John Maxwell's #1 Law of Leadership: The Law of the Lid

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1:03This is the Ed Myland Show. 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership series. Law 1, law of the lid. One of the hardest truths I've ever learned in business is this. The biggest problem in any organization, it can be you. My leadership ability was the ceiling of the entire business when I started to become successful. In other words, you're not going to exceed your own identity in business. I talk about this in my books all of the time. So welcome to this special leadership series on John Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. For decades, these laws have helped shape leaders in business, sports, organizations, and frankly, me.

1:42Families around the world have benefited from this, and I'm so honored that in this series, John Maxwell will teach the law itself, the timeless leadership principle that's changed my life. This is why I do this podcast. When you change your identity and you elevate who you believe you are, the thoughts and concepts and beliefs you hold to be the most true about yourself, you lift the lid on what your possibilities are in your business and your life. So my role today is to help bring that principle into the real world, what it looks like under pressure, what it looks like when you're leading people, and what it looks like when the stakes are high.

2:13Today's principle is the law of the lid. Early in my career, I believed growth depended on opportunity, timing, or market. But the truth is, eventually I realized something very powerful. My leadership ability determined the growth of the organization. If my leadership was a five, the business could never grow to be a nine. I could only grow to my level of confidence or of what I call identity. The moment I understood that, everything changed for me. Instead of blaming my circumstances, the market, interest rates, supply chain, other people, I started developing myself as a leader. In my book, The Power of One More, you hear me talk about the concept of raising your thermostat.

2:53Most people, if they're like at 98 degrees, like in your body, your life will always try to regulate that temperature. I believe in real life, if you raise your temperature, then you've got a chance of raising what you can produce in terms of results. So your identity is almost like a thermostat setting set on your life, right? So if you're set at 72 degrees and you begin to produce 90, 80, 100, 120 degrees worth of results, you'll subconsciously turn the air conditioning on of your life and cool it back down to your thermostat setting. So the problem is most people, you go watch people and they gain weight.

3:27You know, you watch someone who was overweight and all of a sudden you meet them and they've lost 20 pounds. They look incredible. So they've done the behaviors and the tactics of what would a fit person do. But then you run into them a year later and they put the 20 pounds back on. Why is that? Why do we always go back to where we were before? because that thermostat setting is so powerful in your life. And so you can change the external conditions, but if you don't change internally who you believe you are, you're always going to cool your life back down to what you believe you're worth. That's why I love this first law so much.

3:59If you set a lid on yourself, there's no room for growth. So I'm so honored to do this. Let's hear John Maxwell teach the foundation of this crucial principle, the law of the lid. Law number one, the law of the lid. The law of the lid says leadership determines the level of effectiveness. Now, this is a huge law, and although I say one law is not more important than any other law, here's what I do want you to know. If I would start off with any law, I must start off with this one, and here's why. Because if you can buy into this law in the next five to six minutes as I talk to you, if you can buy into this law, you'll have a great passion to learn all the others.

4:45And let me explain why. I'm going to illustrate the importance of this law by using my hands. Watch this for a moment. It's kind of a visual illustration. Let's say, for example, my left hand here represents my ability to lead people. This is how well John Maxwell leads people. This is my leadership lit. Okay. If this hand is my leadership and if this hand is my business, in other words, my company, my department that I'm overseeing, okay, whatever I'm in charge of, here's what I want you to understand. My department, my business, my company, my organization, here's what I want you to understand.

5:23The lid of my leadership will never allow my business to get any higher. It'll never allow my, in other words, in other words, if this truly is my leadership lid, my company, my business, my department, my organization, whatever it is, it can never get any higher than the lid of my leadership. In other words, your leadership, my leadership, our leadership, whatever it is, is going to literally control and determine the size of our business. Now, this is huge. If I were sitting where you are right now and I was taking notes, what I'd be saying to myself is something like this. Since the law of lid says that my leadership is going to determine my effectiveness.

6:06The most important thing that I can do in my life is learn how to become a better leader. Let me explain to you. Remember, I've already said to you the laws can be learned. We've already realized that you can learn these laws, okay? In fact, you told your neighbor you can learn these laws. Now, let me explain to you what could happen. Let's say from a one to a 10, my leadership lid is a four. Well, what that means is if I'm a four as a leader, then my business, my organization is going to be a three. Now, here's what's not going to happen. If I'm a four as a leader, my business or my organization is not going to keep going above that lid and go to a four, five, six, seven.

6:42It's never happened. In the history of mankind, the organization has not grown beyond the lid of the leadership of that organization. The leadership contains and controls and determines the size of the business. Now, so if I'm a four, you look like a great smart audience, so I'm going to ask you a question. If I'm a four as a leader, what's my organization going to come to that I lead? But what's my number? Three, four max. Isn't that right? Can't be any higher. What it's not going to be, it's not going to be a five, six, or seven because my lid is a four. Now, the good news is I can learn to lead.

7:21So here's what I'm saying. If I'm a four as a leader and I've got a three, three and a half, maybe, max, maybe, maybe a four, I doubt, company or organization, here's what I want you to see. If I go from a four and I start learning leadership to a five, to a six, to a seven, all of a sudden, now look what happens. I have capacity for growth. I have potential for growth. My company can go from a three to a four to a five to a six. In other words, here's what I'm saying. You can literally double the size of your department. You can just double the size of your company by just lifting your leadership lid.

7:57And every one of you, every one of you here, everyone that would watch these tapes, I want to say this to you. You can lift your leadership lid. But everything, remember this, everything rises and falls on leadership. By the way, where I learned this, when I lived in San Diego, California, I had a fellow by the name of Don Stevenson who was my mentor. And he was the president of Global Hospitality, and that Global Hospitality literally would buy, they would buy resorts that were going bankrupt, resorts like La Costa, Greenleaf, any kind of major resort across America that was going under financially.

8:37What we found was that this company, Global Hospitality, would come in and they would buy the company. Okay, now get the picture. Here we are. I'm sitting out with Don Stephenson about every other month he's mentoring me, And I asked him one day, I said, Don, when you go buy a bankrupt company, a resort that's going under, are there some things that you always do? And I'll never forget. He looked at me, said, John. He said, yes, there is. He said, when we go into a bankrupt company, he said, there are two things we always do. And I looked at him and said, two things? He said, yes, absolutely. He said, the two things we always do is, he said, first of all, we train all, we take and we train all the people that are in the service business, the employees.

9:19In other words, the guys that are out there when the cars pull up and they're unloading the luggage. He said, we train them all in relational skills. In other words, we train them and we talk to them about how to remember names, how to get along with people. And he said, the reason we do that, the waiters, the waitresses, the people behind the checkout counter on the grounds. And he said, what we found is 90 % of the people who do not return to the resort after their first visit had a bad experience with the employees of the organization. They weren't treated with great respect or they weren't taken care of well.

9:47And so he said, what we do is we go through and we train all the people. Now, so what I'm doing, I'm sitting there and I'm taking notes. And so I'm writing down to me, you know, make sure that you've trained all the people in your organization. Okay. He said, the second thing we do is he said, every time we take over a bankrupt company, he said, we fire the president. And I don't write that one down. And I look up and say, what do you mean you fire the president? He said, John, he said, every time we take over a company that's going there, he said, we fire the president. I said, well, it seems a little harsh, isn't it?

10:22I mean, don't you first go see him? You know what I mean? Go sit in the office, light a fire in the fireplace, you know, hold hands, do a little kumbaya, you know what I'm talking about? No, no, no, no. He said, John, we fired the president. And I'm pressing him a little bit more and he could finally, I couldn't remember because he was eating this out. He was just looking down eating a salad, talking to me. And he stops, puts his fork down. Now he's looking at me. It's a little bit ticked that I'm not catching this, you know? And he's looking at me. He said, John, listen to me. He said, if the president were any good, the company wouldn't be going bankrupt.

10:55The first thing we do is fire the president. I remember finally saying, fire the president. You know what he was teaching me that day? He was teaching me the law of the lid. What he was really saying to me is that it's an absolute fact that in any organization, everything rises and falls on leadership. And the leadership of that organization will determine the size of that organization. And so therefore, when you have a good company that's thriving and doing great business and excelling, you've got good leadership. And when you've got a company that's stagnant and it's going downhill and it's not going well, I can promise you, you have bad leadership.

11:35Everything rises and falls on leadership. Now, let me tell you what that law did for me as a leader. That day when I walked out from the table, after listening to Don talk to me, that day what I realized was that I was responsible as a leader. That I had to now take responsibility for my organization. I had to take responsibility for my people. I had to take responsibility for the success of my company, that I couldn't go and blame someone else. I read a statement recently that's just powerful. Here's what it is. It's easier to go from failure to success than it is to go from excuses to success.

12:15That's a tremendous statement. And whenever, as a leader, I begin to make excuses for why my company is not doing well or why my organization is not doing well, And I began to go say, well, you know what I mean? We're in the wrong location and we got the wrong people. And listen, listen, cut the excuses out. If you're the leader, learn to lead and take responsibility for that leadership. Here's the good news. You can grow as a leader. You can become a better leader than you are right now. That I promise you. But take responsibility. Because the law of the lid says the organization or the company cannot rise any higher than your level of leadership.

12:55the law of the lid is a huge law so if you'll notice in your workbook i have some questions just some simple questions questions i want you on your own to ask yourself questions such as what is the lid number on my leadership from a one to a ten where am i question number two i love this one would those around me agree with my assessment You get your leadership team together. Hey, by the way, let me just say this. If you know, when you're kind of evaluating yourself, if you put down that you're probably from a one to a 10, you're probably like a 9.5. And you ask your team, you know, you get your team together and say, you know, what do you think my number is?

13:35And they say, you're a 2.5. You're probably missing something. So let those around you evaluate and assess your leadership. And then question number three, what is my plan to increase my leadership lid number? How am I going to grow it? Because I have found that this is absolutely key. The ability to prepare and do curriculum like we're doing here so that you can grow as a leader. I mean, how am I going to grow my leadership lid? And question number four, what are the lid numbers of those that work with me? That's a great question. Those that are around you close, because one of the laws we'll study in the 21 refutable laws of leadership is the law of the inner circle.

14:14The law of the inner circle says those closest to me determine the level of my success. So what are the lid numbers of those around me? And then question number five, what is my plan to increase their lid numbers? What's my plan? How am I going to increase the lid numbers of those around me? Law number one, the law of the lid. Have you noticed your sheets slipping off the corners lately? Or maybe your pillows just don't feel supportive like they used to? You want to get a better night's sleep and be healthier? replace your bedding. That's why I upgraded our bed with Bowlin Branch. They make everything your bed needs.

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16:41Plus, that is the only way to get your questions in front of John and I for the Q &A sessions coming up in a few weeks. Get the guide, join the list, and let's get back to the teaching. Was that not unbelievable, everybody? So, leadership ability determines the level of effectiveness of everything around you. I learned this from John Maxwell multiple decades ago. Here's the good news. Leadership ability can grow. When you raise your leadership lid, you raise the potential of everybody else around you. You can help change their thermostat setting by increasing yours. You can heat, literally, other people up.

17:14Ask yourself this honestly. Might my leadership ability currently be the lid on my team or organization? Then take one step this week to raise that lid. Do some self-reflecting now. What are the things you could be doing to raise your identity? I hope one of those things is you participate in this podcast more regularly. because I believe the more you pour into yourself great information, the more you believe you deserve to raise that thermostat setting, raise that lid. Truthfully speaking, the lid is your thermostat setting. So let's do some reflecting this week on how you can better influence the people around you and your business before we go into the next episode.

17:53This is the Ed Myland Show.

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