success
What I Believe About Success
When will you be successful? If you’re like most people, what comes to mind is someday—somewhere off in the future, when you’ll suddenly wake up and think, “I made it! I’m a success!” That’s how most unsuccessful people see success: as something to strive for and hope to reach “someday.” Each of us has a…
Read MorePassing the Ball to Playmakers
In a football game, the quarterback starts each play with the ball, but he rarely keeps it. After the ball is snapped, the quarterback steps back behind the line, surveys the field, and then hands the football to a running back or passes it to a wide receiver. These positions—running backs and wide receivers—are often…
Read MoreThink You’re Ready for Success? Prepare To Be Disappointing
Leaders who transform their neighborhoods, businesses, and communities have an unshakable sense of purpose. They are motivated by a bold and compelling vision that consumes their thoughts and fills them with passion. Such a vision demands sacrifices, unconventional choices, and tradeoffs that won’t always make sense to the leaders’ biggest fans: their friends and family.…
Read MoreWhy You Need to Set Personal Goals This Year
One mark of high-achievers is goal-setting. Most of the successful people I know make it a priority to place targets at various points in the coming year and shoot for them. You might already be working on your list of goals now. It could be increasing your income, launching a product, or starting a new…
Read MoreLive Like a King
Crowns and scepters, thrones and palaces, rulership and riches—these are the words we associate with medieval royalty. Celebrity and ceremony, elegance and style, popularity and paparazzi—these are the words we associate with modern royalty. Tattered cloth and shepherd’s staffs, a stable and manger, humility and servanthood—these are words we associate with the newborn king celebrated…
Read MoreAvoiding Dead Air Time
Connecting is the leadership ability to identify with and relate to people in such a way that it increases your influence with them. Connecting demands constant attention on the part of the leader so that people stay tuned in to the vision, values, and priorities of the organization. The trick is to keep the connection…
Read MoreMaxwell Fundamentals: How I File
As a communicator, I’m often asked where I get all the great quotes, statistics, and stories that I use in my lessons and books. For over thirty years, I’ve always answered the same way: I get everything from my files! I learned a long time ago that if I was going to have something fresh…
Read MoreThe Not So Secret Path to Greatness
The young girl skipped onto the stage of the dilapidated, half-filled theater hall, her thin voice competing with the noise of an unruly audience. Midway through the first verse of her first song, a beer bottle smashed onto the floor just a yard or so in front of her. The child’s voice quaked momentarily, but…
Read MoreTraits of a Successful Failure
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”- Thomas A. Edison Nobody likes to fail. But if we’re honest, we understand that failure is a part of life. There is no success without some amount of failure. Great inventors like Thomas Edison experience a lot of failures on the way to…
Read MoreMy favorite time of year
Happy New Year! I hope your year has begun well. What is your favorite time of year? Is it Christmas? Is it when you celebrate your birthday? Or when flowers bloom in the spring? Or your summer vacation? Or when the children go back to school? Or the beginning of football season? Or when the…
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