SPECIAL--Author Spotlight--September 2023

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, this is David and welcome back. Oh wait, this is not a mojo minute, just kidding you. And if you can't tell by that background music, this is the author spotlight. This is the September 2023 author spotlight. And what is our author spotlight? Well, that is the monthly segment where we feature some of the greatest writers and their works, and it's like me sharing with a friend you those wonderful authors and those wonderful books that I enjoy and I hope that you will enjoy them too. Now, these are the types of episodes I've always loved, and so we ask that you sit back and you enjoy this treat we have for you Now. Back in July, we feature Brad Thor, the incredible political and military thriller writer and our first actually our second author spotlight, but we resumed it in this year, 2023. And last month, we featured the great historian and now political writer and, I would say, the hardest working historian, victor Davis Hansen, and that guy just pumps out copious amounts of writing and podcasts and books. It's just incredible the amount of hard work that guy gets accomplished each and every day. So be sure to check out that part two, two part, rather two part author spotlight episode in August. We've gotten some rave reviews about it. But now we will move on to this month's author spotlight. And if there was a family tree in the personal development world, this guy would be the grandfather of this type of writing, the personal development writing, personal development genre. He has written a lot. Before we go over his interesting biography, let's kick it off with one of his quotes. We live in a culture where many people think they are doing well if they just do what is expected of them. I don't believe that helps people reach their potential or expand their capacity To do that. A person has to do more. Jack Welch calls this getting out of the pile. To distinguish yourself, get noticed in advance, your career. You need to do and be more. You need to rise above average. You need to do this by asking more of yourself than others ask, expecting more from yourself than others expect and believing more in yourself than others believe. Doing more than others think you should have to do, giving more than others think you should give and helping more than others think you should help. Doing more than is expected does more than just separate you from your colleagues by earning you a reputation for performance. It also trains you to develop a habit for excellence, and that compounds over time continued excellence. Expand your capabilities and your potential. And that, my friends, is an excerpt from John Maxwell's delightful little book Jump Start your Growth a 90 day improvement plan and the aforementioned. Mr John Maxwell is our September 2023 author of the month and will be in the author spotlight Now. We chose John Maxwell because, again, he is the grandfather of the personal development movement, the personal development genre, and he's been in this industry for over 44 years. He was named the number one leader in business by the American Management Association in 2014. And we featured him in our leadership week way back in 2021. Now we'll put a link in the show notes for that. If you missed that leadership week, it was pivotal to our growth in this podcast, and we have a review of one of his books in our Mojo Academy called Failing Forward. Now he's written oh gosh, I don't know some 30 or 40 books, I'm almost certain. And let me real quick, read off a list of those books. This comes from the back of the book. We have four different categories here. The first category is relationships, and here's the titles of the books 25 ways to win with people, becoming a person of influence and changes everything. Ethics 101,. Everyone communicates, few connect. The power of partnership. Relationships 101. Winning with people. And then our next category equipping the 15 laws, the 15 invaluable laws of growth, the 17 essential qualities of a team player, the 17 indisputable laws of teamwork. Developing the leaders around you. Equipping 101. Learning from giants Make today count. Mentoring 101. My dream map Partners in prayer. Put your dreams to the test. Running with the giants. Talent is never enough. Today matters. Moving on to the category of attitude Attitude 101. The difference maker, failing forward, which we've reviewed in Mojo Academy. How successful people think. How successful people win. Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. Success 101. Thinking for a change. The winning attitude. And finally, our last category leadership. The 10th anniversary edition of the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. The 21 indispensable qualities of a leader. The 21 most powerful minutes in a leader's day. The 360 degree leader. Developing the leader within you. The five levels of leadership. Go for gold, jumpstart your leadership. Leadership 101. Leadership gold and leadership promises for every day. So you can tell by all those titles that John Maxwell is a prolific author. This guy can crank out some good books and everything is very substantive. He is just not cranking out stuff to crank stuff out. So he's one of my favorite writers in the personal development genre. I have followed him for a long time and that book that we just quoted from, jumpstart your Growth, is actually part of a great series that he has. It's called the Jumpstart series, and he has several. He has more than several. He has probably five or six different series. This particular one is the Jumpstart series. It references four books we quoted from Jumpstart your Growth, a 90 day improvement plan. There is also part of that series Jumpstart your Leadership a 90 day improvement plan. Jumpstart your Thinking the 90 day improvement plan. And Jumpstart your Priorities a 90 day improvement plan. So as we build out our Mojo Academy Review Library and Bookshelf, you can be sure we'll be featuring more and more of John Maxwell, if not from the Jumpstart series then certainly from some of the other books. And in fact this guy was part of the inspiration for creating that 101 format, that philosophy 101 format, where we drew from so far six of the nine big nine philosophers and we talked about them at a very high level. Just to kind of give you a cursory overview If you wanted to pursue them further. You had a rough outline of what those at least six of the nine that we've covered so far, what those nine or what those six philosophers said, what they did, how they moved philosophy along. So he was the inspiration for that 101 format. So we might continue that on. People like that format. They liked how we did it. It gave them enough of an outline that they could go pursue and do the research on their own. Now back to Maxwell's bio. John Maxwell is known as America's expert on leadership. He speaks to persons, to hundreds of thousands of people. Rather, each year he has communicated his leadership principles to Fortune 500 companies, the United States Military Academy at West Point and sports organizations such as the NCAA, the NBA and the NFL. Now let's stop here real quick for a hot second. Now here's a cool thing that I did not know. Maxwell was born in Garden City, michigan, in 1947, but I did not know that. He completed his bachelor's degree at Circleville Bible College in 1969. He went on to complete a master's of Divinity degree at Azio Pacific University and a Doctor of Ministry degree at Fuller Theological Seminary. He resides currently in South Florida with his wife, margaret, and he is an ordained minister in the Wesleyan Church. But Circleville Bible College, where he got his undergraduate degree is literally 20 to 25 minutes away from my hometown of Columbus, ohio, so I just found that fascinating. I did not know that about John Maxwell. Now, since the 1970s, he's led churches in Indiana, ohio, california and Florida. He I did not know this either. In 2008, he began serving as a guest pastor at the Crystal Cathedral in Orange County, california, if I can spit that out. His mentor, robert Shuler, had a variety of noted evangelical pastors preach at the Megasun, at his mega church rather and Maxwell returned to preach at the Crystal Cathedral several times and his messages were shown on the Hour of Power television program. I remember that growing up, the Hour of Power. Now Maxwell is the founder of InJoy Stewardship services, as well as several other organizations dedicated helping people reach their leadership potential. He dedicates much of his time now to training leaders worldwide through equip, a non-profit organization. The New York Times bestselling author has written over more than 40 books, including winning with people thinking for a change and the two million dollar bestsellers developing the leader within you and the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. We will cover the 360 degree leader later on, but that's just a little bit about who John Maxwell is and I want to give, just to give you a flavor of his writing and his topics. One of those popular books that we've talked about is the 360 degree leader developing your influence from anywhere in the organization and this actually was a profound nugget of wisdom for me when I first read it. Let's go to the book. I have taught leadership for nearly 30 years and just about every conference I've taught someone has come up to me and said something such as I like what you teach about leadership, but I cannot apply it. I'm not the main leader and the person I work under is, at best, average. Is that where you live? Are you working somewhere in the middle of an organization? You may not be a follower at the lowest level of the organization, but you're not the top dog either. Yet you still want to lead and to make things happen and to make a contribution. You do not have to be held hostage to your circumstances or your position. You don't have to be the CEO to lead effectively, and you can learn to make an impact through your leadership, even if you report to someone who is not a good leader. Let me repeat that you can learn to make an impact through your leadership, even if you report to someone who is not a good leader. Continuing on from the book, what's the secret? You learn to develop your influence from wherever you are in the organization. By becoming a 360 degree leader. You learn to lead up, lead across and lead down. Not everyone understands what it means to influence others in every direction those you work for, the people who are on the same level with you and those who work for you. Some people are good at leading the members of their own team, but they seem to alienate the leaders in other departments of the organization. Other leaders excel at building a relationship with their boss, but they have no influence with anyone below them in the organization. And if you can get along with just about anybody, but they never seem to get any work done. On the other hand, some people are productive, but they can't get along with anybody. But the 360 degree leader they are different. Only 360 degree leaders influence people at every level of the organization. By helping others, they help themselves. Man, when I first read that, that hit me like a lightning bolt. I think that's actually where we got the inspiration for the lightning bolt emoji in the lightning bolt logo for the Mojo Academy is. Ideas come to us like lightning bolts. They strike us when we're not thinking about it. The best ones do, at least. So your key takeaway is that 99% of all leadership occurs not from the top but from the middle of the organization, and that is a substantive nugget of wisdom. In fact, that's a golden nugget of wisdom, if there ever was one. Write that one down, put it in your phone and, like I said now, the funny thing is, when I read the quote I thought maybe Maxwell has not been to my office or my organization because my organization is different. Isn't that what we all say to ourselves in the back of our minds? He doesn't know my boss, he doesn't know my company, he doesn't know my culture, my company's culture. And then I read a guy named David Rutherford, who's just a crazy dude and I forget the name of the book, but he's been around some great leaders, some fantastic leaders, and he said something to me. It just stuck out so profoundly and it matches up with what John Maxwell here is teaching us. He said about leadership to be a great leader, you have to be a great follower. Let me repeat that to be a great leader, you have to be a great follower. And I thought, dang. That is total validation of what John Maxwell is saying in the 360 degree leader right there. He just said it a different way. So what John Maxwell is preaching is truth, and it was. It was so profound to me. Now, moving on to another of John Maxwell's writings he's super famous. Actually, most people know him of his books, rather for the 101 series of writings, and there's nine books, I believe, in that series there is leadership 101. Well, you knew that one was coming. And then here's the rest of them. Then you got Attitude 101, self Improvement 101, relationships 101, success 101, teamwork 101, equipping 101, and Mentoring 101. Now you can get the complete set in the Kindle format and it's called, of all things, the complete 101 collection. Imagine that. So now let's grab some quotes from this books, because this stuff is good too. Let's start with Attitude 101, go into the book. The title of this section is an attitude compounds. When exposed to others, all things on a team are not contagious talent, experience and willingness to practice. But you can be sure of one thing attitude is catching. When someone on the team is teachable and his humility is rewarded by improvement, others are more likely to display similar characteristics. When a leader is upbeat in the face of discouraging circumstances, others admire that quality and want to be like him or her. When a team member displays a strong work ethic and begins to have a positive impact, others imitate him or her. People become inspired by their peers. People have a tendency to adopt the attitudes of those they spend time with, to pick up on their mindsets and beliefs and approaches to challenges. Did you catch that nugget that we often preach about and harp on here in the Mojo Academy Humility. When someone is teachable and his humility is rewarded by improvement, others are more likely to display similar characteristics. Now, that's just good stuff, right there. Be humble or you will get humbled, as the saying goes, can never go wrong. Following that practice, let's move on to relationships 101 in that section of the book, and Max will answer this question. Edgar Watson, how once joked, no man will listen to you talk if he didn't know it was his turn next. It's a pretty good joke, isn't it? It sounds like us listening. Right, we are all guilty. Raise your hand. I'm raising my hand right now with you, brother. Raise your hand because we are guilty of hearing but not listening. Let's go to the book. This is under a section titled how Can I Become a Better Listener, and we pick it up halfway down the page. Unfortunately, that accurately describes the way too many people approach communication. They're too busy waiting for their turn to really listen to others. But successful people understand the incredible value of becoming a good listener and then, further down the page, max will gives us the benefits of listening. Listening shows respect. A mistake that people often make in communicating is trying very hard to impress the other person. They try to make themselves appear smart or witty or entertaining. But if you want to relate well to others, you have to be willing to focus on what they have to offer. Be impressed and interested, not impressive and interesting. The poet-philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson acknowledged every man I meet in some way my superior and I can learn of him. Remember that and listen and the lines of communication will really open up. Another benefit that listening provides for us it builds relationships. Dale Carnegie, the author of how to Win Friends and Influence people, advised you can make more friends in two weeks by becoming a good listener than you can in two years trying to get people interested in you. Carnegie was incredibly gifted at understanding relationships. He recognized that people who are self-focused and who talk about themselves and their concerns all the time rarely develop strong relationships with others. David Swartz noted in the Magic of Thinking Big, which I have read in which needs to go on the list Note 2 Self. David Swartz noted in the Magic of Thinking Big Big People monopolize the listening, all people monopolize the talking. By becoming a good listener, you are able to connect with others on more levels and develop stronger, deeper relationships because you are meeting a need. Author C Neil Straight pointed out that everyone needs someone who feels like they're really listening to them. When you become that important listener, you help that person. And finally, another benefit is listening increases knowledge. Wilson Meisner said a good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something. It's amazing how much you can learn about your friends and family, your job In the organization, organization you work in, and yourself when you really decide to listen to others. But Not everyone clues into this benefit. For example, I once heard about a tennis pro who is giving a lesson to a new student. After watching the novice take several swings at the tennis ball, the pro stopped him and suggested ways he could improve his stroke. But each time he did, the student interrupted him, gave him an opinion of the problem and stated how it could be solved, and After several interruptions, the pro began to nod his head in agreement. When the lesson ended, a woman who had been watching the pro said to him why did you go along with that arrogant man's stupid suggestions? The pro smiled and replied I learned a long time ago that it is a waste of time to try and sell real answers To anyone who just wants to buy echoes. Now there is a nugget of wisdom. So that's just a taste of John Maxwell's writing, and he is our author in the spotlight for September 2023. Now we encourage you to delve into John Maxwell's extensive body of work and Doing, so we think you'll gain a richer and fuller understanding of how to improve, how to lead and how to be successful in your life, especially with your family and with your work and with your friends. And For me, john Maxwell is a very good writer. He's one of the best in the personal development genre. I always look for his new books and we will certainly be covering them in the mojo Academy in the future. So we hope you enjoyed this author in the spotlight 2023, john Maxwell. Now keep reading those good books out there to find those great nuggets of wisdom. And let's go, mojo.

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at team mojo academy calm, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.