John Maxwell's #12 Law of Leadership: The Law of Empowerment

📥 CLICK HERE to Download the free Leadership Workbook and submit your question for our Q&A with John and me. You either go up with the people you lead, or you go down with them. There is no version where you stay still. Welcome back to our series on John Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Law #12 is the Law of Empowerment, and John opens it with a line that stopped me: only secure leaders give power to others. This one hits close to home for me. If you know me at all, you know I like control. Letting go of it has been one of the hardest lessons of my leadership life. In this episode, John shows you what happens when a leader pushes people down instead of lifting them up: you don't stay above them, you go down right along with them. Then he gets specific about why so many leaders never empower anyone in the first place. He breaks down five reasons, from insecurity to ego to the kind of bad experience that makes you swear you'll never pour into anyone again, and he doesn't let anyone off the hook, including himself. I connect this straight to what I teach in the power of one more. I talk about how leaders convince themselves they're more valuable when everything depends on them, when the truth is the opposite: if everything depends on you, you don't have a business, you have a bottleneck with your name on it. I challenge you to stop asking how you can get something done fastest and start asking who can grow by doing it instead. That one shift in the question changes everything about how you lead. Here's what you'll gain from this episode: The Demonstration: John's live, physical illustration of exactly what happens to a leader who pushes their people down instead of lifting them up. The Five Reasons You Don't Empower: The breakdown of what's really stopping you from letting go, and at least one of them is going to sting. The Power of One More: How a single moment of belief from a leader can turn someone into who they were always capable of becoming. The Bottleneck Trap: Why holding onto every decision doesn't make you more valuable, it makes you the reason your organization can't grow. Kingmaker, Not King: What John says the real goal of leadership actually is, and why the leaders who understand it end up more secure, not less. I think about every person who ever believed I could be more than I thought I could be, and I know I would not be sitting here right now without them. That is the debt I am trying to pay forward every single day. Somebody in your life is waiting for you to see something in them before they see it in themselves. Stop protecting your position long enough to go find that person this week. This is part of a new series releasing every Thursday where John Maxwell and I are walking through all 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership together, one law at a time. Click the link below to download the free 21 page workbook so you can follow along, track your growth, and submit your questions for our upcoming Q&A sessions with John. 🗓️ 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.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  This is the Ed and Mylan Show.

• 0:08Ed Mylett?

  21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Series, Law 12, The Law of Empowerment. Look, average leaders need to be needed. I've seen this a lot in my career. Great leaders build people who don't need them forever. Welcome back to the special leadership series on John Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Today's principle is the law of empowerment, and this law is one of the biggest tests of a leader's security. Because empowerment sounds simple, but for many leaders, it's incredibly difficult. Why? Because empowerment requires trust. Look, if you're like me, you're probably a control freak, and it's very difficult to let go of things. But one of the things I've learned as a leader in business is one of my main jobs is to transfer belief and skill to people.

• 0:51Ed Mylett?

  The transfer of belief and skill is what makes a great leader. And once you've done that, you've got to give people space to improve and to grow, and even make decisions in some cases. So it requires releasing control. It requires letting someone else carry responsibility, and it requires being secure enough to celebrate when someone else grows. One of the greatest mistakes leaders make is believing they're more valuable when everything depends on them, so they hold on to everything. They make every decision, they control every detail. Actually, they become the bottleneck, and then they wonder why the organization isn't growing. But here's the truth: If everything depends on you, you haven't built a team. And here's the other truth: You don't have a business. You just have a "you" thing, where you control everything, and nothing will ever get you free. You'll never be independent.

• 1:36Ed Mylett?

  What you've really built is dependency, whereas great leaders build independent people. And dependency makes a leader feel important temporarily, but it limits long-term growth. In leadership, control feels safe, but control does not scale. Empowerment scales. When you empower people, you give them the responsibility, you give them the belief, you give them the room and the space to make decisions, and therefore to grow. And you give them the dignity of ownership. This doesn't mean you disappear. It means you develop. John uses the term "to equip." You coach, you create standards, and then you trust people to rise. This connects deeply to what I teach in The Power of One More. One more opportunity can change someone's life, one more belief, one more moment where

• 2:21Ed Mylett?

  a leader says, "I believe you're capable of more. I believe in you." Sometimes people don't become leaders because nobody ever empowered them to lead. They were managed, they were corrected, they were criticized, but they were never empowered. And one of the great gifts a leader can give someone is the gift of belief before they truly believe in themselves. You'll also hear me in my books talk about identity. Empowerment is one of the great ways leaders shape identity in others. When you give someone meaningful responsibility, you're communicating to them, "Hey, I see leadership in you. I see capacity in you. I see something bigger in you than maybe even you see in yourself." That's the great gift great leaders have given me in my life.

• 3:05Ed Mylett?

  They've made me believe I was better than even I thought I was. Well, I can't believe that if you're controlling every single decision. Let me soar, let me make some mistakes, let me grow, let me expand. And when that happens, people begin to rise to the identity you call out of them. That's leadership. Think about the best coach you've ever had, the best boss, the best mentor, the best parent. They didn't just tell you what to do, they made you feel capable of becoming more. They gave you a standard, they gave you accountability, but they also gave you belief. That is empowerment. And I think this matters so much today because so many people are over-managed and under-developed. They're told what to do, but not how to think. I got to tell you why we do this, too. We don't have a long-term vision for our business.

• 3:49Ed Mylett?

  We're so caught up in the day-to-day of trying to make a profit, trying to hit our numbers. And what we do is we cause ourselves to stay in that cycle perpetually forever because we don't develop any expansion and any leadership. There's no transfer of belief or skills. So what you've done is you've given tasks, but not ownership. Great leaders do it differently. They don't just ask, "How can I get this done expeditiously?" They ask, "Who can grow by doing this?" That shift changes literally everything, because now leadership is not just about production, it's about multiplication. With that, let's hear John Maxwell teach the foundation of this principle, the law of empowerment.

• 4:26John Maxwell?

  Number 12. The law of empowerment. And the law of empowerment says, "Only secure leaders give power to others." Only secure leaders give power to others. In your notes, "The people's capacity to achieve is determined by their leader's willingness and ability to empower." Let me illustrate. Every year, I spend time with my nonprofit organization equip, traveling internationally. And as I travel to many countries, I teach thousands upon thousands of leaders.

• 5:09John Maxwell?

  What I have noticed, especially in developing countries around the world, is I've noticed that the person in power, the person that has a leadership position, instead of empowering others, and instead of sharing with others, and instead of including others and developing a leadership team, the person in a leadership position, instead of raising up people, in developing countries, most often, they try to push down people. Let me illustrate. Come on up here for a moment. My name's John. What's your name? David. David, come on up here beside me. Let me just illustrate this with David. By the way, David, I wanted to pick out somebody good-looking. Sit down. No, no, no.

• 5:53John Maxwell?

  No, no, no. I just looked around, said, "I got to get a good-looking guy for this." Okay, now, watch this, David. What I've found is too many leaders, and by the way, I don't want to stop here, but not only in developing countries, in America, I see this happen all the time. Leaders who have power and have position, taking somebody like David, let's say, "I'm the leader, I got the power, I got the position." Here's what I see happening all the time, where we take them and we try to push them down. Okay, come on, David, cooperate. I'm sorry. David's theme song is "I Shall Not Be Moved." So these leaders, they push them down. You follow me? And their whole thing is, "I got to keep pushing my people down. I got to push them down."

• 6:38John Maxwell?

  By the way, have you noticed something? While I'm pushing David down, what's happening to me? I'm going down with him. That's the way it always works, friend. Listen, if you're a leader and you push people down, you just go down with them. It's only a matter of time. Just ask if I take David and I start developing him, and I say, "I'm going to lift him up, and I'm going to get him up to a higher level." Now, no, no, no, now, what happened? When I start lifting David up, what happens? I go up with him. Here's what I want you to understand as a leader. You either go up with your people, or you go down with your people. And this idea of somehow, "I'm going to protect my position, I'm going to push people down,"

• 7:21John Maxwell?

  what we don't realize is, it eventually is our downfall also. By the way, thanks, David. You did a great job, didn't he? Huh? Give him a hand. He did a great job. Okay, now. David, you and I have been practicing that for months, and boy, it worked out really well.

• 7:38Ed Mylett?

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• 8:21Ed Mylett?

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• 9:06Ed Mylett?

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• 9:38John Maxwell?

  So you ask yourself the question, I ask myself this question all the time, again, when I travel and I see this happening in other countries, I ask myself, "Why is it that the leader insists on somehow being way above his or her people, and always is trying to kind of keep everybody?" You know, I don't know, they have this kind of like, I don't, the best way I explain it, almost like a king-of-the-hill mentality. And I got to be on top. Why is it that people fail to empower people and give them the energy and the permission and the environment that will help them to be growing and be great leaders themselves? I think there are several reasons we need to discuss quickly.

• 10:21John Maxwell?

  One of the reasons I think we fail as leaders to empower others is insecurity. You show me an insecure leader, and I'll show you somebody that will never empower anybody. In fact, let me tell you what's never happened. An insecure leader has never empowered anyone, because they're too insecure. They're afraid that somebody else will get their job. What happens if I give somebody a little bit of empowerment, and they do a better job than me? Oh! And that insecurity constantly causes leaders to keep pushing people down. Let me just say this, and then I'll put it up quickly, because I'll start to show my bias, and I don't want to do that.

• 11:05John Maxwell?

  One of the worst days of your life is to be in any organization where you have to follow an insecure leader. Trust me. It's like walking handcuffed through a landmine. It's only a matter of time till they'll blow you and them up together. Insecurity. Insecure leaders do not empower other people. Another reason I think we fail to empower others is a desire for job security. I do know people who, I don't think they're insecure, they just want to keep their job. They're saying, "Well, I don't know if I want to train and empower somebody, they may take my job away from me."

• 11:47John Maxwell?

  Now, what I've always taught, especially in my inner circle, who I have taught all to be leaders, I've always told them, it's their job to work themselves out of a job. My thing is equip and train people to take your job, and let me tell you something, if you equip somebody to take your job, and you train them, here's the way this works. If you work your way out of a job, I'll give you another one. I've had key inner circle members that have had seven or eight positions in a period of maybe 13, 14 years with me. I mean, they've gone from this one to another because they trained and empowered, and then they've done that, so they don't need to run that, so they go over and run another area. I have a wonderful friend of mine who's been with me for over 20 years, Dan Ryan. Little that man, I bet you he has worked himself out of at least a dozen jobs in 20-plus years of being with me.

• 12:29John Maxwell?

  And all I say to my staff is, "You work yourself out of a job? I'll give you another one." In fact, here's the way it works with me. If you can't work yourself out of a job... You're smart, aren't you? I'll take the one away from you. You'll lose the job if you can't train someone else to do the job. But I think sometimes, we just don't want anybody else to take our job. Another reason I think we fail to empower people is a bad experience. In other words, I'll bet everyone in the studio, and I'll bet everyone listening to

• 13:11John Maxwell?

  this leadership training tape, I'll bet every one of us have had a time where we've trained somebody. I mean, you've worked hard, you've poured your life into them, you trained them, and then it turned out bad. They didn't do a good, you know, they left the company, they left you, they hurt you, they backstabbed you, they did all kinds of... How many of you have ever had a bad experience trying to train someone? Raise your hand. Oh, yeah, 100% in the studio. How many of you are sitting beside that person today? Now, see, you've learned. Now, your hand doesn't go up anymore. You know better, you know better. Okay, now, a lot of times, just a bad experience. I've had that happen to me. I can remember, as a young leader, taking a very promising young guy, younger than me, I was already in my 20s, so he was really young, and pouring my life into him for a

• 13:56John Maxwell?

  couple, about three years, and only to have him just mess up. And I remember, I said to myself, "I'm never going to do this again. I am never going to do this again. I'm done training people." In fact, I thought, when I hire people from now on, instead of pouring my life into them, I'm going to keep them at a distance. And for the next six months, when I brought a couple people on my staff, I kept at a distance, and then one day I realized that if you don't allow a person to get close to you, and if you don't pour your life into them, the good news is, they probably won't hurt you, but the bad news is, they'll never help you. They'll never be able to come alongside of you and truly alliance and partner with you. But a bad experience. A lot of times, we just have bad experiences, "I'm never going to do that again," and so therefore, we fail to empower people.

• 14:40John Maxwell?

  Number four, ego. Just ego, just the fact, hey, a lot of times, we don't empower anybody because we want all the credit, isn't that true? Yeah, we think, "My goodness, so I empower this team, they're going to get some of the credit, and I'd like to have it all." Hello? Number five, codependency. I think sometimes, we are codependent with others. In other words, basically, what we're saying is, is I need you, and I want to keep you close to it, if I empower you, I might free you up to let you go. And I put in there because it's a true statement, you can't lead people if you need people. Now, don't take that statement to the extreme.

• 15:22John Maxwell?

  Don't go back and say, "Boy, I don't even like people. This is just, this is awesome. I have the first quality of being a great leader." No, no, no, no, no. If you need them, and the reason you can't lead them if you need them, is if you truly need them in a codependent way, you'll never make the hard decisions, because you need their approval too much. By the way, as I close out the law of empowerment, I just want to say to you that this has been a law that has been very important to me since I've turned 50, and now, much older. I've come to the conclusion for me, now, this is just for me, that my greatest joy

• 16:05John Maxwell?

  and my greatest fulfillment is in adding value to others. And I can say, at this stage of my life, other people's success brings me more joy than my own success. And I don't mean that wrong, because I still like to hit the ball out of the park. And every once in a while, I get the chance to hit the ball out of the park. But to train and teach someone else to do that, it's a greater joy. You know what? I kind of know what I can do. But when I pour my life into others, and I see what they can do, it begins to compound as far as the return. It begins, instead of to add, it begins to multiply. And so, I kind of close this law by saying that I have found that adding value to people

• 16:48John Maxwell?

  is very important to me. And I basically try to guide my life, so that every day, I can positively take people to another level. And I've found three things about adding value to people that is just absolutely huge. And the first thing I've found about adding value to people is this, that you can only add value to people if you truly value people. If I don't value you as a leader, I'll manipulate you, instead of motivate you, and it's never right. So, the only way that I can ever add value to you is truly value you.

• 17:27John Maxwell?

  And secondly, I only can add value to people when I know and relate to what they value. I've got to know and relate to what they value, because I can't add value to them if I'm on a different page. I've got to know what their interests are, and what their goals and mission and passion is. Those are important. So, I can only add value to you if I know and relate to what you value. And thirdly, I can only add value to you and to others when I make myself more valuable. In other words, I've got to keep growing. Because if I don't keep growing, I cannot pass on to you what I'm learning, because you cannot give what you do not have. So, how do I stretch you?

• 18:12John Maxwell?

  By stretching myself first. How do I add value to you? By adding value to myself first. How do I grow you? By growing myself first. By making myself more valuable, then I can add value to you. And that's what the law of empowerment is all about. Taking people to a higher level than they would have ever gone on their own, but because you willed it and gave permission to it, you empower them.

• 18:46Ed Mylett?

  So, everybody, John and I get asked often, where you could see the two of us speak actually together, and very often, we do that for Life Surge, which is a Christian business event, where you can come in looking for the Spirit, and you also learn a bunch of things about business. And John and I are at many of those events actually at the same time, and we love speaking for them.

• 19:03John Maxwell?

  Oh, we love doing it together. It's just, if you come to Life Surge, you just get, I started to say double trouble, but hopefully you also, hopefully you also get some double help, and Ed and I would love to see you at one of our events.

• 19:15Ed Mylett?

  Absolutely, we'll see you there. If you haven't done it yet, click the link below. You'll need the 21-page workbook in your hands to track the rep for every law. Plus, that is the only way to get your questions in front of John and I for the Q&A sessions that we've already done, and the ones that are coming up in a few weeks. Get the guide, join the list, and let's get back to the teaching. The highest level of leadership is not getting people to depend on you, it's helping people grow so much that they become leaders themselves. Insecure leaders, control. Secure leaders, empower. And the more secure you become in who you are, the more willing you are to help others become who they were born to be. The rep is to pick one person this week and intentionally empower them. Give them ownership, not just an assignment.

• 20:00Ed Mylett?

  Let them solve a problem, let them make some decisions, let them take a visible role, then support them without bringing them down. Also, ask where your ego may be slowing down the growth of others. Sometimes, the greatest act of leadership is stepping back enough for somebody else to step up. The goal is not to remain the hero. The goal is to build more heroes. Not to be the king, but to be the kingmaker. Not to be the queen, to be a queenmaker. To be successful as a leader, you must empower others. The greatest things happen only when you give others the credit. Enlarging others makes you larger. Do some reflecting on how you can make things easier for you to give some authority over something important.

• 20:43Ed Mylett?

  It can be something as simple as a family member in your house, asking them to do a task, or delegate tasks to employees, then encouraging them to bring them up, and then encouraging them and bringing them up to reproduce leaders, which will be the key for the next law.

• 20:57Speaker 03

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