John Maxwell's #9 Law of Leadership: The Law of Magentism

📥 CLICK HERE to Download the free Leadership Workbook and submit your question for our Q&A with John and me. If you're not happy with the people around you, the most important question you can ask is not "why do I keep attracting this?" It's "what about me is drawing it in?" Law #9 of John Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership is the Law of Magnetism, and it is one of the most confronting laws in this entire series. The principle is simple: who you are is who you attract. Leaders don't attract who they want. They attract who they are. Your values, your energy, your standards, your character — all of it creates a magnet that pulls toward you the people who reflect it back. John opens this episode with an exercise that will stop you cold. He asks you to write down the three qualities you most want in the people around you. And then he asks the only question that matters: do you actually possess those qualities yourself? I connect this law to something I've written about in both Max Out Your Life and The Power of One More: your internal thermostat. Most people are running their teams, their businesses, and their lives at whatever temperature they believe they deserve. And when results start to exceed that setting, they subconsciously cool things back down. This law is about raising that thermostat because when you raise your own standard, the quality of people who stay in your world begins to change too. Here's what you'll gain from this episode: The Mirror Exercise: John's opening exercise that forces you to look honestly at what you're actually bringing before you make another hire or point the finger at your team. The Six Areas of Magnetism: The specific dimensions where like attracts like, and how to use each one to understand exactly what your leadership is currently pulling in. Your Life Is Recruiting: Why your leadership is drawing something toward you right now whether you realize it or not, and the one question that changes everything. The Identity Thermostat: My framework for understanding why most leaders keep attracting the same people at the same level, and what it takes to permanently raise the standard. High Standard Attracts High Standard: The practical rep this week: evaluate your team, your inner circle, and your culture at home, and ask honestly what your leadership has been modeling. This is one of those laws that stays with you long after the episode ends. The people you are surrounded by right now are telling you something. The question is whether you're willing to hear it. Go watch this episode and then do the exercise John walks you through. I promise it will reveal something worth knowing. This series releases every Thursday and each law builds on the last. If you haven't grabbed the free workbook yet, click the link below. It's the only way to track your progress law by law and get your questions in front of John and me for the upcoming live Q&A sessions. Max out. 🗓️ 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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• 1:06Speaker 01

  This is the Ed and Marlin Show.

• 1:11Ed Mylett?

  21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Series, Law 9, The Law of Magnetism. Who you are determines who you attract. Leaders don't attract who they want, they attract who they are. Welcome back to this leadership series on John Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. John teaches the principle, and I help connect it to what really looks like in the actual, real world when you're building a team, or a company, or a life. Today's principle is the law of magnetism. The people you attract are often a reflection of who you are as a leader. Your values, your energy, standards, discipline, most of all, your character, create a kind of magnet where you draw to you the people like you. And over time, that magnet shapes the people who come into your world. This is one of the most confronting laws in leadership because it forces us to look in the mirror.

• 1:57Ed Mylett?

  If your team lacks urgency, clarity, or accountability, sometimes the first place you need to look is not at them, but at you. What are you modeling? What are you tolerating? What standards are you consistently reinforcing? Because you're always going to eventually get your standards. In both my books, Max Out Your Life and The Power of One More, I talk about your identity being an internal thermostat. As a reminder, just in case, you know, since that time, I mentioned it back in Law 1, most people will have a homeostasis, let's say at 98 degrees, of what they believe they're worth and they deserve in their life. And like in your body, you're always trying to regulate that temperature. So if you begin to get results that exceed your internal thermostat setting, you subconsciously, even unconsciously, turn the thermostat setting, the air conditioning, on to cool your life

• 2:41Ed Mylett?

  or your business back down to what you believe you deserve. This is something I see over and over and over again. So I believe in real life, you can raise the thermostat temperature around you for certain behaviors as well. When you become more successful, your business, your family, your faith, or your health, by raising that setting. That thermostat impacts more than your own results. It influences what kinds of people stay around you. High standard leaders attract people who want growth. Low accountability leaders often attract excuse makers. Your life is recruiting something, whether you realize it or not. That's why this law matters so much. Before you ask why certain people keep showing up in your world, ask what your leadership is attracting. Let's hear John Maxwell teach this principle, the law of magnetism.

• 3:25John Maxwell?

  In the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, the ninth law is the law of magnetism. And the law of magnetism says, who you are is who you attract. Let's do an exercise.

• 3:40John Maxwell?

  Since this is a training and leadership type of an exercise, I realize that maybe you will even want to turn off the tape for a few minutes and do this on your own before you proceed. But let's do an exercise. What I want you to do is I want you to write down the top three qualities in people that you would like to attract to your organization.

• 4:02John Maxwell?

  Now, as you write down the top three qualities of people that you would like to attract, I want to just take a timeout for a second and let you do that. In a moment, I'm going to come back, and I'm going to let you look at those three qualities, and I want to do my teaching from what you put on paper.

• 4:22John Maxwell?

  Now that you're back, let's look at those three qualities that you have placed on the piece of paper. I want you to look at them because whatever three qualities that you have placed on your paper, what I want you to understand is this. You won't attract people because these are three qualities of people that you want to attract. You will only attract people of these qualities if you possess these qualities yourself. For example, on my piece of paper, I said, if I'm going to bring people around me, I want to bring people that have leadership abilities. I want to bring people that have integrity, and I want to bring people that have a great attitude. Now, those are three important things to me.

• 5:06John Maxwell?

  Integrity, attitude, leadership abilities. Those are the kind of people I want to attract. Now that I've put my list down of the three qualities of people I want to attract, the question I've got to ask myself is not, where are those people? The question I've got to ask myself is, do I possess those qualities? Because if I possess those qualities, if I'm a good leader, if I have a great attitude, if I'm a person that's filled with integrity, if I possess those qualities, I'll attract people because like begets like. So every once in a while, what I do is I run into leaders, and they'll say something like this.

• 5:47John Maxwell?

  They'll say, John, I need a person of high energy in my company. Boy, we need some initiative, high-energy people in my company. And whenever they say that, I look at them and I say, let me ask you a question. What's the question? Do you have high energy? And do you take initiative? Because if you do, I've got good news for you. You'll attract people like that. But can I tell you something?

• 6:10John Maxwell?

  If getting out of bed is a challenge every day, you understand?

• 6:17John Maxwell?

  And you need a nap in the afternoon. You know what I'm saying?

• 6:22John Maxwell?

  You're not going to attract a lot of high-energy people. Because high-energy people don't look around and say, man, do we need to find somebody that's slow and lazy?

• 6:35John Maxwell?

  If I could just see somebody that's moving, but you can't tell they're moving, that's the kind of person I want to be around. No, no, no, no, no. Like begets like. Al McGuire, who's now passed away, who was a very successful basketball coach for many, many years at Marquette University, had a statement that I just love. In fact, I like it so well, I put it in your notes. He said, "A team should be the extension of the coach's personality." My teams were arrogant and obnoxious.

• 7:01John Maxwell?

  Let me tell you something. He was. And that's what his teams were. In other words, he put himself, his who he was, became who the teams were themselves. This is just an absolute fact. It works in your life, and it works also in my life. I was doing a leadership conference, and we were, again, in a question and answer period. And a fellow raised his hand, and I said, what do you want? And he said, "I love this leadership stuff you're teaching." And I said, "I've got a question." He said, and he was a young kid again. He said, "I've decided I'm going to be a leader," which was nice, okay. So now, he said, "The question I have for you is, who should I start leading?"

• 7:39John Maxwell?

  And I looked at him, and I said, "The first person you should lead is yourself." Yourself. In fact, let me put it this way. If you wouldn't follow yourself,

• 7:51John Maxwell?

  why should anyone else follow you? Now, this goes back to this law of magnetism. What are you and who are you on the inside? Because here's what I want you to say. You're going to attract people just like you. So what I would do as a leader is this. When I defined and understood the three, or four, or five top qualities of people that I wanted to attract to my organization, I would make sure, two things. One, that I had those qualities in my life. And if I did not, I would make sure that I began to discipline myself to have those qualities in my life. Because who you are is who you attract. That's the way it works. It works that way every time. It works that way in the business community.

• 8:34John Maxwell?

  I have the privilege of being with many companies, organizations, and corporations. Again, I tell you, they all have a personality. When I'm out with the Walmart people, these are people that get up early, and these are people that love numbers and figures. If you go to one of their early morning, Saturday morning meetings, not during the week, they do theirs on Saturday morning, they get all the stats from all the regions all over the country of how their Walmart stores are doing. And they're up early, and they're beating those numbers, and they're putting them up there, and they're saying, "You made it, you didn't make it, you were short this week, and this is how quickly." They love accountability, and they love getting up and doing something just early and making sure that, you know, they're kind of the early bird gets the worm kind of a mindset. Now, that's who Walmart is, that's a culture. And they attract, what kind of people they attract? They attract those kind of people.

• 9:22John Maxwell?

  I go with other companies and they, they love to study. They just love to, to learn and grow and they're, they're kind of, they have a growing, personal growth type of a culture and environment in them. And as long as they're growing and as long as they're learning, they know if they can grow themselves, they're growing their company. So they want a lot of meat. They want to keep saying, okay, how can I develop myself? And they're always wanting programs to develop themselves. Now, what I'm saying is every organization has its own personality, but here's what I know. The culture of that organization determines the kind of people that they attract to it.

• 9:58Ed Mylett?

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• 12:02John Maxwell?

  What I have found is that there are some key areas of attraction. In other words, what I want to do is I want to define for you certain areas that the law of magnetism I know works for a fact. For example, for example, number one, your mission. Your mission of your company attracts a certain type of a person. That's an absolute fact. And when you put your mission out, can I tell you what your mission does for your organization? It divides people. It attracts people who are like that and have a desire to have a mission like that and it repels people who have no desire to be like that and that is certainly not their goal or mission in life.

• 12:43John Maxwell?

  So when you lay out the mission, you attract certain people and you repel people based upon what your mission is, what you're trying to accomplish. Another area, number two, is priorities. Whatever your priorities are in your organization and whatever the priorities of the leaders happen to have, can I tell you something? That's the kind of priorities that the people are going to have. For example, when I gave the illustration of one of the other laws about the CEO that looked at the people and says, if anybody in my company asks you to do anything wrong, here's my personal phone number, you call me. Do you know what he was doing? The law of magnetism was operating. You know what he was? He was attracting people of integrity. He was attracting people who want to do the right thing.

• 13:25John Maxwell?

  He was attracting people who said, yes, I will call you if somebody asks me to do something wrong. He was going for a high integrity, high-character type of person with that kind of statement. It's the law of magnetism. So your mission attracts certain people? Your priorities, and it has much to do with, with the kind of person you attract? Number three, age. I found that people grouped together by age to a certain extent. And I've found that you get into certain organizations, they, they basically age with what the leaders are. You get into some companies and they just got a bunch of young people that are just kind of going after it as fast as they possibly can.

• 14:07John Maxwell?

  And, and age has a lot to do with the type of person that you attract yourself. Number four, your values. Oh my, this is huge. The values that you have are going to do a lot with what kind of a person that you're going to attract to your organization. For example, a high value to me is adding value to people. That's a huge value. That, that's right at the top for me. If somebody says, John, what do you want to do in life? It's very simple. My life is very simple. I want to add value to you. I want to come alongside of you. I want to write books that add value to you. I want to do lectures and teaching and tapes that'll add value to you. I want to add value to you. My greatest goal is to take people to a higher level than they could ever get on their own. That's my desire. What, what kind of people do I attract?

• 14:51John Maxwell?

  Well, I can tell you what kind of people I attract. People that want to add value to others. I don't attract selfish people. I don't attract people who are kind of basically in it for themselves and taking the journey by themselves and hoping to, at the end, to have just some huge reward that they give only to them. I don't attract selfish type people. Why? Because it's a value. The law of magnetism says you attract basically who you are. Number five, another area I have found is, to be very true, is in the area of background. A lot of times we attract people that have the same kind of background. Maybe it's, maybe it's, we grew up in the same area and, and so therefore we have common roots geographically. Perhaps we had common roots as far as our education or perhaps the kind of business we're in.

• 15:34John Maxwell?

  But basically we attract people a lot of times based on, on our background. And then finally, the other indicator of the law of magnetism that it's a key area of attraction is attitude. You attract people based on your attitude. Can I tell you what you've never found? You've never found an organization where you've got a great attitude at the top and a poor attitude at the bottom. You don't, you don't see that. Attitudes come in. You know what? People with bad attitudes, they don't even want to be around people with good attitudes. It's that too much cheery stuff. You know what I'm saying? Just, it just kind of weighs on them after a while. You know, they're just, you're just way too happy for me, you know?

• 16:17John Maxwell?

  You're too excited about life, you know? So, so people with a bad attitude, they're not attracted to people with a good attitude. They don't even want to be around. I, I love a guy said, well, if you have a great attitude, you'll attract everybody. I said, no, no, you won't. You'll make some people sick. It felt like to say, I can't stand that person. They're happy, they're enjoying their life, they're going somewhere. Who wants to be happy, enjoy their life, and go somewhere? Could I have another cup of coffee, please? Now those are areas that if you possess, will bring a sense of magnetism to you and you'll attract like people. It's just an absolute fact. So look at your organization and ask yourself, who are we?

• 17:00John Maxwell?

  Because by answering the question, who you are, what you value, what is your mission statement, what your attitude is, what all that stuff is, and I would encourage you, this is a great exercise for you to do as a group. Once you get quote, your DNA, your personality as a company or a culture, once you have figured it out, just understand this, you're going to attract a whole bunch of people just like you.

• 17:28Ed Mylett?

  So if you haven't done it yet, click the link below. You need the 21-page workbook in your hands to track the rep for every law. Plus, this is the only way to get your questions in front of John and I for the Q and A sessions coming up in a few weeks. Get the guide, join the list, and let's get back to this teaching. Leadership intuition helps you read what others miss. It sharpens discernment. It improves your timing. It helps you lead ahead of problems instead of behind them all the time. It allows you to respond rather than always react. Intuition helps leaders become readers of intangibles in leadership. Write down these key points on how to apply this law. Number one, notice details of changes to the situation around you or the environment. Two, pay attention to where things seem to be headed, not just where you are.

• 18:12Ed Mylett?

  Three, in every situation, look for available resources, materials, technology, and most of all, people. Four, pay attention to changes in people's moods and behaviors. Five, notice changes to your own state of mind, your strengths and your weaknesses. In addition to writing these details down for the rep of the week, do some self-reflecting and see where you can be intuitive. Start to listen. You know, silence is a powerful thing. Getting quiet will give you a lot of the answers to the questions that you may not even know you need to the test. As John said, if you struggle with this law, find an intuitive leader and be around them. Ask questions so you can learn from them. Also lead from your strengths. If you see a trait or a law you thrive in, stick there and lead off of your skill set.

• 18:57Ed Mylett?

  We're going to see you next week with law number nine. So you attract who you are. As you grow in character, vision, and discipline, and your standards, the quality of people around you begin to change too. I promise you this is accurate. This week, ask yourself, what am I consistently attracting into my life and leadership? And what does that reveal about me? Be honest. Look at your team. Look at your inner circle, your business relationships, even your culture in your home. Are you attracting high-character people, hungry people, committed people? Were you surrounded by inconsistency, drama, passivity, or low standards? Now evaluate these areas. Number one, energy. Do you bring life or drain it? Two, standards.

• 19:42Ed Mylett?

  Are your expectations clear and lived out? Three, character. Do you attract trust or caution? Four, growth. Are you the type of person that's ambitious, disciplined, that other people want to follow? Why this matters is this, you tend to attract people who are similar in mission priorities, age, values, background, attitude, even leadership ability. If you think the people you attract could be better, maybe it's time you look at yourself. This will be key in going into the next law where we build upon this week to learn the law of connection.