Master John Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - Season 1 Premiere

📥 CLICK HERE to Download the free Leadership Workbook and submit your question for our Q&A with John and me. The greatest leadership teacher alive is here and this conversation is going to change the way you see yourself forever. I've spent my entire career studying one man's work on leadership, and today John Maxwell sits across from me to break down the laws that have shaped presidents, CEOs, coaches, and champions across every industry on earth. His book, the #1 bestselling leadership book of all time, didn't just change my life. It changed the lives of nearly every top performer I've ever had on this show, including the former president of Tesla who told me in passing last week that this book was the reason he succeeded. But here's what makes this episode different. This isn't just John Maxwell talking at you. I've lived these laws. I've applied them building my own teams, my own business, my own life and I'm in this conversation with him asking the questions YOU would ask if you were sitting in that chair. Here's what you'll gain from this episode: Understand the Law of the Lid: Discover why your leadership level is the single ceiling on everything you'll ever build and how to raise it starting today Redefine What a Leader Is: Learn why you are already a leader whether you have a title or not — leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less Know Which Law Matters Most: Find out which of the 21 laws John Maxwell says unlocks all the others and why mastering it first changes everything Learn How Leaders Actually Develop: Understand why leaders grow daily, not in a day, and the one action you can take this week to start that process Attract Better People Into Your Life: Discover the Law of Magnetism and why you attract who you are, not who you want 🗓️ New law dropping every Thursday so make sure you're subscribed so you never miss one. Click HERE to Subscribe to my email list to MAXOUT your life (all value, no fluff) Thank you for listening —Please Share it and get the word out! 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ← ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠INSTAGRAM⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FACEBOOK⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LINKEDIN⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠WEBSITE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

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• 0:45Ed Mylett?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

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• 1:35Ed Mylett?

  This is the Ed Mylett Show. All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. So I cannot tell you how excited I am to let you know that every week on Thursdays, we are releasing what I believe is the greatest series in the history of any book written on the topic of leadership. You will now get access to either through audio or video on our channel, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, with John Maxwell himself, every single week, each lesson, each law broken down by the master, directly through the camera or through your headphones into your life here on the Ed Mylett Show. We've structured this journey into Three distinct sessions to help you master these principles. Session one is your foundation, the internal character required to lead.

• 2:17Ed Mylett?

  Session two moves into your influence, how you connect and how you build elite teams. And session three is about legacy, how you multiply your impact for generations. Leadership is a discipline, it's not a title. And in every episode, I'm giving you the rep. One clear, high stakes action for you to execute that week. To track your progress, we've created a full 21-page leadership workbook. Just click the link in the show notes right now to download the entire playbook. It's free, our gift to you. Between each session, John Maxwell and I are hosting Q and A sessions to solve your specific leadership struggles. Isn't that incredible? So if you want us to answer your question, here's how you do it. When you click the link to download your free workbook, you'll see a section to submit your leadership question directly to John and I.

• 3:01Ed Mylett?

  We're pulling our Q and A topics directly from that list. So if you want your situation navigated by John and me, get that workbook and submit your question ASAP. We've never done anything like this on the show. I'm so excited. So I hope you enjoy it, everybody. God bless you. Max out. So leadership is one of the most discussed topics on planet Earth. It's also one of the most misunderstood. My education on leaderships come from one man, and it's a book, the number one sold book in the history of leadership books, the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, written by the man to my left, who also happens to be my hero. We're going to get in the nitty gritty on leadership here today, everybody, with the number one expert on planet Earth, Mr. John Maxwell. John, welcome back to the show.

• 3:41John Maxwell?

  Ed, I love you and I always love being with you. And I love when we get to do stuff together.

• 3:46Ed Mylett?

  I do too.

• 3:47John Maxwell?

  I do.

• 3:47Ed Mylett?

  You are my hero, as everybody knows. And my first introduction to you was actually this book.

• 3:54John Maxwell?

  Yes.

• 3:55Ed Mylett?

  Did you write it to find me? Or why did you actually write the book?

• 3:58John Maxwell?

  I wrote it to find myself. A lot of times what we write is for ourselves. And then we say, hey, this helped me, maybe it'll go help someone else. But I wrote the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Interestingly enough, the idea came on a golf course. You and I love to play golf. Yeah. I was playing golf with one of my publishers. And he said, John, I just finished reading a book on the laws of management. And he said, it was a terrific book. So I said, Victor, I want to write a book on the laws of leadership. And then I began to ask myself, okay, what really makes a law? Because I mean, you can have a good principle, you can have a good thought on leadership. But the word law kind of gives gravitas.

• 4:41John Maxwell?

  It's kind of like, this is kind of bigger than a principle. So I first of all, developed kind of a grid. What would be a law of leadership? And it has to be obviously about leadership, but it has to be, for example, timeless. If it's truly a law, I mean, the law of gravity is, it's the law. I mean, it doesn't come in and go out with time. So it has to be timeless, it has to be able, I have to be able to, it has to fit in every culture. It has to be male and female, it has to fit all of that. And it has to, it has to have positive life change in people's life. So I began to list what these laws were. And literally for two years, all I did was work with what would be a law of leadership. For two years. And I started off with about 60. I was gonna ask you.

• 5:25John Maxwell?

  And just kept whittling down, whittling down. And then I would talk to people like you and I'd say, do you think this is truly a law? And sometimes they'd strike it down. So anyway, after a couple of years, I got to the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. And so I wrote the book. And then for three years, I went on a book tour with it around the world because it became a bestseller the first week it came out. And it just stayed there on the bestseller list. In fact, the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership sells as many books today, 20 plus years later, as it did the day the book came out. You're kidding me. It's just, it just keeps. It just keeps on going.

• 5:59Ed Mylett?

  I gotta tell you, on the show, you know, I've probably interviewed 800, oh, going on 1,000 people. And one of the things people ask me, what do these folks all have in common? And they don't, not all of them have something in common. But the vast majority of them have told me they've read this book. In fact, last week, the last podcast that I did, was a gentleman who was the president of Tesla for 10 years. And as the interview was over, in passing, he asked me if I knew you, because you're also his hero. And I said, uh, yeah, in fact, I do. I consider him one of my great friends. He said, well, the 21 Aforethoughtful Laws of Leadership changed my life. I'm curious, of all of the laws, is there one that stood out to you? I kinda know this answer, but is there one that stands out more than others? Or they all like children, you love them equally?

• 6:42John Maxwell?

  Well, I love them, but not equally.

• 6:46John Maxwell?

  The Law of the Lid, which is the first one, Ed, I put it first, and here's why. If, if a person buys into the Law of the Lid, and I want us to talk about it for a moment. If they buy into the Law of the Lid, they'll buy into the other 20 laws.

• 7:02Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 7:03John Maxwell?

  That's a fact. And the Law of the Lid just says, how well you lead determines how well you succeed. In other words, the reason I began teaching on leadership, I was in my twenties. And I came to the conclusion that everything rises and falls on leadership. And when I came to that conclusion, I said to myself, if that is true, that if I can teach myself, if I can teach other people how to lead well, then it'll rise. Well, now we're, we're, we're taking that lid and it's going up. And if, and if I don't know it well, of course, it, it can fall. So, the Law of the Lid basically just says that the most important thing you can do to succeed in life, really learn. And that's true in business, that's true in government, that's true in ministry.

• 7:48John Maxwell?

  The ability to learn how to lead, because how well I lead not only determines how well I succeed, how well I lead determines how well the people that are on my team succeed. So let's say that between a one and a 10, I'm an average leader, I'm a five. What that means is that my organization will come up to my lid of leadership, and it'll be a, probably a four, but it cannot be a six or a seven. Because in the history of mankind, no organization has risen higher than the leadership lid of those who lead it. It just doesn't happen. Now here's the good news, you can grow as a leader. And when I wrote the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, I'd already written the book Developing the Leader Within You, which basically says, in fact, Ed, that was the first book written

• 8:34John Maxwell?

  that said you can develop yourself as a leader. Up until that time, two things are very significant. One is, people thought leaders were kind of born. Secondly is, if you go back, because I wrote that in the late 1990s, if you go back, there were no leadership books in bookstores. Wow. They were management books. Great point. I mean, Peter Drucker, he was a management guru, and you ma- But what happened, Ed, was, um, you can't manage speed. And so by the late, eh, by the mid 1990s, things were happening so fast that you couldn't manage them anymore. And somebody says, we gotta get ahead of them. And that's what leaders do, they see more than before. And so therefore, all of a sudden, leadership began to be the thing. And so I said, you can develop yourself as a leader. And then, in developing yourself as a leader,

• 9:20John Maxwell?

  I began with the lid saying to yourself, if you have a five, you can learn leadership skills, you can go to a six. With a lot of time, working on your skills, get to a seven. Now, every, every time I raise my leadership lid, guess what I do? Now, I raise the room of potential for all the people on my team. So, so, so when you raise your lid, you raise the lid of everybody around you. And, and so therefore, the law of the lid just, I just said, if people can understand it, and they can really learn it, and they can embrace it, and they can do it, they're not only going to help increase their ability, and the people's ability, but also, one more thing, Ed. When I raise my lid, if I'm a five as a leader, guess who I attract? Fours, threes, twos, and ones? Great point.

• 10:04John Maxwell?

  In the history of mankind, there's never been a person that is a nine, say, I want to follow a five. And so therefore, every time I raise my leadership lid, I also raise the quality, the type of person I attract. Because in the 21 laws, the law of magnetism is, we attract who we are, not who we want. And so I run into people all the time, they'll say, they'll say, well, I, I would like to have people that, you know, hardworking, great attitude, you know, teachable, and I'm taking my little list. When it's done, I look at them and say, now, are you hardworking? Are you teachable? Because if you have those qualities, people will migrate to you.

• 10:39Ed Mylett?

  Hmm.

• 10:39John Maxwell?

  If you don't have those qualities, they won't. So that law of led helps us draw better people. It helps us, it helps us improve our leadership. It's just, it's kind of like the essential law that if you get it, then now you say, I want to learn all the other 20.

• 10:54Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 10:54John Maxwell?

  Because now they're going to help me. What, all the other 20, why do they help me raise my lid?

• 10:57Ed Mylett?

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• 11:41Ed Mylett?

  Go to ro.co/milet to see if you qualify. That's R-O dot C-O slash Mylett to get started on Ro. For side effects of GLP-1 medications, including boxed warning, go to ro.co/safety. R-O dot C-O slash safety. So when I, when I ended up buying the island, we had to do all of our outdoor decorating, and I spent a fortune in the first half of the place. And I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore, but I want the best stuff. And that's where Wayfair came in. My wife wanted to get this new garden bed, and Wayfair was the place that offered the perfect solution. Wayfair also helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value, and trusted reviews. Wayfair verified products are hand-vetted by product specialists. They use a 10-point quality inspection system. Here's all I can tell you. The stuff has lasted over time, it looks great, and I get compliments on it.

• 12:26Ed Mylett?

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• 12:58Speaker 03

  Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 13:01Ed Mylett?

  So good. Let me ask you one more question about this because for me, obviously you know the impact your work and the fact that this is going to be on the channel on a regular basis for people getting access to these laws is just mind blowing to me. But one of the other things that you've done for me, you've changed the definition for me of what a leader is or looks like, meaning this. And I think a lot of people feel this way. I'd like you to speak to it. I think they think they're not a leader. I think when they picture a leader, they're picturing someone who's the CEO of a company only.

• 13:30John Maxwell?

  Position.

• 13:30Ed Mylett?

  Right. It's a position or they're the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Now that's a leader, but me, I'm not a leader, right? They're thinking that about themselves.

• 13:38John Maxwell?

  Of course.

• 13:38Ed Mylett?

  Who is, how do you know if you are one?

• 13:40John Maxwell?

  You know, when I started off, I knew that if I was going to talk about leadership, I was going to have to define what I think it is. So after much time, a lot of time, I came up with a conclusion that leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. Your ability to influence people. In fact, I love that proverb that says, he that thinketh, he leadeth, and hath no one following him, is only taking a walk. And I know what kind of people take it a walk. In fact, I wrote a book called The 360 Degree Leader that helps a person know that you can lead from the middle of the pack, you can lead up, you can lead beside, you can lead others. And the moment that we understand that leadership is influence, then all of a sudden, mom at home says, wait a minute, I'm a leader.

• 14:23John Maxwell?

  I have influence with my family, I've got influence with my children. And the reason I wanted everybody to understand that is in our own world, to our own degree, Ed, we all influence people. The moment I feel that I can influence people, now it gives a gravitas for me to learn how to do it. And so let's get rid of the leader titles and all that. And let's just say, look, where you are, what you're doing right now matters. So now learn to use influence in a positive way to help people where you are right now. And you'll begin to add value to them. And once you add value to people, then I, I promise you, they'll follow.

• 15:05Ed Mylett?

  You, if someone's watching this week by week, would there be some advice you would give them? If they, they watch one of the laws or listen to one of the laws? Is there something that you would recommend they do as they're doing that weekly? Some sort of daily practice?

• 15:20John Maxwell?

  Of course, of course, you know as well as I do, Ed. If you don't practice it, it doesn't happen. I mean, uh, action is, in fact, I had somebody the other day said, now, what's the best action to take? And I said, any action. Would you just get going in the game? Because you and I know that it's the action that allows us to learn. When I start moving, I find out a lot about myself. I, I find out a lot about my journey, what I'm doing. So what I tell the people is, in fact, another one of the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership is the law of process that says leaders develop daily, not in a day. So as you're watching this weekly, understand it's a process, okay? And take one at a time and practice them.

• 16:05John Maxwell?

  If you practice them, you'll learn. And understand this. The ability and the willingness to take action will give you what you need to know that you don't know now. The big mistake people have is they say, as soon as I figure it out, I'll do it. And I look at them, I say, no, no, no, you have to do it to figure it out. And so I would take each law and I would practice them and take it slowly and understand in a few months, I can promise you, you're going to be a better leader than you are right now. And that's okay. By the way, I'm 79. I'm still growing every day. I'm still practicing every day. I'm still learning every day.

• 16:48John Maxwell?

  And once you begin to learn the process of growth, you develop leadership growth capacity. And now you have the ability to learn more quicker and in greater degrees because you've increased your capacity. So start now, start slow, but go.

• 17:07John Maxwell?

  Trust me, you'll begin to see growth in your life. You'll find out sooner or later that you'll not go to the next level. You'll start to grow to the next level.

• 17:17Ed Mylett?

  So good. Everybody, there, I just feel so blessed that we're doing this. I'm so blessed that you're in my life. I'm blessed that, I can't believe, I love you. I can't believe we're doing this on the channel. That they're getting access to this. It's like, this is like a dream come true for me. There are 21 irrefutable laws of leadership, but there is one undisputed goat of all time on the leadership topic. And that is this man to my left. And so, thank you so much, John Maxwell, for being a part of the show.

• 17:44John Maxwell?

  It's my joy. I love you, man.

• 17:45Ed Mylett?

  I love you too. Enjoy, everybody. God bless you. Max out.