choose the narrative that those situations could follow, which I don't know.

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In both of those cases, I don't think the confrontation would have happened at all were

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it not for that case.

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So yeah, I would say as far as like a power, I hate using the term power move.

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Exactly.

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A power move.

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But that's ultimately what happened and it did tip it in my favor.

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So I guess as far as the laws of power go, me biting my tongue in that scenario did exactly

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what it was supposed to do.

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All right.

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Didn't think it would go that way.

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Maybe it was the beard that was intimidating.

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Totally the beard.

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Absolutely the beard.

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If you have no idea what we're talking about, you should join us for the live recording

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sometime because Joe has a phenomenal holiday beard going on.

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I do have a holiday beard going on.

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I got a three month beard at the moment and I suspect it's going to end up at a six month

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before we're done.

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So nice.

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Yeah, Joe decided to beard it out.

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Well, should we talk about today's book?

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If we don't, we have other issues.

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All right.

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Well, we are talking today about the 21 laws of leadership.

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Now, the laws book, very different flavor, I would argue.

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This is a classic book by John Maxwell.

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Full title is the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership, subheading, follow them and people

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will follow you.

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And this was first published 25 years ago, I believe because I have the 25th anniversary

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edition.

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And this was just released, I think, of handful of months ago.

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Now you and I have both read this book before.

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But it has been a very long time, at least for me.

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When was the last time you went through this?

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I went through this.

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It would have been about eight, nine years ago.

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It's when I went through it.

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Okay.

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Yeah.

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So that's probably about when I first read it.

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This 25th anniversary edition has a lot of additions to it.

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I don't have the old version to compare it to, but I can tell you from the preface he

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talks about how he's expounded on some of these different laws, added more context, added

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more stories.

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There's quite a bit, especially in the last half of the book it seemed, that dealt with

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these laws being applied during the pandemic.

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So I feel like this is not one of those old classic books that you have to translate.

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I feel like the updated version definitely speaks to the world that we find ourselves

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in.

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And it's kind of interesting to me, just generally speaking before we get into the actual laws

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here, that a lot of the stuff that he was talking about with the COVID-19, the tone that

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he spoke about some of these things could come off a little bit like I told you so,

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sort of a thing.

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But it doesn't read that way.

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It's not negative, controlling, corrective in any way.

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It's really just trying to inspire people, I think, to strive for these leadership principles

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and get to a high level themselves so they can make a positive impact in the lives of

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the people that happen to be following them.

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But it was interesting to me, a lot of the COVID stuff did not change these, but it just

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reinforced the importance of them.

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It's kind of like you don't recognize how important something is until you recognize

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that it's not there.

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And what we saw with COVID was a lot of people...

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I say let's just call it a leadership vacuum.

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I'm thinking of stories that people told me of their jobs going remote and they're now

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in meetings for eight hours a day because their higher ups need to make sure that they

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are communicating to the people below them, but then they still expect everyone to put

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in eight hours of additional work every day.

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And the executives feel good because they had a chance to do their stuff, but everyone

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else who actually has to do the majority of the work doesn't have any time to do it.

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And the just...

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Leadership has no concept of, well, they're just home all the time.

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Why can't they just get this done?

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Right.

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Completely ignoring many of these laws that we're going to get into.

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So I thought this was a really fun read.

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And having gone through it, it felt more timely and more applicable, I guess.

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Then even the first time that I had read it, did you feel the same?

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Yeah, and I would say that's probably because obviously life stages change things.

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And when I originally went through this, it was with a group of, I think it was 18 to

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20 men that we walked through this as part of a class at our church.

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So getting that opportunity to go through it and deep dive each of the laws, like taking

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a law per week was a very good experience.

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But at the same time, I was a new dad at the time.

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Did not have hardly anybody underneath of me as far as I was not in a leadership position.

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Though going through this, it's not required to have a leadership position.

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It's almost a non-topic, if you will.

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Like obviously, if you're given a position of leadership, this applies even more, but

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it's definitely not necessary.

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But when I went through it the first time, it definitely showed me like, "Okay, well,

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here's ways that you can be a good leader of your household."

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That was definitely my mindset when I went through it then.

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Going through it now and seeing the changes he put into the stories and the examples that

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go into each of these laws and re-wording some of the subtitles for each chapter, that

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all leads to a very different perspective to me right now because obviously still a

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dad, but I've now got one, two, three, four different teams underneath of me and that

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amounts to maybe 25, 30 people that are reporting to me mostly under volunteer positions, which

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is its own thing that he talks about a little bit here.

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That is a very different perspective to view this book through.

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I'm grateful for that because now I've got a little bit of a different mindset whenever

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I'm considering each of these laws.

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It kind of hits me a little bit harder now than what it did then because of that.

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At the same time, I know the changes that he's made to it.

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I didn't really pick up on what those were.

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That might just be a factor if it's been long enough that I don't have the other one

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forefront of mine.

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I wish I had taken the two and compared them because obviously I have the two, but I did

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not do that.

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Although you can tell which parts are new because of the, this happened after 1998.

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Obviously, this was an added component to the book.

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You can tell what parts those are.

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It is good to see that, but I also don't feel like he put this in a pigeon-holed time box

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where in 15 years it's going to be out of date.

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I don't really feel like that's true.

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I think he's got it set up pretty well for future readers.

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Agreed.

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If you had to pick somebody at the beginning here, who is this for?

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Do you have someone that fits that description?

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I ask that because I feel like the title, the laws of leadership, people can look at

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that maybe and think, "Oh, well, I'm not a sea level manager at an organization, so

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I don't need any of this stuff."

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You just shared a whole bunch of personal application as it pertained to leading your

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family.

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I think it's a lot broader than maybe people realize at first glance.

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I think you're absolutely spot on with that because I know, for me, obviously in my position,

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I'm put in a leadership position.

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I have people that report to me.

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If you're in that scenario, this is an obvious book that fits.

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But I think what people don't always necessarily connect is how even just leading yourself,

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take a single person who just moved to a new country.

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You have no friends, your family is not anywhere near you.

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Your work is something where it's just you.

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Something in that scenario.

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Even then, this does apply because this does still so much of this.

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It's about character building and it's about life building, if you will.

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It's not necessarily going to require other people to learn these skills.

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If you have any interest in becoming a person of influence of any kind, even over yourself

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and your friends, then this is going to be helpful.

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You're probably right.

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The connotation here is there's an obvious positioning.

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This is my job connotation with just the title of the book.

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That probably does it a disservice.

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It's going to have a much broader impact than what it is perceived to have.

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That would be my take on it.

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Yeah, I agreed.

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Last question before we get into the contents of the book.

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How do you feel about this title?

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The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership.

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Pretty bold claim.

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I know he put that on the original too.

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It's a tall claim.

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Obviously, he's got a lot more experience in the leadership realm than I do.

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I would have a very hard time arguing with John Maxwell.

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At the same time, I don't know what I would add or subtract from this.

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Maybe?

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I don't have enough experience to say yes or no.

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That's the problem.

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But it is a pretty tall claim.

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How many books do we read that have pretty tall claims?

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The number one book for x, y, z.

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No, there's two others that are better than this one.

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Yeah, you just typically don't think of John Maxwell as being the clickbait guy.

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Correct.

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Yeah, right.

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All right.

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Let's get into the contents here.

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There are, as the title says, 21 different laws.

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There's also an introduction and a conclusion.

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That's 23 different chapters, essentially.

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We're not going to cover all of those because this would be a very long podcast.

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We're going to cover the introduction.

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We're going to cover the conclusion and we're going to cover a sampling of laws in between.

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I want to start here with the introduction.

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This is pretty short, but I feel like there's a couple important concepts that we have to

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discuss in this introduction before we get into the rest of the material here.

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One is that nobody does all 21 of these laws well.

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He admits that even he does not do all of these all of the time.

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He shared some specifics.

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I didn't jot down any notes about which ones he specifically struggles with, but I think

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that is very freeing right at the beginning.

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The way this is positioned, the 21 irrefutable laws, he's obviously done the research.

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He's the expert.

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He's basically saying that even I don't have not mastered this stuff.

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You don't have to worry about it either.

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That's maybe taking a little bit too much from it because these are very important principles

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and they do, I believe, significantly impact the quality of the life that you have.

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I believe that where you are today is because of the decisions that you made previously.

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Seed time and harvest, all that kind of stuff.

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If you want to change your future, you got to change what you're doing today.

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Then those decisions and those actions will change your future.

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It's not just about people that work underneath you at a corporation or an organization.

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If you have any interest in personal development or personal growth, then you have to be able

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to lead yourself.

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He actually talks a little bit about that in here.

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I do think it's freeing to know that you're never going to be able to just master this

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material.

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Everyone is in the same boat, essentially.

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Everyone is striving to become better, but we're looking for progress, not perfection.

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It's also interesting how he says that all these laws stand alone so you can pick any

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one of them, which is what we're going to do for the podcast here and talk about that.

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Yes, there are interdependencies between these and they do influence each other.

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There's a lot of places where he says, as I talked about in this other chapter, however,

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each one of these, if you wanted to just take one at a time like you did with your group

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back in the day and just study that one that is totally applicable.

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If you did that, you would definitely see some benefit from that approach.

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Then he talks about how the laws are timeless.

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They're the foundation of leadership and they carry consequences with them.

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Uh-oh.

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That means that you can apply this or ignore it at your own peril.

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I think of all the books that we have read, this is the one where it is the strongest

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argument for just do these things and your life will improve out of any book that I've

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ever seen.

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Yeah.

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And like I mentioned, you don't really expect the standard productivity clickbait type stuff

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from John Maxwell, which to me is just evidence of the fact that he's lived this stuff out

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for so long.

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I don't know how old he is at this point, but he talks about a lot of different things

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that are different portions of his journey and his story in this book.

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And I'm reflecting on it now, I think that's the reason is that he isn't just saying this

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stuff because he knows this is what people want to hear or this is what's going to sell.

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This is the stuff that he's applied himself for a very long time.

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And so he's earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to that at least in my mind.

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Yeah.

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He's in his early mid-70s at this point.

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Okay.

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He's seen a lot from a leadership stance.

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But there's a couple things here in this introduction that I think you've touched on that are probably

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more important than we want to give him credit for in that not everyone does all of these

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well.

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We are human, like you were saying.

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To me, that's a pretty big deal because there are definitely some of these that and if we

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were to jump ahead to action items, we could probably pinpoint which of these ones that

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you and I struggle with because I'm betting our action items follow suit on that.

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And yet there are some of these that I know you can learn and you can get better at.

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But you and I each probably have our own.

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I know I've got a few that's like, I don't even have to think about this one.

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I just do this without thought.

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It just happens.

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I'm not even aware that I'm doing it.

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There are some of these for probably everyone.

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There's probably at least one if not multiple where you've kind of got these to where, yeah,

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this is pretty easy.

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I don't even have to worry about this one.

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But then there's going to be others like, holy cow, why is this in here?

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I don't ever want to touch this.

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Like there are definitely those as well.

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So it's one where it's good to know that even the leadership guru, John Maxwell, has

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the laws that he himself struggles with.

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So that's a little bit freeing in that sense.

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But it's also I think important to know that each of these laws have a consequence, like

00:25:12

you were saying, in it's one that we don't like to talk about, right?

00:25:17

If you do these things, it pretty much always, if done well, has a positive outcome.

00:25:25

But if you don't follow this, it can have very negative ramifications.

00:25:31

Now, the severity of that quote negative consequences is going to vary widely depending on what

00:25:41

scale we're talking about.

00:25:42

If you fail to follow through on a communication piece and we're talking about an international

00:25:49

crisis, then that's a pretty big deal.

00:25:53

If I fail to communicate, if I'm going to be home at 2 or 230, the ramifications of that

00:25:59

are fairly minor unless there's some big thing going on tonight, right?

00:26:03

So it's very different depending on what we're talking about.

00:26:09

But regardless, there are consequences to actions, whether we like them or not.

00:26:13

That's just how it goes.

00:26:14

And that's ultimately what we're, what he's getting at here is like, if you follow

00:26:17

them, you have this consequence.

00:26:18

If you don't, you have that.

00:26:21

Welcome to life.

00:26:22

That's just how it is.

00:26:24

Yep.

00:26:25

Should we get into the actual laws?

00:26:28

Sure.

00:26:29

All right.

00:26:30

So the first one here is actually the one that I want to start with.

00:26:34

So chapter one or law number one, the law of the lid.

00:26:39

And this basically in a nutshell is that how well you lead determines your effectiveness

00:26:46

with others and the potential of your team.

00:26:49

And the best way to visualize this is using one of these, these graphs.

00:26:56

And on the Y axis, you have the leadership ability.

00:27:00

And then on the right axis, you have the success dedication, he calls it.

00:27:06

And what the law of the lid basically says is that if you don't develop your leadership

00:27:13

ability, you have a cap on how effective or successful you can be.

00:27:21

And there's a really great visual in the book of the effectiveness here.

00:27:27

So the success dedication, this is, looks like an eight, but the leadership ability is

00:27:34

only a one and then the box that is created by that, that plotting that on the graph shows

00:27:45

your effectiveness.

00:27:48

And when I first saw that, it's like, wow, so if you're dedicated to the outcome that

00:27:54

you want and you increased your ability, even a little bit from one to a two, essentially,

00:27:59

you've doubled your effectiveness.

00:28:01

And I think that's kind of the effect that he's going for there.

00:28:06

And I think this is really powerful, maybe hard to see in your own life.

00:28:13

But I mean, we're both involved with our churches, right?

00:28:16

There's the emphasis on discipleship.

00:28:19

And if you're going to help people, you need to increase your ability in order to help them

00:28:28

to develop their own ability.

00:28:31

If you don't work on yourself, then ultimately you have nothing that you can contribute to

00:28:38

somebody else.

00:28:39

And if you try to do it, you will very quickly realize that.

00:28:46

I think anyone who has tried to help somebody out or lead somebody without having the leadership

00:28:56

chops to really do it effectively has maybe not recognized the amount of the damage that

00:29:02

they've done.

00:29:03

But at the very least, the person that you're trying to lead just disconnects and is like,

00:29:08

yeah, there's nothing for me here.

00:29:10

He kind of talks about that later on in some different laws.

00:29:14

But essentially, your leadership ability is always the lid on both your individual personal

00:29:20

and also the organizational success.

00:29:23

So the quickest way to change your situation, I think, is to realize this and to work on

00:29:30

developing yourself.

00:29:31

Work harder on yourself than you do on your job, as Jim Rohn puts it.

00:29:35

But by doing so, what that's going to do is translate into success for your job and for

00:29:40

everybody that you work with.

00:29:43

This is a very powerful graphic.

00:29:45

I think you alluded to that.

00:29:46

I think of it in terms of volume, so for the people who see volume with this chart, if

00:29:54

you're a number one on leadership and your dedication to your mission is at an eight,

00:30:00

think of that as like eight cubic units, if you will, of effectiveness.

00:30:05

But if you elevate yourself to a level eight leader and your success dedication is still

00:30:10

at an eight, that's now 64, effectiveness cubic unit thingies that I've now made up.

00:30:16

So thinking about it as far as like that volume, and again, when you see it, like, oh buddy.

00:30:22

Okay, so if I'm a poor leader, it doesn't matter how dedicated I am to our goal, it

00:30:32

can massively increase our ability to be successful if I become a better leader.

00:30:38

And that's what he's referring to as far as the lid.

00:30:40

Like that's the cap.

00:30:41

That's the top that you can't break unless your leadership ability increases.

00:30:46

And I have to say like starting off with this is a really good way to start this book because

00:30:50

whenever I saw the graph and I saw that like this is the cap, like, hmm, so I need to go

00:30:56

to work on myself.

00:30:58

If I want my teams to operate at a higher level of quality, then I need to increase

00:31:04

me, not work on them.

00:31:06

Like that it starts with me.

00:31:08

And I have to be honest, Mike, that's frustrating.

00:31:12

I don't want to hear that.

00:31:14

That is the opposite of what I wanted to hear.

00:31:17

And it's exactly why he needs to start with it.

00:31:21

So okay.

00:31:22

Yes.

00:31:23

I'll go to work.

00:31:25

Right.

00:31:26

There's another book by John Maxwell that I had read a while back called the five levels

00:31:32

of leadership.

00:31:33

He mentions it briefly in this one, but not real in depth.

00:31:38

But the big takeaway from that one is that the further you go up in terms of the levels

00:31:43

of leadership, the less rights you have, the less it's about you, the more it's about

00:31:49

the people that you're, you're leading.

00:31:52

So you have to very quickly disconnect from the things that you are owed if you're going

00:31:59

to be a good leader.

00:32:01

But the story that goes along with this does a really good job of communicating the potential

00:32:08

when you're able to go beyond that lid.

00:32:14

All of the different chapters and laws that he uses in this book all have cool stories

00:32:19

that go along with them.

00:32:21

And the one in this first chapter is on McDonald's, which was founded by the brothers Dick and

00:32:26

Maurice.

00:32:28

But they had limited leadership.

00:32:30

And so in 1954, they met Ray Kroc, who was a milkshake machine salesman with a big vision.

00:32:38

And he knew that he could help catapult this thing.

00:32:43

So in 1955, Ray partnered with these brothers and they started selling their franchises.

00:32:48

And then in 1961, he bought the exclusive rights for $2.7 million, which sounds like

00:32:54

a lot of money back in 1961 probably was.

00:32:57

However, now there's 38,000 plus restaurants, which are valued at $170 billion.

00:33:02

So Ray Kroc was the one who had the leadership ability to maximize the potential of this

00:33:10

idea.

00:33:12

And that immediately gets me thinking about all of my failed projects.

00:33:17

Was it a bad idea?

00:33:18

Or was it just I wasn't good enough?

00:33:21

Yeah.

00:33:22

Right.

00:33:23

Which reminds me of another thing Jim Rohn mentions is don't wish it was easier, wish

00:33:28

you were better.

00:33:30

Like if something has got a bunch of potential, then if it was easy, everybody would do it

00:33:38

essentially.

00:33:39

Right.

00:33:40

So if something has a bunch of potential, it's not it's by definition not going to be

00:33:45

simple or easy.

00:33:46

Otherwise someone else would just step in and capitalize on the thing.

00:33:50

So the fact that it's hard, like that should inspire us if we're all trying to make the

00:33:57

most of our abilities and our talents to become more than we are currently so that

00:34:02

we can take advantage of those opportunities that aren't in front of us.

00:34:06

I don't know.

00:34:07

I don't think any of my ideas have been $170 billion ideas, but maybe.

00:34:12

That is a frustrating realization though.

00:34:16

If you think about past projects that you've led that were shuttered, like I have a string

00:34:21

of these and you think about why did it not succeed and then ask the question what did

00:34:29

I do wrong?

00:34:30

Like even if it was outside of your control, what did I do that led to that failing?

00:34:37

This is one of those exercises that people tell you to do that I don't ever want to do

00:34:41

and I tend to avoid as much as I possibly can.

00:34:45

And not ashamed to say that is just how I like I don't want to do that.

00:34:50

Nobody wants to do that.

00:34:51

But if you will humor yourself and indulge in the difficult work and put yourself through

00:34:58

the discipline to make that process happen, it seems like there's rarely a scenario where

00:35:06

you are not at some level at fault or responsible at a minimum for that failure especially if

00:35:14

you were the leader.

00:35:16

Which then brings the question to if you were to start over and do that now, what would

00:35:22

that mean?

00:35:23

What would you do different?

00:35:24

How would you lead that different?

00:35:25

What are the skills that you've learned that you would capitalize on?

00:35:28

And then what are your remaining shortcomings?

00:35:33

That's the one I don't want to know.

00:35:35

But the things like the ones I'm still not good at that I need to get better at and now

00:35:40

I need to do the work to get better at those.

00:35:43

And that's the area where the improvement can come in.

00:35:46

But none of that's a fun process.

00:35:50

At least for most people.

00:35:52

There are probably people out there who really love that process and I don't want to be in

00:35:57

the same room with you to be completely honest.

00:36:01

Well let's get into the next law here because I feel like there's a tangential connection

00:36:06

here.

00:36:07

The people who are really motivated to work on themselves typically have a specific direction

00:36:12

that they want to develop.

00:36:15

The next law however is the law of influence.

00:36:21

And you may think well I really want to make the most of my development however I don't

00:36:26

care what anybody else thinks and I don't really want to influence people because that

00:36:30

sounds like the 48 laws of power.

00:36:32

Yes.

00:36:33

Right but I don't think you can disconnect these ideas.

00:36:37

The true meaning of leadership is influence.

00:36:40

It talks about in this chapter.

00:36:41

If you do not have influence you'll never be able to lead people.

00:36:45

I think that even applies personally.

00:36:47

If you don't have influence you can't lead yourself.

00:36:49

What do you mean you don't have influence over yourself?

00:36:51

Well let's just say you read a task list every day and you've got 20 things on it and you

00:36:57

only get five done.

00:36:58

After a while you just don't have faith in yourself when you make that list that you're

00:37:02

going to be able to follow through and do the things that you said you were going to

00:37:05

do.

00:37:06

Right.

00:37:07

So the question is gone and it's a downward spiral.

00:37:11

So I do think at the heart of it you do need to be able to have influence.

00:37:18

Now there are in this chapter he talks about the five myths of leadership and then I want

00:37:25

to get into like the volunteer organization stuff.

00:37:27

This is the chapter that came from and you kind of mentioned this earlier.

00:37:31

So five myths about leadership the management myth leading and management are the same.

00:37:36

They are not.

00:37:38

Leading is very different than management is kind of like the picture I get is micromanaging

00:37:43

making sure that someone follows you and does something exactly the way you told them

00:37:46

to do it.

00:37:47

Leadership is interesting them to go make the thing happen.

00:37:51

The entrepreneur myth all entrepreneurs are leaders.

00:37:54

Nope.

00:37:55

A lot of entrepreneurs I would argue are not.

00:37:59

They can discipline themselves but they have a real hard time rallying people behind their

00:38:05

cause.

00:38:07

The knowledge myth neither IQ nor education determines leadership or equals leadership.

00:38:15

The pioneer myth anyone out in front of a crowd is a leader.

00:38:21

I guess this one it's possible to be a you could be a pioneer and you could be a leader.

00:38:31

However I think you could just accidentally be in the right place at the right time have

00:38:35

no leadership ability and very quickly people are going to go and follow somebody else.

00:38:40

My pastor has this saying that if you actually picked up from someone like John Maxwell but

00:38:45

if you are a leader and you turn around no one's following you you're just out for a

00:38:51

walk.

00:38:52

Then position myth leadership is not based on title.

00:38:55

Let's get into the five levels.

00:38:56

The title is the absolute lowest level.

00:38:59

That may work in the very short term but it's not going to work in the long term.

00:39:05

Ultimately you have to have this influence.

00:39:09

It is not an option.

00:39:11

A volunteer organization where you have no leverage how are you going to do that?

00:39:15

Very carefully.

00:39:17

Right because you can't tell somebody hey do what I tell you to do or you're fired.

00:39:23

Right.

00:39:24

They're not there for the paycheck anyways.

00:39:26

They'll just leave.

00:39:27

Yes.

00:39:28

I do that.

00:39:29

Blake had a comment in the chat.

00:39:32

We're mentioning Blake a lot today but leading volunteers is like training dolphins.

00:39:36

They don't like what you're doing.

00:39:37

They'll just swim away.

00:39:38

That's a great way to think of it.

00:39:41

I will never.

00:39:42

I'm going to tell my volunteers that's like you guys are dolphins.

00:39:44

You guys will love that.

00:39:48

This is absolutely true in volunteer organizations like take the teams that I'm over.

00:39:56

There's only one one.

00:39:59

One paid staff member.

00:40:01

The rest are all volunteers.

00:40:05

It has to be done with sensitivity to making it easy for them.

00:40:12

Making it something that's fun for them.

00:40:15

I don't claim to be good at that.

00:40:19

I know that it's something that I've continued to work on honestly going through this book

00:40:24

and realizing how many shortcomings I have in that area.

00:40:28

It's something that I know I need to continually work on but it's absolutely true.

00:40:32

If I'm working with a group of volunteers they need me to be the one that's got the

00:40:39

mantra that we're going to preach every single time and they need to make sure that I'm bought

00:40:43

in and that I'm doing my part and that I'm putting them first and leading the charge.

00:40:49

All these things.

00:40:50

That's something that has to happen.

00:40:52

If I'm not willing to do something, why on earth would I ever expect them to do it?

00:40:58

It's something that happens in paid scenarios where you've got a sea level person who's got

00:41:06

the authority and can push things down on their salary or hourly people.

00:41:14

They have a little bit of sway because they can control your income.

00:41:18

If you can't control their income that whole incentive process is out the window and then

00:41:25

relationship becomes the number one component in that mix.

00:41:30

Maybe there's more than relationship but that's a very big part of it.

00:41:35

Trying to make sure the influence is something that you maintain and can continue to build

00:41:43

and then use wisely, that's all something that is absolutely critical in a volunteer

00:41:48

organization.

00:41:50

This is definitely something I need to continue to work on but that's the world I live in

00:41:54

for sure.

00:41:56

There's lots of ways that you can build that influence obviously and I would argue that

00:42:04

the rest of the book is basically how you can do that.

00:42:08

He does have a list in here about how leadership is character.

00:42:11

It's who you are, relationships who you know, knowledge, what you know, intuition, what

00:42:15

you feel, experience where you've been, past success, what you've done, and ability what

00:42:20

you can do.

00:42:21

I think that's a good encapsulation of all that kind of stuff.

00:42:26

It's not built quickly.

00:42:28

It's built little by little brick by brick but I guess just at this point law number two,

00:42:37

the law of influence, don't write this one off as like, "Well, I don't really care about

00:42:40

that."

00:42:41

You need to care about that if you care at all about leadership and personal development.

00:42:49

Next one I want to talk about here is chapter five, the law of addition.

00:42:52

I feel like this one follows up on the law of influence because you have to add before

00:43:02

you withdraw.

00:43:03

This kind of reminds me of the seven habits of highly affected people back when we did

00:43:09

that one.

00:43:11

Stephen Covey talked about the relational bank account.

00:43:14

I'm not sure if you remember that story but basically you have to make withdrawals before

00:43:19

you make a deposit, sorry, make deposits before you make withdrawals.

00:43:25

I'm not sure banks work that way.

00:43:27

It would be awesome if they did and they kind of do in some ways but usually interest is

00:43:31

paid.

00:43:32

That's how credit cards work for most people.

00:43:38

So that idea really resonated with me, just making the deposits and that's how I view

00:43:45

the law of addition here.

00:43:46

You constantly have to be making deposits.

00:43:48

You have to be investing in other people.

00:43:52

Leaders add value by serving others, by putting their needs and desires ahead of their own.

00:43:58

He also talks about in this section that the bottom line in leadership is how far you advance

00:44:05

others, how much you are able to help people.

00:44:08

So the big question that I wanted to consider here, I don't have an action item with this

00:44:15

but just the thing to kind of talk about in the podcast is like, are we making things

00:44:22

better for the people who follow us?

00:44:25

I feel like if you really are trying to maximize your personal development and you buy into

00:44:30

the whole idea of leadership and you have a platform, even a small one like we have with

00:44:35

Bookworm, although it's growing.

00:44:37

So thank you everybody who's downloading and listening.

00:44:41

But are we making things better for the people that follow us?

00:44:45

I would like to say yes and I think our intention is to do that.

00:44:50

However, I think as a creator, we do have to be careful.

00:44:56

We have a responsibility for the stuff that we create.

00:45:00

We can't just mail it in because I don't know how you feel about this but I personally

00:45:09

feel you're going to download an episode and you're going to listen to an hour and a half

00:45:14

of us babbling about a book.

00:45:16

There should be something that you can take away from this that's going to help you.

00:45:20

I view that responsibility of the people who are going to invest that much time with us.

00:45:26

They got to get something for that.

00:45:30

It's very easy I feel as a creator to go down the slippery slope of just creating the thing

00:45:38

that is going to get the views or get the clicks.

00:45:44

This is the thing that I think rubs people wrong with stuff like the part-time YouTube

00:45:48

Academy and the ship 30 for 30.

00:45:51

This isn't what they're saying but this is the dark side of it.

00:45:54

This is the 48 laws of power in the wrong hands.

00:45:59

I'm going to manipulate people for my own nefarious purposes by leveraging these technology-based

00:46:06

tools that way.

00:46:08

I think the people that I really enjoy following are the people who are invested in giving

00:46:18

something to their audience.

00:46:19

They take that responsibility seriously.

00:46:22

As I was reading this I just felt like I needed to take stock of the stuff that I make.

00:46:28

Am I doing right by the people who read my stuff, listen to my stuff, watch my stuff?

00:46:34

I think this is something that is only going to be good if we take the time to consider

00:46:42

it but it may make creators specifically feel a little bit uncomfortable.

00:46:48

I don't know.

00:46:49

How do you feel about that?

00:46:50

I feel like there's a weighty responsibility here anytime I put something out into the

00:46:55

world.

00:46:56

Am I crazy for thinking that way?

00:47:00

There's a side of being a creator where there's a few different mindsets behind it.

00:47:07

There are some people who create because it's something on their mind and they just feel

00:47:11

like they want to talk about it or make something around that idea.

00:47:17

The public opinion of that really doesn't matter.

00:47:20

They're not really interested in what people think of it.

00:47:25

They just have this thought that they want to get out into the world.

00:47:28

There definitely is that particular side of it.

00:47:31

The other side of it where, and I feel like this is maybe the area where I personally

00:47:36

struggle with just because of the time, but whenever you have something you've done for

00:47:40

a long time, we've been doing bookworm now for what is this, six and a half years, which

00:47:47

seems like crazy numbers to me.

00:47:52

When you've been at it that long, sometimes what happens is, again, this is for me, it's

00:47:56

easy to think through, well, this is the book I want to read, so then I'm going to pick

00:48:00

that and then we're going to talk about it, but my opinion on the way that I'm presenting

00:48:07

it and the things I want to bring up, I'm not necessarily doing that because I feel like

00:48:11

it's something that would help our listeners.

00:48:13

It's just because it's what's interesting to me.

00:48:15

There's definitely a place for that type of content, but at the same time, I think that

00:48:22

when we've had our routines to the point where we're able to go through this book and pull

00:48:29

out the points that you really need to know when you're going through this book.

00:48:33

This is something that I've processed this.

00:48:36

We've been through enough books.

00:48:37

This is my perspective on it, and this is what the public needs to know about this.

00:48:41

When you can have that viewpoint, this is what I feel like you as a listener need to

00:48:45

know about this book.

00:48:46

If I'm able to get myself to that point where I can process it there, that's where this

00:48:53

additive piece comes in.

00:48:55

This is where I'm trying to add to the legacy.

00:48:57

This is where I'm trying to add to you as a listener, and it's not necessarily about

00:49:02

me anymore.

00:49:05

That's a place where I struggle with it because it's easy for me to fall into the routine

00:49:08

of, "Yeah, I read every day.

00:49:10

That's easy.

00:49:11

It's easy to connect with Mike and we'll talk about a book."

00:49:13

That's simple.

00:49:14

It's easy to put together an outline, figure out, "Hey, this one's interesting to me."

00:49:18

It's easy to do that, but trying to process it at a bigger level where it's like, "Here,

00:49:23

this is the thing you need to know about this book.

00:49:25

You need to watch out for this particular viewpoint.

00:49:27

Keep your eye on this when you go through it."

00:49:29

Trying to get that out isn't always easy.

00:49:33

I feel like when you can find creators who are able to do that type of making, if you

00:49:38

will, that's the people that tend to really thrive.

00:49:43

They can do, "This is my thoughts on this," but the reason I'm sharing my thoughts on

00:49:47

this is because it would help you in this particular way, this XYZ arena.

00:49:53

I'm sure I'm missing something in that realm, but that's how I process that.

00:49:58

I think you're on the right track there.

00:50:01

Let's actually talk about the next one because, again, this is related.

00:50:06

The thing that makes it possible to be authentic and to do what we're supposed to do is that

00:50:20

we need to make sure that we're connecting.

00:50:22

Chapter 10 is the law of connection.

00:50:25

One last thing from chapter 5, where we get in here, is that when you give, you receive

00:50:29

back more than you give, but I think that only happens when you do it the right way.

00:50:37

90% of people who take more than they give do it unintentionally, but 90% of those who

00:50:42

give more than they take do so intentionally.

00:50:47

We want to be the people who give more than we take, and we have to do that intentionally.

00:50:53

How do we do that?

00:50:54

We try to connect.

00:50:57

The law of connection here, I think a lot of the application of this is kind of person-to-person

00:51:01

in real life, but I was thinking about this in terms of all the stuff that we do online.

00:51:07

I don't know.

00:51:08

I've just been thinking a lot about over the last couple of weeks with the holiday break

00:51:12

and everything.

00:51:14

What do I want my newsletter schedule to look like?

00:51:17

What do I want the YouTube video schedule to look like?

00:51:21

What is the process for the different stages in writing, where it starts off as maybe a

00:51:29

thread on Twitter?

00:51:30

Then if I recognize that this is something people care about, then I turn that into a

00:51:34

newsletter, eventually a blog post, video script, whatever.

00:51:37

There's different stages that this stuff can go down, but I can't just pick whatever

00:51:40

I'm excited about in the moment and just make that stuff.

00:51:45

You can't do it in a vacuum.

00:51:49

The point here, leaders touch a heart before they ask for a hand.

00:51:54

That's hard to do in a podcast.

00:51:58

The podcasts are great.

00:51:59

I love them because that was the thing that gave me a seat at the table before I had any

00:52:05

of these relationships.

00:52:06

I would download podcasts and I would listen to people and it felt like I was right there

00:52:11

in the middle of the conversation.

00:52:14

I recognize now that there are people who have the same sort of effect when they download

00:52:21

and they listen to my podcasts, whether it's bookworm, focused, whatever.

00:52:29

I don't want to just let that be.

00:52:32

I want to continue to think about what are other ways for people to connect with me or

00:52:40

let's flip this around.

00:52:41

Let's not put the responsibility on somebody else because he talks about in chapter 10,

00:52:45

the law of connection, that it's the leader's job to connect, not the followers.

00:52:50

I can't just sit here and be like, "Well, I wish more people would reach out to me and

00:52:53

let me know what they think."

00:52:55

I can create vehicles and ways for that to happen though.

00:52:59

That's what I'm trying to do with the faith-based productivity community is just make a place

00:53:05

where I can connect with people and I did a giveaway because I actually ended up with

00:53:10

two copies of the laws of creativity and gave one away to somebody who answered a question

00:53:18

like, "What's your biggest struggle with creativity inside of the community?"

00:53:21

I love stuff like that where it's not just the cookie cutter stuff, it's not just the

00:53:28

process stuff.

00:53:30

It's the stuff that doesn't scale.

00:53:35

Those are the things that people are always impressed by.

00:53:37

It's like, "Wow, you did a video call and there were only a handful of people there.

00:53:43

Was that worth your time?"

00:53:44

Yes, it was worth my time because I gave more than I took right there.

00:53:48

Every time that I do that to another point, I get back a whole bunch more by doing that

00:53:53

giveaway and surprising somebody with a copy of the book.

00:53:58

I got a whole bunch of people telling me what their biggest struggles of creativity were.

00:54:02

I've got a year's worth of content ideas right there on what people want me to talk about.

00:54:10

If I actually listen and so that's how leadership in the online space, I feel like that's kind

00:54:18

of an unexplored isn't the right word.

00:54:24

It's not something that natural application of these concepts though and it's not something

00:54:30

that I hear a whole lot of people talk about, especially creators, which kind of bugs me.

00:54:36

It's all focused on the metrics and how do I grow the audience and that always kind of

00:54:40

feels selfish.

00:54:42

I guess what I'm realizing I haven't gone through this book is that it doesn't have

00:54:46

to be the more people that listen to my stuff, that watch my stuff, that read my stuff, the

00:54:53

more opportunities I have to help them get to a place that they maybe could not have

00:54:59

gotten to on their own or at least make it a little bit, the journey a little bit easier.

00:55:05

I don't have it all figured out but I've made some mistakes and learned some lessons so

00:55:09

maybe I can help other people avoid some of those same mistakes.

00:55:14

I really just want to continue to think about this and this is one of my action items.

00:55:20

It's very broad, just connect with people.

00:55:22

I want to find additional ways to connect with people and it's broad on purpose because

00:55:27

I feel like there's a million different ways that this could be applied.

00:55:31

This is connecting with people in person, at church and at the day job.

00:55:36

This is connecting with people in the faith-based productivity community.

00:55:39

It's connecting with people who listen to the podcast.

00:55:44

It's the question that I want to continue to think on and there's got to be additional

00:55:48

ways and additional things that I haven't thought about vehicles that I could use to

00:55:53

connect with people and I want to do a better job of that in 2023.

00:55:57

This is where one of my, I have two action items and one of mine comes from this as well.

00:56:03

It's not really tied to online but I get what you're saying as far as how do you connect

00:56:08

in the online space.

00:56:09

It's a very different realm.

00:56:11

How do we connect with Bookworm listeners?

00:56:16

There's really not real great ways to do that but so I'm sure we could do some work there.

00:56:20

The way that I took this was with my volunteer teams because one of the ways that I was

00:56:27

I don't really struggle to get volunteers on our tech teams and I think part of that

00:56:32

is that I've actually got a waiting list right now now that I say that.

00:56:37

Part of that is that we actually have a decent amount of fun on Sunday mornings when we run

00:56:42

things and I try to make sure that that happens.

00:56:45

I'm the guy that comes in and is like, "If you have a problem, I'm going to go solve

00:56:49

it for you."

00:56:51

Yet, if you don't have a problem, we're joking around and kidding and it's like, "Guys,

00:56:55

you screwed up the audio delay.

00:56:57

You can hear him talking before his mouth moves."

00:56:59

"Oh, like kind of a weird combat movie way back going on here.

00:57:07

This is kind of fun.

00:57:08

It's like, I'll make those jokes and I'm not usually been out of shape over something

00:57:13

that went wrong technically."

00:57:14

It's like, "Well, we'll get it better next time.

00:57:15

What do we need to do to improve that for next time?

00:57:18

I'm not going to berate people over that.

00:57:21

That's kind of my view on it.

00:57:22

Let's have some fun while we're there."

00:57:25

But one thing that I don't do is on a one-to-one level.

00:57:29

I don't really connect with each of our volunteers personally.

00:57:35

That's something that I feel like I'm missing out on.

00:57:38

I can make this fun as a team and we can joke and have fun and all the things.

00:57:42

That makes it a fun experience for everybody involved.

00:57:46

I don't necessarily know what's going on in Steve's life that I could help him out

00:57:53

with that's outside of this team.

00:57:55

Maybe there's somebody else that I know on the team that could help him with something

00:57:58

that's not connected to our tech roles.

00:58:01

That's an area that I've kind of left untouched.

00:58:05

I think that's a huge miss on my part.

00:58:08

Reading this one, the tagline on this particular law is, "Leaders touch a heart before they

00:58:12

ask for a hand."

00:58:14

That's a really good way to say that.

00:58:16

It sounds like his teams underneath of him, underneath John Maxwell are just sick of hearing

00:58:20

this.

00:58:21

He's like, "Okay, yeah, you say this a lot."

00:58:25

But it makes a lot of sense.

00:58:26

It's something that I feel like I need to make sure that I'm better at.

00:58:29

I've got an action item down here to intentionally connect with every volunteer on Sundays.

00:58:35

That is a very big task actually.

00:58:37

That is not a simple thing because any given Sunday, that means I've got five, six, maybe

00:58:43

almost seven people that I'm trying to connect one-on-one with in some way.

00:58:49

I don't always have much time on Sundays to be able to do that.

00:58:56

It's a fair commitment on my part.

00:58:58

Probably means I'm meant to get here early in order to catch people.

00:59:01

Probably means I'm meant to stay a little bit late, but that's okay.

00:59:04

That's my role.

00:59:05

I need to take that.

00:59:08

Yes, I need to do that too, Mike.

00:59:13

The next chapter that I want to talk about, chapter 11, "The Law of the Inner Circle."

00:59:18

I'm curious.

00:59:19

You mentioned that you want to connect with all of your volunteers.

00:59:25

Any of them fall into this definition of inner circle.

00:59:30

I guess I'll just frame this.

00:59:32

Those closest to you determine the level of your success.

00:59:36

There's a quote in here that I really like from Mother Teresa, "You can do what I cannot

00:59:39

do.

00:59:40

I can do what you cannot do.

00:59:41

Together, we can do great things."

00:59:44

This is a little bit different application of leadership.

00:59:46

I think this is looking for people that can hide your weaknesses.

00:59:53

This isn't directly from this book, but one of the big ideas around making the most of

00:59:58

what you have to work with is to maximize your strengths.

01:00:02

Don't try to develop your weaknesses.

01:00:05

That's the natural thing, though.

01:00:07

We don't want to appear to have any weaknesses.

01:00:09

So I'll tend to focus on, "Well, I'm going to do this thing."

01:00:11

Really, we'd just be better off doing the thing that we can do better than nobody else

01:00:15

can do.

01:00:16

So back to the original question here.

01:00:19

Are you applying this law of the inner circle to any of the people that volunteer with you

01:00:25

at church?

01:00:26

Are there people there that you've specifically added to your team because they can do something

01:00:32

that you can't do?

01:00:33

Or are these all people who are, if we had an accountability chart, one level lower than

01:00:38

you?

01:00:39

It's kind of a mix, I would say.

01:00:43

The vast majority of the people on these teams are doing a job that I can do and can do pretty

01:00:50

well.

01:00:51

That said, there's an entire team, our slide team.

01:00:55

This is very basic.

01:00:57

Sunday morning, somebody is controlling the words that go up on the screen.

01:01:02

Somebody controls when to advance to the next set of slides.

01:01:05

I am not the person you want to run that.

01:01:07

That sounds like a very simple, easy to do thing.

01:01:10

Don't screw this up.

01:01:12

I am the wrong person for that because I do one of two things.

01:01:17

I either know the song well enough that I'm just going along with it and I don't realize

01:01:22

I'm not advancing the slides.

01:01:24

I'll do that.

01:01:25

The other thing that I'll do is that I will look at the screen in front of me and not

01:01:30

the projectors or the TVs that we're using.

01:01:33

On that screen, you can see all of the slides for the entire song, which is what you want

01:01:38

because then you need to be able to jump between them if they happen to go somewhere you weren't

01:01:42

ready for.

01:01:44

But the problem is that my eyes will go to the next slide, but I won't hit the button

01:01:48

to go to advance it.

01:01:51

This is simple stuff.

01:01:53

This is so easy and I cannot do this.

01:01:57

I cannot do that job.

01:01:59

I make sure that the people who run that set up for me know that they are doing something

01:02:05

I cannot do.

01:02:06

I make sure that they know that.

01:02:08

That is an area where I know that they're filling a gap that I can't fill.

01:02:13

I can get it done.

01:02:14

It goes okay, but it's not as good as say Al on our team.

01:02:19

I can't run it the way he does.

01:02:22

As far as an inner circle, I feel like that's a little bit different than what we're talking

01:02:25

about here.

01:02:27

As far as these guys fill a role I can't do as well, but I also have, there's one other

01:02:33

role with our video productions, he knows more than I do on that.

01:02:38

He's better at that.

01:02:39

He's definitely in that inner circle of that.

01:02:43

There's maybe two or three people that would fit that title, if you will, for the inner

01:02:48

circle for me in that very specific situation.

01:02:53

I would say that there's probably at least two that fit that.

01:02:57

They definitely do make it possible for our overall teams to do a good job.

01:03:02

I could not make it happen without them.

01:03:05

Yeah, I think there's different applications of the inner circle concept.

01:03:13

Thinking about your position at my church, we've separated the sound and the audio stuff.

01:03:21

Sound people don't really know how to do anything.

01:03:23

The audio people do and the audio people think maybe they know about sound, but they really

01:03:26

don't.

01:03:28

That would be an example of I have this knowledge gap, so I'm going to bring another person alongside

01:03:36

and fill that knowledge gap.

01:03:39

You could do that in an organization.

01:03:43

I guess technically you could do that in a family as well.

01:03:49

I don't have a specific framing for the inner circle in mind, but I do have an action item

01:03:53

here.

01:03:54

I do when I think of inner circle, I think of the people that I'm going to let get close

01:03:59

to me.

01:04:01

When I say close, my personal confidence, I don't know.

01:04:07

This is not the law of connection at this point.

01:04:11

This is the people who just use the religious example of Jesus had his disciples, but then

01:04:20

he had the three that came with him and they prayed on the mountain.

01:04:25

That's his inner circle.

01:04:28

The people that I'm going to let into my inner circle, John Maxwell talks about how you should

01:04:33

have a list of things that are requirements for the people who are going to be really,

01:04:38

really close to you.

01:04:40

Again, I don't have a specific arena for what I want to define as this is what I'm saying

01:04:48

when these people are in my inner circle.

01:04:50

I guess if I had to pick one, it's really just a lot of the faith-based productivity

01:04:54

stuff.

01:04:55

This is my personal mission.

01:04:58

This is what I feel like I'm here to do.

01:05:02

The people who are going to be in my inner circle are going to be people who really resonate

01:05:08

with that vision.

01:05:09

They want to help me build that thing.

01:05:12

That's where I feel like there is potential because I can't do all of the things and I

01:05:16

can't do all of the things well.

01:05:17

There are other people who can do some of this stuff better than I can.

01:05:21

I do want to think about what are the requirements for these people who are going to be in this

01:05:28

inner circle.

01:05:29

He talks about John Maxwell in this chapter three areas.

01:05:32

People need to be solid in before you bring them into your inner circle, which is who

01:05:35

they are, what they do, and then how they lessen your load.

01:05:39

I want to think about that and I want to come up with a list.

01:05:43

I'm not sure that this list is going to have any sort of application.

01:05:48

I don't think having come up with this list, I'm going to use this as like, "Well, you've

01:05:52

got to meet all of these requirements."

01:05:54

But really the intended benefit I think that I will get from this is just defining those

01:06:00

things.

01:06:01

Recognizing where I do need some help and I feel once I have those things written down,

01:06:07

I will be able to more easily see who are the people who can and want to help me in

01:06:15

those different areas.

01:06:16

Does that make sense?

01:06:17

It does.

01:06:18

It does.

01:06:19

Basically you're documenting how to build your inner circle.

01:06:22

That's what it sounds like.

01:06:24

Yes, yes.

01:06:26

I guess I'm a little bit weird because this is when I'm talking about my inner circle,

01:06:33

it's really like my life purpose, my life mission, which is all around helping people

01:06:39

make the most of the time and the talent that they've got to work with.

01:06:43

There's lots of different flavors of that and I don't have a specific organization that

01:06:50

I want to say, "This is all going to happen under this umbrella."

01:06:56

But that's kind of the perspective I'm going in with.

01:07:00

If your life theme, which is the term that I use, is not in alignment with mine and that's

01:07:12

like I guess who they are and the skills and abilities that you have to bring to the table,

01:07:19

what you do, if those don't have a way to lessen my load, then maybe you don't belong

01:07:28

at the inner circle.

01:07:29

It sounds harsh, but I think this is important.

01:07:33

There can be people who you align with.

01:07:38

People whose missions and purposes are very much in agreement with yours, but they have

01:07:45

no ability or intention of being able to lessen your load.

01:07:51

They can't add in a way that somebody in the inner circle should.

01:07:57

I guess going back, remembering the action item that I did of where I ranked everybody

01:08:03

in my life from plus plus plus to minus minus.

01:08:07

Adding in the process of some tractors.

01:08:09

Yeah.

01:08:10

The people who were the plus plus variety, those are the people that I would consider

01:08:16

for my inner circle as I'm reflecting on this.

01:08:20

But I also recognize that in that exercise, I never considered what sort of skills or

01:08:26

abilities.

01:08:27

Why am I going to these people?

01:08:28

Why do I feel like they are adding to my life?

01:08:31

I think there's value in identifying those things and maybe some partnership opportunities

01:08:35

that will arise from that.

01:08:39

I commend you for being willing to document this because that is not something I would

01:08:43

do.

01:08:46

One of the laws, we don't even have it on the list is around the law of intuition, being

01:08:50

able to feel your way through situations.

01:08:53

I've learned that my intuition level is very high.

01:08:57

Stuff like that, I just feel my way through it.

01:09:00

I'm not one to just let me document this and figure out how this could go.

01:09:06

No, these three people, done.

01:09:08

That's my view on it.

01:09:12

That's me.

01:09:13

I know that that is not normal.

01:09:15

That is not a common trait.

01:09:19

The concept of trying to document this just makes my skin crawl.

01:09:22

I don't want to do this at all.

01:09:23

But it's absolutely something I think you should do.

01:09:26

You are definitely the right person for that job.

01:09:30

Have you ever taken the Colby assessment?

01:09:32

No.

01:09:33

I think you asked me that about every third episode though.

01:09:35

You probably are a high quick start would be my guess.

01:09:38

I'm a high-fact finder.

01:09:39

But I guess what I'm saying with this action item is I don't want to create a process

01:09:42

out of this.

01:09:44

I want to write down my thoughts.

01:09:47

In the process of doing that, I believe there will be clarity.

01:09:52

But I do not want to create something that is an SOP for joining the interview.

01:09:57

Sure.

01:09:58

Yeah.

01:09:59

You basically want to think on paper about it.

01:10:00

Yes.

01:10:01

It might not be on paper, but you get my point.

01:10:05

Yep, exactly.

01:10:07

Do you want to introduce the next one I asked you before we recorded if there were a couple

01:10:12

laws that stood out to you.

01:10:14

This was one that you mentioned.

01:10:16

Yeah, so the next one up here is law 12, the law of empowerment.

01:10:20

Only secure leaders give power to others.

01:10:22

This is one that the corporate world doesn't really, in most corporate scenarios that I'm

01:10:29

familiar with, this is anti-operating procedure in that once you have power, you hold on

01:10:36

to it and you don't really hand it over to anybody.

01:10:39

This is one that if you're willing to give power to other people, they make you look

01:10:44

even better and it can go significantly better than you would expect it to.

01:10:50

I don't know that this is one that I've ever struggled with.

01:10:53

It's just one that I know that I've done naturally.

01:10:57

This is one of those, I don't even think about it.

01:10:59

It's like, "Hey, you can do this."

01:11:01

Even if you can do it only 80% as well as I do, I'm still going to give it to you.

01:11:06

Then we can work on making you better at it.

01:11:09

That's a view that I've had for a very long time and I do this in many scenarios.

01:11:13

I've empowered a lot of people to take stuff that's on my plate that they want to take.

01:11:17

Sure, absolutely.

01:11:18

Let me hand this over.

01:11:20

You can do this.

01:11:21

You have full control over it.

01:11:22

I will not going to get in your way.

01:11:25

That's a part of it that I think is easily forgotten.

01:11:29

People want to delegate something.

01:11:31

They will hand that power over.

01:11:32

We've heard this from how many places like delegation, delegation, delegation, like this

01:11:35

is something you should do.

01:11:38

Once you have it delegated and you give somebody the power to do a task, get out of their way.

01:11:44

Let them do the job.

01:11:46

They've got a quote in here from Teddy Roosevelt.

01:11:49

The best executive is the one who has since enough to pick good men to do what he wants

01:11:54

done and the self restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

01:11:59

Get out of the way.

01:12:01

Let them do their job.

01:12:04

This is a part that I know, again, I don't really struggle with this, but it's something

01:12:08

that I think is super important for leaders in general because you are going to hand things

01:12:12

off to people.

01:12:13

You have to give people power to do things.

01:12:16

If you want to be anywhere near successful, he's got stories here where people wouldn't

01:12:19

do that.

01:12:20

It gets to be painful and almost completely self-destructs if you don't.

01:12:25

Being willing to give up that power is super important.

01:12:30

Once you do that, let them do their job.

01:12:33

It's okay.

01:12:34

Let them have that power.

01:12:36

It's all right.

01:12:38

Yeah, he talks in this chapter a couple barriers to empowering others, which I think these are

01:12:45

pretty profound if you think about them.

01:12:48

Desire for job security, resistance to change, or lack of self-worth.

01:12:52

I think those are accurate and it seems kind of simple.

01:12:58

When you read those and then you think about, "Well, why haven't I empowered others?"

01:13:04

Because it disconnects somewhere there.

01:13:09

I don't have self-worth.

01:13:10

That's uncomfortable to ask yourself those questions, but I feel like that's John Maxwell

01:13:14

in a nutshell.

01:13:15

He does a really good job of challenging you that way.

01:13:18

The other thing I really like about this chapter is how to empower others.

01:13:21

There's five different steps here.

01:13:22

I had heard of four of these different steps before.

01:13:26

Maybe there were five in the previous version.

01:13:27

I just forgot it.

01:13:29

But I've heard people quote this stuff many different places, many different times.

01:13:34

Step one is I do it.

01:13:36

Step two is I do it and you're with me.

01:13:38

Step three is you do it and I'm with you.

01:13:40

Step four is you do it.

01:13:42

Then that's kind of where whenever this has been communicated to me, that's where people

01:13:46

will leave it because it's like, "There.

01:13:48

Now you're able to do the thing.

01:13:49

I can disconnect from it.

01:13:50

I can go do something else."

01:13:52

But that completely undermines the real motivation behind all of this leadership stuff.

01:14:01

Because step five is you do it and someone else is with you.

01:14:04

It's not I'm just trying to clear things off of my plate so I don't have to do them anymore.

01:14:08

I'm helping you so that you can help somebody else and we continue to pay this forward.

01:14:15

Something as simple as that last step completely changed that whole section for me.

01:14:22

Help me see it in a way that I had not before.

01:14:26

That's the part that is gold.

01:14:31

Let's go back to the slides team.

01:14:35

I do not train our slide team anymore.

01:14:38

I used to whenever I have somebody new come on, which doesn't happen very often anymore.

01:14:43

Whenever somebody new comes on, I don't do that training because there's a guy on the

01:14:47

team that I taught how to do it using those first four steps.

01:14:53

Then just based on timing, after about six months of him being in that role, someone

01:15:00

else was coming on the team.

01:15:01

I asked him to do the training because at that point he'd gotten to where he was at my level

01:15:07

or higher as far as how to do things in the program.

01:15:11

He took over on the training.

01:15:14

All because of that, it had this weird effect in that because he taught the other person

01:15:22

who was a peer how to do it, it opened this door for them to work together on figuring

01:15:28

out how to do things and how to make things happen.

01:15:30

They're doing things like, "I don't even understand what they're doing right now."

01:15:33

There's stuff that they're accomplishing very easily that I haven't gotten involved with

01:15:38

because it's their territory.

01:15:40

I know enough about the program.

01:15:41

I could go figure it out if I took the time, but I don't need to because they teach each

01:15:46

other how to do that stuff now.

01:15:48

I don't have to get involved with that.

01:15:51

It's because I gave them the power.

01:15:53

Here you go.

01:15:54

Make this do this thing.

01:15:57

I could get it done, but you have the time and the expertise and you're interested in

01:16:02

it.

01:16:03

Let me know if you need help.

01:16:05

I'll back you wholeheartedly.

01:16:08

Tell me how it's going.

01:16:10

I'll check in once in a while.

01:16:11

That's the part I haven't been doing.

01:16:15

That is really cool to see when you've got somebody on your team that can do those trainings

01:16:19

and can do the empowering of even more people.

01:16:21

It's cool.

01:16:22

I just sit back and watch and this whole thing just happens.

01:16:25

Even though that technically it started with me, but at this point, they've made it significantly

01:16:30

better than I ever could have.

01:16:33

Thanks, team.

01:16:34

If you're listening, appreciate you.

01:16:38

All right, should we go on to the next one?

01:16:42

The next one here, I guess I'll intro this too, is Law 13, which is the Law of the Picture.

01:16:49

People do what people see.

01:16:53

People think of military stuff.

01:16:54

Military comes up a lot in this book, but military is easy on this particular one because

01:17:00

it's like, "Who leads the charge?

01:17:02

Well, your commanding officer should lead the charge."

01:17:05

People just intuitively know this at this point.

01:17:08

But obviously, that doesn't happen all the time.

01:17:12

People don't always lead in that way.

01:17:15

But if you're willing to set the example and show people what you want done, that is so

01:17:21

much easier to follow than it is to take what they're telling you and then make that happen.

01:17:27

One of the examples I would have just personally on this one is I've tried to—and not everybody

01:17:32

does this, and I get it.

01:17:34

I'm not making them do this.

01:17:36

I try to make sure that our teams and especially the people who are going to be at the church

01:17:41

all day on Sunday, like the entire morning, like when you pull up to the parking lot,

01:17:46

you're getting here an hour before everybody else.

01:17:49

Park as far away from the building as you're willing to park.

01:17:53

I do this all the time.

01:17:54

I will park in the farthest spot away from the building because I know my car is going

01:17:57

to sit there all morning, and I'm not back and forth.

01:18:01

I'm fully capable of walking the entire length of the parking lot.

01:18:04

It's slick this time of year.

01:18:05

I'll take it.

01:18:06

That's fine.

01:18:07

I'll do that.

01:18:10

I've got a couple other team members that do the same thing now.

01:18:13

They park next to my car, and one of them likes to try to park in my spot, which is

01:18:18

the farthest away.

01:18:19

It's now become a thing who can park further away.

01:18:24

I took the truck one day and parked on the snowbank.

01:18:27

It's like, "Okay, this is the thing."

01:18:30

The reason for that is because there are many people who are either elderly, they have

01:18:33

kids, they should not be walking on ice.

01:18:37

They don't need to be walking the entire length of the parking lot.

01:18:40

If I can put one, two, maybe three cars as far away as we can, that means that someone

01:18:46

else can park closer and they can have an easier walk into the building.

01:18:50

That only happens because Joe's willing to walk a long distance to get to the building

01:18:56

because it's not a short track from the bottom of the parking lot to the building.

01:19:01

Having that example and showing people what you want to have happen, that makes it much

01:19:06

easier to follow.

01:19:09

Whenever I've got people who won't, my leadership that doesn't do that type of thing, it gets

01:19:14

kind of hard to follow on that.

01:19:17

It's set the better example.

01:19:20

Yeah, that's one of the things that he mentioned specifically in this chapter is the most valuable

01:19:24

gift the leader can give is being a good example.

01:19:27

Good job, Joe.

01:19:30

He also says that the people you lead are always watching what you do.

01:19:35

What's that saying more is caught than taught?

01:19:39

That is absolutely true.

01:19:40

The law of the picture here, this has multiple applications.

01:19:45

Yeah, it's the little things that you're talking about which are in service of the big vision

01:19:50

that you ultimately need to communicate.

01:19:53

Another thing he talks about here is that leaders are stewards of the vision and that

01:19:57

they understand that mission provides the purpose or the why.

01:20:01

Vision provides a picture or the what and then strategy provides a plan or the how.

01:20:06

This is something I want to spend some time thinking about because those are three different

01:20:11

ways of describing what I would have previously stated as vision.

01:20:19

You can paint a picture of the vision and that's just the what.

01:20:24

That's not going to be enough for some people.

01:20:26

Ultimately, it's the responsibility of the leader to make sure that people follow through

01:20:31

and take action on this.

01:20:32

If they have the what but they're not following through with it, why aren't they doing it?

01:20:36

Maybe they don't know how.

01:20:37

Maybe they don't know why.

01:20:39

But ultimately, if I'm going to take responsibility as the leader, it's up to me to fill in the

01:20:45

gaps there.

01:20:47

That is another key idea here which I have been thinking about a lot lately.

01:20:54

That leaders can afford to be uncertain but they cannot afford to be unclear.

01:20:59

That means that I may not know what the best thing to do is that's okay.

01:21:05

No one's going to hold that against me as a leader.

01:21:08

However, if I do know what needs to be done and I have not communicated the why, what and

01:21:13

how, that is completely on me.

01:21:16

People will notice that and they will disconnect from me as a leader.

01:21:20

They'll recognize a lack in leadership ability and they'll go find someone who has more.

01:21:27

Right?

01:21:28

So, that's something I've been thinking about.

01:21:29

I don't have an action item associated with that necessarily but obviously it's been challenging

01:21:36

me to step up my leadership and not just think that because I have communicated in a certain

01:21:42

way something that it has really been communicated.

01:21:45

I'm recognizing that I tend to look at things from one perspective and I need to consider

01:21:49

something from all the different perspectives before I try to communicate it to the people

01:21:54

who are following me whether that's at church home or the day job, whatever it is.

01:22:00

It's got to have more context.

01:22:01

It's got to have another dimension to it before people can really attach to it and follow it.

01:22:09

Yeah, and you always have to set the example right?

01:22:11

Like there's a quote from who is this?

01:22:13

Vijay Featherstone?

01:22:14

I don't know this person.

01:22:16

But the quote was leaders tell but never teach until they practice what they preach.

01:22:22

I like that.

01:22:23

I like that.

01:22:24

I like that.

01:22:25

That's well said.

01:22:26

Yep.

01:22:27

All right.

01:22:28

The last law that we're going to talk about here before the conclusion is the last law

01:22:34

in the book, Law 21, the Law of Legacy.

01:22:36

Although there are lots of great laws that we could talk about here.

01:22:41

Lots of different things that I jotted down.

01:22:43

But this one was interesting to me because he talks about the life theme.

01:22:47

He doesn't call it a life theme.

01:22:49

He says, "What is your life sentence?"

01:22:51

And I was kind of curious, Joe, do you have a life sentence?

01:22:55

I don't know.

01:22:57

I don't think so.

01:22:59

That's the frustrating part.

01:23:00

Whenever I was thinking through this, I was like, "I don't know what that would be."

01:23:04

I have these little short-term missions, like three, five years out.

01:23:09

I can kind of work towards that.

01:23:10

As far as a life sentence, I didn't really know what to put down.

01:23:14

If you asked me to write that, I don't know what I would put down.

01:23:18

Yeah.

01:23:19

Well, this is not easy.

01:23:21

I think that it's also easy to discredit this and think, "Well, I don't need to..."

01:23:27

I have a general idea.

01:23:28

I don't need to put in all the effort and the work to actually go through this.

01:23:32

I think there's a lot of value in this, however, and would advocate for everybody doing some

01:23:38

form of this.

01:23:40

My version of it, like I said, is a life theme.

01:23:44

My life theme personally is help people answer the question, "Why am I here?"

01:23:48

By inspiring and encouraging and teaching them to connect to their calling, discover

01:23:51

their destiny, and live the life that they were created for.

01:23:55

Then everything that I do, personally, professionally, all the side projects, etc., I try to filter

01:24:00

through that and make sure that it connects in some way.

01:24:05

I have noticed that maybe it doesn't affect the things that I would do, although I think

01:24:11

it actually does, but let's just assume that it doesn't.

01:24:16

You go through the life theme exercises, which I've actually got a five-step thing that I

01:24:21

give away for free inside the faith-based productivity community.

01:24:25

People want to use my version of it.

01:24:26

They can, but you don't have to.

01:24:28

I would just encourage you to think about what is your life in a sentence.

01:24:33

What is your theme?

01:24:35

We're recording this at the beginning of the year, so the yearly themes and the words for

01:24:39

the year, like this is a common idea.

01:24:42

Well, go bigger than that.

01:24:44

If you were to encapsulate your entire existence in a single sentence, what is it?

01:24:50

It doesn't have to be that forever.

01:24:52

It could just be that for this season.

01:24:53

It could change.

01:24:54

It could evolve, but I think, again, assuming that this does not at all influence what you

01:25:01

are doing, it absolutely influences the way that you do it.

01:25:05

I think it's a lot easier to bring motivation and excellence to everything that you do when

01:25:10

you recognize why you're doing it.

01:25:13

Again, you may have a general idea of why, but just my personality.

01:25:16

I found a lot of clarity comes from actually writing it down and saying, "Oh, this is how

01:25:23

it connects."

01:25:24

Well, that makes this thing that I'm doing way more valuable now.

01:25:29

I think that as it pertains to leadership, people can see that.

01:25:33

People can connect to that.

01:25:35

People can tell when you're faking it too.

01:25:39

They maybe won't know why something doesn't seem authentic, but they'll be able to smell

01:25:47

it.

01:25:50

I think this is a really cool way to end the whole book.

01:25:53

He gives a couple of examples of life sentences.

01:25:57

I would just ask people to think about this and to just consider the legacy that you're

01:26:02

going to leave.

01:26:03

He talks about the three different pictures of legacy, which is a clock.

01:26:06

What are you doing, a compass?

01:26:07

Where are you going?

01:26:08

Companions.

01:26:09

Who is going with you?

01:26:10

There's developing your leadership legacy, but this is habit number two, Stephen Covey,

01:26:17

begin with the end-in-mind sort of stuff.

01:26:19

I don't think there's anything super unique in here other than that life sentence.

01:26:24

Once you see John Maxwell's next step, I think that is like, "Well, what does this mean

01:26:29

for me?

01:26:30

What does it mean for Mike Schmitt's?

01:26:31

What is his life sentence?"

01:26:32

I'm not going to give you an action item here, but would be curious if people who do this

01:26:39

sort of thing, what sort of results they get from the process.

01:26:45

Everyone that I know that has done this sort of thing is like, "Yeah, this really helped."

01:26:48

But then I don't know.

01:26:50

I don't follow them around for years afterwards and see like, "Are you actually filtering things

01:26:55

through this?

01:26:56

Does it really affect your day-to-day?"

01:26:59

I can absolutely report back for me at it does.

01:27:03

And I think John Maxwell would say that it does.

01:27:06

But I don't know.

01:27:08

I want to see more social proof of this idea, I guess.

01:27:14

I would be curious to know what your process is that you would recommend to people.

01:27:21

You don't have this life sentence.

01:27:22

You don't know what this is.

01:27:25

What is that process that you would recommend people go through?

01:27:28

I was like, "Yeah, it's cool to say, 'Sure, you should think about this.

01:27:31

You should come up with what this is.'"

01:27:33

Great.

01:27:34

I'm a very tactical person when it comes to that.

01:27:37

That's a very vague task that you just threw out onto the world.

01:27:41

That's where I go.

01:27:43

I get that.

01:27:44

Okay.

01:27:45

Okay.

01:27:46

But you're also not wrong in making it vague either because it could potentially be very

01:27:50

different that process for different people.

01:27:53

Do you know what I'm saying?

01:27:54

It could be very different for different people depending on the way that they think.

01:27:58

They're personality styles.

01:27:59

Things can be very different in the way they come at that.

01:28:02

On a broad level, do you have a more tactical...

01:28:06

These are the three things I think you should do, that type of thing.

01:28:10

Yeah.

01:28:12

The things that I've gone through here for my process, the first step is to recognize

01:28:19

the moments of impact, the moments where you come alive, you feel energized, something

01:28:23

is more important to you than life itself.

01:28:26

So identifying what are those moments of impact for you is step one.

01:28:31

Step two is starting to think about your ideal future.

01:28:37

What does that look like in getting as specific as you can?

01:28:40

What time do you get up?

01:28:41

What are you doing during the day?

01:28:42

What kind of impact do you have in the lives of others?

01:28:47

Silly things, like how are you dressed?

01:28:48

What kind of job do you have?

01:28:49

What do you do for fun?

01:28:50

Where do you live?

01:28:51

Who's there with you?

01:28:52

That kind of stuff.

01:28:53

Then step three is to think bigger.

01:28:58

So what would you do if you had unlimited resources?

01:29:02

What would it look like if you were wildly successful?

01:29:04

That sort of stuff.

01:29:06

Kind of removing the limits of our thinking in terms of what's realistic.

01:29:10

Step four is identifying your core values.

01:29:14

What do you want others to say about you?

01:29:16

What are you passionate about?

01:29:17

What do you love doing?

01:29:18

Getting those codified for who you are.

01:29:20

And then you condense all of that stuff, all those visuals into a single sentence, which

01:29:25

I call a life theme.

01:29:28

So that's the high level.

01:29:30

And like I said, I've actually got a challenge for this in the faith-based productivity community.

01:29:34

If you like that approach and you want a little bit more detail and some examples, I'll put

01:29:38

a link in the show notes for people.

01:29:41

But that's not the only way to do it, obviously.

01:29:44

And I think the real value is just you walk away from reading a book like this thinking

01:29:49

about it.

01:29:50

Yeah.

01:29:51

Because if you start thinking about it, you'll probably see things, which is really the whole

01:29:56

idea behind those different steps is to get you to notice some of the stuff that has happened

01:30:01

in your life that was really impactful and helping you to recall that and ask why.

01:30:06

Well, thanks for that.

01:30:07

Because part of me asking that is very selfish because apparently Bookworm is more about

01:30:12

me than it is about the listener, I guess.

01:30:15

I don't know.

01:30:18

Probably not.

01:30:19

That is just me being obnoxious.

01:30:22

Part of the reason I'm asking is this is the time of year when people ask these questions.

01:30:25

One, and two, me personally, I've been working through this for a couple months now.

01:30:31

I'm on a pretty good track with what I do for work.

01:30:34

I'm on a pretty good track with what I do personally.

01:30:37

But why?

01:30:38

Why is that?

01:30:40

Why do I feel like I'm in a good spot?

01:30:42

And what is that overall mission behind it?

01:30:46

I can tell you on subscales what that means.

01:30:52

When it comes to the tech stuff I do at church, I can walk you through some of our missions

01:30:56

and what we're shooting for and why on that.

01:31:00

That's the tech department that doesn't mean it's Joe.

01:31:04

Those are two different arenas.

01:31:06

What I do and the way that I come at that can be very different than what we're doing

01:31:12

is a tech department because it would be much bigger than that.

01:31:16

That's okay.

01:31:17

But what does that mean?

01:31:18

Now, I'm saying that knowing I'm collecting a bank of these questions, knowing that at

01:31:22

some point in probably the next month, month and a half, I'm probably going to do a personal

01:31:26

retreat of some sort.

01:31:27

I know you've preached this for years.

01:31:29

I'm not putting this as an action item at this point because I'm not quite there.

01:31:34

But at some point I need to sit down, take a day or two, and just work through all these

01:31:38

questions.

01:31:39

It's going to be painful, it's going to be hard, and that's part of the point.

01:31:47

That's something I need to do and I've not taken the time to do that.

01:31:50

I feel like that's a part that I'm missing right now because it feels like, "Yeah, my

01:31:54

day to day and my week to week, great solid on that."

01:31:58

The next year, I kind of know that you get me to five years and I can make some guesses

01:32:04

three to five years, sure.

01:32:07

Ten years out, no clue.

01:32:10

But that doesn't mean that it's going to come true because you put together that ten

01:32:15

year.

01:32:16

I'm not that naive.

01:32:17

But at the same time, I don't have that overarching drive behind it.

01:32:23

Does that make sense?

01:32:25

Yes, yes it does.

01:32:27

Yeah, I don't want to spend too much time talking about this, but that is where the exciting

01:32:33

stuff happens, honestly, is the further out that you go.

01:32:36

Because five to ten years, you could pick pretty much anything and you could completely

01:32:43

change your life in five to ten years.

01:32:46

We vastly underestimate what we're capable of in the long term and we overestimate what

01:32:53

we're capable of in the short term.

01:32:57

That's really the value of having those five to ten year goals.

01:33:02

It's not really a goal.

01:33:04

It's going to change, but it is a yard marker.

01:33:08

It's a point in the horizon that you're aiming for.

01:33:11

You don't have to have the blueprint.

01:33:15

You just need the compass.

01:33:17

You got to know I'm going in this direction.

01:33:19

And then you can fill in the blanks with the details as you go.

01:33:23

So the blueprint, I love that analogy because you're not going to sit down and start building

01:33:28

a house unless you have the blueprints and you've figured out all that stuff.

01:33:32

But that is a terrible approach to project management for things that you want to do

01:33:37

by the end of your life.

01:33:39

You just got to figure out what the next thing is and then do the next thing and then

01:33:45

do the next thing.

01:33:46

You take a step forward and then the next step becomes clear.

01:33:49

Cool.

01:33:50

We should probably go on to the conclusion here.

01:33:54

And there's not a whole lot in this other than another action item here for me, which

01:33:59

is to take the leadership evaluation and notice you have this one too.

01:34:05

But there is a very cool summary here of different levels here, I think.

01:34:12

And he uses the term organization, but I think you could apply this to team, whatever

01:34:17

situation that looks like for you.

01:34:20

So personnel determine the potential of an organization.

01:34:23

Relationships determine the morale of an organization.

01:34:26

Relationships determines the size of the organization.

01:34:29

Vision determines the direction of the organization.

01:34:32

Leadership determines the success of the organization.

01:34:36

So if you've got a team and you've got all that other stuff in place, really the thing

01:34:39

that's going to make that team successful or not is going to be leadership.

01:34:43

Going all the way back to the beginning, the law of the lid, it's not just you, it's

01:34:47

everybody else that's connected to you, whether they are above or below you, I would argue

01:34:52

on the chain of command or the accountability chart.

01:34:55

We really have a moral responsibility, I feel, to maximize our leadership ability.

01:35:03

Whether or not you come from the same religious background is irrelevant.

01:35:09

If you are here on this earth and there is breath in your lungs and you care about personal

01:35:15

development at all, you care about productivity at all, Chris Bailey, author of a book that

01:35:22

we're going to be covering shortly, spoiler alert, said that people are the reason for

01:35:26

productivity.

01:35:27

I really believe that.

01:35:29

If you're just focusing on yourself, your vision is too small, your impact is going to

01:35:34

be minimal and you're not going to have any sort of legacy that you are going to leave.

01:35:39

What a miserable existence.

01:35:41

At least for me, that's not going to do it for me.

01:35:45

I want to know that I'm making a difference and yeah, 4000 weeks, like cosmic insignificance

01:35:49

theory, we're not going to be able to change the entire world, but we're going to be able

01:35:54

to change somebody's world.

01:35:56

That's what leadership is all about.

01:35:57

That's what creativity is all about.

01:36:01

It's about releasing the gifts that are inside of you and in doing so, you help somebody

01:36:09

else, but you also help yourself.

01:36:11

You get to a level that you could not have otherwise.

01:36:15

Then the people that you are trying to help, they're just along for the ride.

01:36:23

The real benefit is what it does inside of you.

01:36:26

I feel like that's really hard to add to.

01:36:31

This particular conclusion, it's not even two pages, it's like a page and a quarter.

01:36:37

In that page and a quarter, he's got this summarization of you need to be developing

01:36:42

leadership skills.

01:36:44

It does not matter if you are the leader of an organization or your family or even just

01:36:51

yourself.

01:36:53

There's a lot of character building here and forget all the influence side of it.

01:37:01

That's a very important part of it, right?

01:37:04

The skills and the character traits that you are going to build in developing the skills

01:37:09

behind these laws are worth it just in themselves, I would say.

01:37:17

He kind of sums that all up here in the conclusion very succinctly and shows like, "Here, this

01:37:25

is why you need to work on becoming a better leader."

01:37:29

Yes, if you live in a hole somewhere, it doesn't go anywhere, but very few people actually

01:37:37

are that way.

01:37:38

There are people around us and we have relationships and we are connecting with other people somehow.

01:37:46

The question is, how well and are you working towards this mission in your life to leave

01:37:54

this legacy and are you following all these laws that can help you do that?

01:37:59

That's ultimately what he's getting at.

01:38:01

The level at which you're going to have success and effectiveness is based on your leadership

01:38:05

ability.

01:38:07

That's what you need to be working on.

01:38:09

Absolutely.

01:38:10

Should we go to action items?

01:38:12

Sure.

01:38:13

All right.

01:38:15

I have three action items, the very broad connect with people action item.

01:38:24

Come up with a list of things that people in my inner circle must have.

01:38:29

The third one is to take the leadership evaluation.

01:38:32

I feel like the majority of the things that are in this book are not specific.

01:38:40

I'm going to apply this one in this specific situation.

01:38:44

There's no quick fixes here, which was a little bit surprising.

01:38:48

I feel like you go through all these different laws.

01:38:51

Each one can stand alone.

01:38:53

I went into it thinking I was going to have a ton of action items.

01:38:57

It gave me a lot to chew on, a lot to think about and a lot to process.

01:39:01

There will probably be additional action items that will follow up from that.

01:39:05

However, these are the three that were immediately visible to me after reading this book.

01:39:11

How about you?

01:39:12

Yeah.

01:39:13

I've got a couple here.

01:39:14

One's the same, taking the leadership evaluation test.

01:39:17

The other one was intentionally connect with the volunteers on Sunday, which I talked about

01:39:21

to some degree.

01:39:22

But you're absolutely right.

01:39:23

There's a lot of stuff here that if you have a specific area that you're aware of, you

01:39:28

could easily think of stuff that you need to do and then action items that you could

01:39:32

take, which is what we did with the law of connection.

01:39:36

There's so much that you could do that at some point, you shouldn't change that much

01:39:41

stuff all at one time.

01:39:43

Yeah.

01:39:44

You've got to be a little careful with it in that sense, but at the same time, this

01:39:48

is one that you're definitely going to have in the back of your head.

01:39:50

There's no way you're going to get around it, the 48 laws of power.

01:39:53

You can't forget some of that stuff.

01:39:57

Notice how it's being used.

01:39:58

This is the same way.

01:40:00

I'm sure some other people would have 50 action items, but that's too much to change

01:40:05

at one time.

01:40:06

It is.

01:40:07

It is.

01:40:08

All right.

01:40:09

Let's talk about style and rating.

01:40:13

I am a fan of John Maxwell's style.

01:40:18

I feel like this is very approachable.

01:40:23

Just about everyone should read this book.

01:40:27

I don't think there's a whole lot in here to disagree with.

01:40:33

I know that there are some specific things that maybe if you take them in isolation,

01:40:40

they can rub you the wrong way.

01:40:42

I know Blake had mentioned he wasn't the fan of the leaders creating other leaders.

01:40:47

Again, I'm giving John Maxwell the benefit of the doubt here just because I've followed

01:40:53

him long enough and he's got enough gray hairs.

01:40:57

But I can look past the words there and recognize that he's not, I believe, saying that because

01:41:05

he's trying to get a whole bunch of people to follow him and a certain number of members

01:41:11

to join his membership site.

01:41:15

I think at this point in his life, he doesn't need any of that stuff.

01:41:24

I think it's kind of cool that he's not even the CEO of his own organization anymore.

01:41:31

I feel like that alone shows that he's practicing what he's preaching here.

01:41:38

The guy who is the CEO of his organization is the guy who's on the Maxwell Leadership

01:41:43

Podcast.

01:41:44

I can't stand him on the podcast.

01:41:50

It's kind of funny.

01:41:51

I can see the character and the integrity that has been reproduced in him from John Maxwell,

01:41:58

to be honest.

01:42:01

Just taking this book in isolation, I would absolutely recommend that people read this.

01:42:07

I don't even know if it's the best John Maxwell book.

01:42:12

I mentioned previously the five levels of leadership and I remember being really impacted

01:42:16

by that one.

01:42:18

That one seems to have stuck with me more so than any of the specific laws that we covered

01:42:23

in this from the first time that we read it.

01:42:25

This is second time around, so maybe it'll land a little bit different this time.

01:42:31

However, I would just encourage people to go into this book with an open mind, willing

01:42:38

to be challenged, willing to look in the mirror and ask, "Am I lacking or wanting in any of

01:42:47

these specific areas?"

01:42:49

If you go into it looking at it like a mirror, it's going to expose some things, I feel,

01:42:57

some shortcomings and that's going to make you uncomfortable for the right type of person.

01:43:01

That is exactly why you would pick up this book.

01:43:05

For the bookworm audience, I think that there is value here for just about anyone.

01:43:13

I don't think it's a five star book.

01:43:17

Feels weird to say that.

01:43:19

It's one of those books that has been around forever and is really, really famous.

01:43:26

But I got through this one and like I said, I still don't even think this is the best

01:43:30

John Maxwell book that I've read.

01:43:31

I'm thinking of the five levels of leadership, but also leader shift was another one that

01:43:36

I read that was really good.

01:43:40

I don't know, I think this is one to put in the collection.

01:43:43

I don't know, it would be kind of fun.

01:43:45

You got me thinking you went through this with a group of people at your church.

01:43:49

That would be really fun.

01:43:50

Just tackle one at a time and talk about it.

01:43:53

But I don't know.

01:43:55

I guess just by the way this is put together, it's not going to go super deep in any one

01:44:00

of these areas and I feel like John Maxwell can do that.

01:44:04

He has shown restraint in not doing that.

01:44:08

However, at this point in my leadership journey, my personal development journey, I think that's

01:44:13

kind of the thing that I would want to see more of.

01:44:16

That's on me.

01:44:17

I got to follow this up with something else in these different areas.

01:44:21

In terms of the concept of leadership, this is probably a great entry level book.

01:44:26

One of the first ones that you should add to your library if that's something that you're

01:44:30

just getting into.

01:44:33

At this point in my life, I don't think this is a life changing book.

01:44:36

I think this is a good foundational book.

01:44:40

I'll give it 4.5 stars.

01:44:42

4.5 to John Maxwell.

01:44:45

Okay.

01:44:46

I won't tell him.

01:44:47

I'll let you tell him.

01:44:49

Thank you.

01:44:50

This is our little secret.

01:44:52

You, me and the rest of the internet.

01:44:54

Okay.

01:44:55

Sounds good.

01:44:56

As long as the internet doesn't tell him, we'll be okay.

01:44:59

The thing with this one is that it's not just a hero of the laws.

01:45:05

Good luck.

01:45:06

I don't think we mentioned this, but there are action items at the end of each of these

01:45:10

chapters.

01:45:12

I did not do any of these because I knew whenever we get books like this, this is going to be

01:45:17

a ton of work and I am not taking the time to do all of this.

01:45:22

That's exactly what this was.

01:45:24

There's a lot that you could get out of it if you do that.

01:45:26

I think there's a lot of self-reflection involved and peer reflection as well.

01:45:34

There's a lot that you can get from this.

01:45:36

I think there's a lot that can be learned from going through these laws.

01:45:42

My memory of going through this with a group of men was that we did deep dive each of these

01:45:48

topics and people had perspectives from a wide range of places.

01:45:54

I remember there was one guy talking about how certain things applied in a mechanic shop

01:45:59

in the same group with a guy who was leading, he was the chief technology officer for a

01:46:05

medical communications company, like massive company.

01:46:11

He's the lead CTO for that company.

01:46:14

Those two in the same group with me and we were talking about leadership.

01:46:17

It's just mind blowing the wide spectrum where these laws can be applied.

01:46:24

Having that experience and going through this again, obviously with you, there's a lot

01:46:28

that you can learn from this.

01:46:31

There's a lot of places where I want more depth.

01:46:34

That's just the nature of this particular one.

01:46:36

I'm sure that where I want depth on it, you probably don't.

01:46:40

Someone else who reads it once at somewhere else, it's just the way it goes.

01:46:44

Yet this is a 290 page book.

01:46:46

It's not short.

01:46:48

It felt short to me because it seemed like it went pretty quick.

01:46:52

That's just the factor of John Maxwell being a good writer in this particular case.

01:46:58

I don't feel like it's a 5.0 book.

01:47:01

I don't.

01:47:03

It's just primarily because it just seems like there's a little bit of, and there's been

01:47:10

comments in the chat about it, there's a little bit of puffing up again of himself and his

01:47:14

organizations that's brought up a lot.

01:47:18

I don't really know why that is or why that needs to be brought up.

01:47:22

Just what I know of John Maxwell having followed him.

01:47:25

That's not necessarily him saying, "Hey, look at me.

01:47:27

Look how great I am."

01:47:28

That's not it.

01:47:29

He's just using an example.

01:47:30

I will applaud him in that most of the time it seems like whenever he brings up his own

01:47:36

organizations, it's to show how he failed to lead them.

01:47:39

Did you catch that?

01:47:41

That was a lot of what he would bring up.

01:47:45

I think it's easy to discount that because he brought up his own organization talking

01:47:48

about it.

01:47:51

I have to keep that in mind.

01:47:53

Overall, I feel like this is a 4.5 book.

01:47:55

I think you nailed it on the head with that one, Mike.

01:47:59

I do think people should read it though.

01:48:01

I don't know that there's somebody that shouldn't read this.

01:48:04

I know that this is one that I continue to learn from it going through this again.

01:48:09

I know I've brought out my old one in the past just to reference it.

01:48:13

This one will take the place of that.

01:48:15

I know that it's one that I'm going to refer back to probably more now than I have in the

01:48:20

past just because I remember what all's in it now.

01:48:25

I'm getting in a position where I'm leading a lot more people and this actually matters

01:48:28

a lot more to me now.

01:48:31

I can see how this is going to be what I'm going to bring out of.

01:48:34

Take off the shelf quite a bit more than I have previously.

01:48:36

Yeah.

01:48:37

I think you're correct in that there's...

01:48:40

It's hard to think of somebody that you wouldn't recommend to read this book.

01:48:46

I can think of people where that recommendation would be pointless until they are in the right

01:48:52

space or season of their life.

01:48:54

That's fair.

01:48:55

That is fair.

01:48:56

That is fair.

01:48:57

That timing is everything, right?

01:48:58

A lot of timing.

01:48:59

Yes.

01:49:00

As long as your mindset is willing to grow, then yes, everybody could benefit from this.

01:49:05

If you think you're stuck in a hole, then no.

01:49:08

Right.

01:49:09

All right.

01:49:10

Let's put the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership on the shelf.

01:49:15

What's next, Joe?

01:49:16

Up next is a book called Iki Guy.

01:49:19

I love this.

01:49:21

I love that I looked up how to pronounce this.

01:49:23

The Iki Guy, I-K-I-G-A-I.

01:49:26

This is the Japanese secret to a long and happy life.

01:49:28

This is by Ekto Rogarcia and French Sask Morales.

01:49:33

Mariahs, something like that.

01:49:34

I'm sure I'm butchering that.

01:49:37

If you remember the old Venn diagrams that we've talked about, this is a Japanese term

01:49:42

that we don't really have an English equivalent to.

01:49:46

It's where you've got this four-circaled Venn diagram, what you love, what the world

01:49:50

needs, what you can be paid for, and what you are good at.

01:49:54

The intersection of those four circles is Iki Guy.

01:49:58

That's what it refers to.

01:50:00

Interesting.

01:50:01

And there are chapters in here that are pulling out Japanese stories and recommendations on

01:50:06

how to have a long and happy life in that little tiny subset of those four circles.

01:50:12

That's what this is about.

01:50:14

So it should be good.

01:50:15

It's kind of a short one, but it'll be good.

01:50:17

All right.

01:50:18

And then what'd you pick?

01:50:20

After that, we are going to read How to Call Me Your Mind by Chris Bailey.

01:50:25

Friend of the show, Chris Bailey.

01:50:26

Okay.

01:50:27

I forget what episode it was.

01:50:29

We covered the productivity project, I think, and we interviewed Chris.

01:50:34

Yep.

01:50:35

And he talked about how he writes all his books and text-set it with his mechanical keyboard.

01:50:40

Yep.

01:50:41

So you should go check out that episode in the meantime.

01:50:45

But How to Call Me Your Mind is his latest book.

01:50:48

It has just been released as we record this.

01:50:52

And I have read the whole thing already.

01:50:54

Oh, Cheater.

01:50:56

Yes.

01:50:57

As it could be a fun one, Chris's career trajectory, I feel, is very much in line with our own

01:51:07

evolution of the Bookworm podcast and just our thoughts on productivity.

01:51:12

I mean, his first book was The Productivity Project.

01:51:14

It was all the experiments on himself, right?

01:51:16

And then the next one was Hyper Focus.

01:51:19

And now this one is How to Call Me Your Mind.

01:51:22

And really, it's about intentionality, disconnecting from the distractions and all the noise.

01:51:30

I can tell you what it is not.

01:51:31

It is not a manual on mindfulness meditation, which is kind of what I was thinking because

01:51:37

I know Chris.

01:51:39

And I know that that's a big part of his story.

01:51:41

But there's a whole big section in here on analog versus digital.

01:51:45

And this is going to be a fun conversation.

01:51:48

So what you're saying is he listens to Bookworm and then he writes books about the themes

01:51:51

that we're currently covering.

01:51:53

So what we're doing?

01:51:55

Sure.

01:51:57

I think more we're following him than he's following us.

01:52:01

Oh, OK, OK, I got it.

01:52:02

I got it.

01:52:03

You want to frame it that way?

01:52:04

That's cool.

01:52:05

It's on how you view the world.

01:52:07

Yep.

01:52:08

Oh.

01:52:09

Genny Getbooks.

01:52:10

I do.

01:52:11

It's a little bit of a weird one to mention even, but it's called Game Bird Breeders Handbook

01:52:16

by Alan Woodard.

01:52:18

This is a weird one to bring up, but I've been going through a lot of it because I'm

01:52:22

in the middle of putting together a new quail venture.

01:52:26

I'm going to start raising quail at the house and we've got chickens and a handful of other

01:52:30

things.

01:52:31

So I wanted to put quail in the mix of that.

01:52:33

So I've been going through this book about how to manage genetics and breeding stock and

01:52:38

all sorts of stuff for quail because I'd love to raise quail, but that's eaten up the extra

01:52:44

book time I've had lately.

01:52:46

So once we get into Iki Guy, I'm probably going to have a second or third one on top

01:52:50

of that.

01:52:51

So here we go.

01:52:52

Yeah.

01:52:53

That's an oddball book for you.

01:52:54

How about you?

01:52:55

That is.

01:52:57

I am finishing up a book that I think I probably mentioned previously, but I have not had a

01:53:02

chance to finish and I am reading right now the Culture Fix by Will Scott, who is somebody

01:53:09

that I met at an organization, an organization event done in Milwaukee, an entrepreneurs

01:53:17

organization event.

01:53:18

So he works with organizations specifically on building solid culture, not just core value

01:53:29

type stuff, life theme sort of a thing.

01:53:33

He gets into like the specifics and the tactics and things like that too, but this was a book

01:53:39

that he gave me when I met him.

01:53:41

So I am going to finish this one.

01:53:44

Cool.

01:53:45

Cool.

01:53:46

That's all we got for today though.

01:53:48

So thank you to everyone who has made it to the end.

01:53:53

Thank you to the people who have joined the live recording.

01:53:56

You can do that yourself by going to youtube.com/bookwormfm.

01:54:03

Thank you specifically to the Bookworm Club Premium members who help us keep the lights

01:54:07

on by contributing five bucks a month or 50 bucks a year.

01:54:10

In addition to our gratitude, you do get a couple of perks.

01:54:14

When you join the Bookworm Premium Club, you get access to the Mind Node files.

01:54:20

I take these crazy Mind Map notes of all the books that we read and I upload those to the

01:54:24

club in both PDF and Mind Node format.

01:54:27

So you can download those.

01:54:28

You get access to Bookworm Wallpaper, which is a 4K wallpaper and a couple of gapbook

01:54:36

episodes that Joe recorded back in the day.

01:54:39

But the big thing is that you're supporting us and you're helping us to continue to do

01:54:42

this podcast.

01:54:43

So we really appreciate everyone who is willing to throw a couple bucks our way to help us

01:54:49

keep this thing going.

01:54:50

And if you are wanting to join, you can do so at bookworm.fm/membership.

01:54:57

And if you're one of these amazing people who reads along with us, pick up IkiGuy by

01:55:01

Hector Garcia and we'll cover that one with you in a couple of weeks.