Law #1 – The Law of the Lid
I am working with a group on developing their leadership skills. One of the activities I am having them do is to read through and provide their insights to each chapter of the book 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell.
This series of post provides the basic summary of each of the Laws along with my thoughts. (Summary paragraphs are provided by Reading Graphics.)
Law 1 – Law of the Lid.
Leadership ability determines a person’s level of effectiveness.
Your level of effectiveness and accomplishments is determined by your level of leadership. In fact, leadership has a multiplier effect on success – by raising your leadership ability, you can increase your overall effectiveness many times without increasing your success dedication.
Thoughts I contributed to the group:
Over the years I have thought about and believe in the Law of the Lid. As I work with people directly responsible to me, I have had to determine if they had reached their capacity, or if they could be developed into more. Then provide the development they needed or find someone else who could do what was required. Many times, it was up to the person to put the effort in to be better.
Most people work hard every day, but sometimes it is not enough. As the author described, even though you work very hard, to be even more efficient you need to build your leadership skills.
I believe that everyone in the organization works hard, but I believe we can be even better by developing the leadership side of our people. Senior leadership obviously feel the same way, that is why I am here to help.
The things we do, like reading the books, having classes on Strategic Thinking, Time Management, Communication, Coaching, doing restaurant evaluations, talking about sales, doing report outs and such all causes a higher level of thinking. It is more than just working hard, but thinking and developing at a higher level on how to be better, how to get our people to do better and how to grow the business.
We all need to be serious about our level of thinking, and work and explore/embrace how we can raise our own lid to be as successful as possible.
Prime Leadership & Development 