We will get through COVID-19. I do not know when. What I do know is you and I are going to come through this better or worse than we were before. None of us will be the same.
Today, on his John Maxwell Leadership Podcast, John gave 5 words to help position us to be successful post-coronavirus. His thoughts were so practical and relevant I want to share them with you. You can listen to his full session by clicking HERE. Trust me, it is worth your time!
Also, his book Leadershift: The 11 Essential Changes Every Leader Must Embrace is an excellent companion piece to this lesson. If you have not purchased your copy yet, click HERE or on the image provided. These are changing times and we need to change as well. This book and the thoughts below will help you.
The following are John Maxwell’s 5 Words You Practice During COVID-19 To Position Yourself To Be A Success In The Future.”
- “I can’t really position for the future because there’s still too many unknowns out there. But what I can do is I can position myself for the future.”
- “Mark Cole shared with me, ‘Be the future instead of see the future.’”
- “Trust me out of this crisis, there’s going to be a lot of opportunity.”
Humility
- “I love this phrase of humility, and that is, ‘Not thinking less of yourself, but just thinking of yourself less.”’
- “When I have a sense of humility, it removes me, John Maxwell, from the center of the picture. In other words, no longer am I the main person. No longer is it all about me.”
- “One of the things I love about a crisis is that every time we’re in a crisis, it removes us from being in the middle. Again, gives us a perspective that is so much bigger than who we are, and so much bigger than what we are.”
- “John, it’s not about you. They’re applauding your giftedness. It has nothing to do with you.”
- “As I look back at my 73 years, I can point to you when I was more proud to be an American than any other time in my life. It was right after 9/11.”
- “As I position myself for the future, I want to keep that spirit of humility in my life that it’s not about me, never has been about me; it’s about others.”
Adaptability
- “No one is in the position they were two months ago. Everybody’s been moved. And what a crisis does is it presents detours in their life.”
- “Please take advantage of the detour. In fact, don’t hurry back, because you’re going to see things you’ve never seen before. You’re going to go places you’ve never been before. You’re going to be able to look at things, understand things, have a different perspective than you ever had before, and the reason that you’re going to be able to do that is because you’re on a detour.”
- “Leaders that are most successful are leaders that are most adaptable, flexible, agile. They’re able to see the moment but they’re also able to seize the moment.”
- “I could look back at myself 20 years ago and hardly recognize myself, because of my growth and my development and new things I’ve learned and things I used to just hold onto. I don’t hold onto them at all anymore. Why? They were good for me when I had them, but I’ve learned something better. I was on a detour.”
- “I’ve had nine personal changes, reinventions of who I am. Now, what I want you to understand is, catch this, my values have stayed the same. Okay? So, during a crisis, my values don’t move. In fact, during a crisis, my values just get stronger and more of an anchor to my life because they become validated. In a crisis, my values get validated, but let me tell you something, my views change. My perspective changes…every time.”
- Henry Ford said, “If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”
Open Handedness
- “When my hand is open, if something comes by me that is so beautiful or wonderful, immediately I can take it. Why can I take it? Because I’m open handed.”
- “Sowing strategy… always sow every day; always sow… During the coronavirus, sow even more.”
- “During difficult days, now this is timing… timing gives you your big R-O-I…always does. That’s why if you’re the first to help you stand out above all the rest that help. The first to help, stands above all the rest to help. Why? Because you were the first on the scene. Timing is essential!”
- “Washing Hands Practicing.. When the right hand washes the left hand, guess what? The right hand gets cleaned too… It’s a win-win. People that aren’t open handed, they think that they’re going to lose it and never get a return.”
- “The Candle Principle… we cannot hold a candle to light another person’s path without having our path lit also. It’s just a fact. If I’m holding a candle for you to help you in your path, guess what? My path is being lit also with a candle.”
- “What can I spare vs. what can I share.”
Discussion
- “The best thing to do is to get around other people and have conversations and discussions that allow you to learn from each other.”
- “Shared Thinking. If you’ve got a good idea, and I have a good idea, if I hold it to myself, I just have one good idea, if we share, we have two good ideas. But what happens is, the moment that we share, the magic happens. And it ignites us in thinking, and what happens when you share your good idea, and I share my good idea, it ends up to be three ideas, four good ideas, because it begins to multiply and great ideas are nothing but a process of several good ideas that are put together.”
- “During a crisis and to be the person you really want to be, I would encourage you to get you a few people that are where you are, and get in discussions with them.”
Reflection
- “In the discussion—to make a discussion great.. you really want to have three things. You want to have preparation. You want to be prepared for what you’re going to discuss. You got to have preparation You got to have reflection. Then you have to have action. And what I want you to understand is reflection is right in the middle. You do the preparation, and then after the discussion you reflect on what’s happening before you could take your action.”
- “The first (of four) reflection question is what do I feel?.. The first influence in our lives is almost always feelings.”
- “If you reflect quite a while on something, that emotion really begins to become intuition.”
- “What do I know?”
- “You don’t want to have feeling, emotion without what you know, knowledge. But you don’t want to have knowledge without emotion either. So, these are put together, they’re stacked. This is kind of like layered reflection.”
- “What do I think?”
- “What thinking does it sorts out the differences between feeling and knowing… thinking allows you to kind of sort it out.”
- “What do I do?”
- “Fear and uncertainty has compounded the crisis, and intuitively now, that I’ve had that emotion for some time, I think that fear and uncertainty will prolong the crisis.”
- “The crisis in itself is a big problem, but it becomes a bigger problem, when people have emotional negatives out of negativity out of a dysfunctional lifestyle that just kind of puts kerosene on the problem.”
- “One of the things I know is that habits are being developed now in this crisis like no other crisis before, because the prolongness of the crisis and people are living life in a different way.”
- “Good habits are being formed, bad habits are being formed. One of the things I know for sure is, that if you are, during this crisis, forming good habits, you’ll come out really much better after the crisis. If you, right now, are forming bad habits during the crisis, you’ll come out even worse for the wear.”
John is just the best!!! What is one word from the list above you can implement today to make you a better leader?
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