Every management expert claims to have created the best definition of leadership. After years of trying to come up with a better way of saying it myself, I keep coming back to the simple explanation that thought leader Dr. John C. Maxwell describes in his book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.
John Maxwell has achieved great success as an author and leadership expert, and one of his biggest secrets is all about the Law of timing. In The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Maxwell writes that “good leaders recognize that when to lead is as important as what to do and where to go.”
Do you have the Big Mo on your side? I’m talking, of course, about momentum. As leadership expert John Maxwell writes in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, “momentum is a leader’s best friend.”
As John Maxwell writes in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, “Victorious leaders have one thing in common: they share an unwillingness to accept defeat.” Let’s face it: if you’re constantly leading your team to failure, you’re probably not a very good leader.
John Maxwell’s take on the Law of Empowerment can be summed up by a quote from Theodore Roosevelt that he included in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants to be done, and the self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”
When was the last time you publicly recognized one of your employees for their performance? Recognition at work is key to making your employees feel like they’re doing a good job. It’s proven to make employees more likely to stick around and creates an all-around positive work environment.
© 2025 Dave Schoenbeck.