What Serving Others Has Taught Me
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Hey, welcome back to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. I hope that you are enjoying the podcast this year. For those of you that are brand new to us and just jumping on board, welcome. We hope to you we're doing what this podcast purpose is all about, and that is to add value to leaders who multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and this week we're going to hear from John Maxwell.

And he's going to share with us what serving others has taught him in his own personal leadership journey. I've been with John now for 25 years. This year, I will celebrate literally my 25th anniversary.

And I can tell you, I've watched John over the last 25 years grow in his influence, grow in his impact around the world. I've watched our organizations, not even 10x, but some cases 100x what we've done just over the last 25 years of being here. One of my favorite things about John is he's never lost his heart to serve others. He's never lost the purpose of what he started in the humble beginnings.

My challenge to you and I this year as we aspire for greatness, we're wrapping up January. My challenge to you and I is no matter how much we experience success, how aspirational we are about more, that we don't lose the foundation of serving others. Now, after John shares today, I'm going to bring in a servant leader. Our co-host today is Chris Robinson. And

He and I will give you practical ways that you can apply servant leadership and what John has learned to your own life and to your own leadership. Today, if you would like to download our free resource or even watch this episode on YouTube, you can go to maxwellpodcast.com forward slash serving others. Are you ready to make a difference by serving others to reach their potential? Grab a pen, grab a piece of paper. Here is John Maxwell.

So I want to talk to you about serving others. A great leader serves others. In my 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership book, I talk about the law of addition. And the law of addition is that leaders add value to others by serving them. And I am not a positional leader. I try to be a serving leader, which means I'm not a positional leader.

I don't have people work for me. I have people work with me. I work with people and we just help each other to grow and to get better ourselves. And I say that because when I was a young leader in my 20s, I heard a man named Zig Ziglar one time from the stage say that if you will help people get what they want, then they'll help you get everything that you want and need in your life.

And this was a paradigm shift for me because I was a young leader and I wasn't interested in helping people get what they want. I was interested in people helping me get what I want. So I was talking about my vision and get on my leadership train. And it was all about helping me. And that day I walked out of that session. I thought, I'm doing it wrong. Instead of asking people to serve me, I need to serve them.

Instead of asking people to add value to me, I need to add value to them. So how am I going to do that? And how am I going to do that successfully? Well, I heard that almost 50 years ago. And now with 45, 50 years of serving other people, let me tell you what serving others has taught me. Number one, it's taught me to value people. It's taught me to change from this idea, you need me to go to the idea of

I need you. And I'm incredibly grateful for the people that I have around me because what I've learned is this, that the more that I've served them, the more that I value them. And the more that I value them, the more value they bring to me. This is incredible. Once we understand how servant leadership works, it's just like we'll never go back to any other kind of leadership again. So serving others has taught me, number one, to value people.

Number two, serving others has taught me to value teamwork. One of us is not as smart as all of us. In my early days, if I would get an idea, because I was a young leader, I wanted to make sure everybody thought it was my idea, so I wouldn't share it with anybody. I would think about it. I'd work about it. I'd develop a system, a plan, everything.

And then I wanted to walk in and I wanted to sit down and say, okay, here's my incredible plan. And so for many years, I didn't do shared thinking and I didn't value the teamwork. And then one day I realized that if I just took my idea to the people in just a few hours, they would make my idea better. In fact, now I've done this thousands of times over the last three or four decades.

I have never taken an idea to my team that after we talked about it and shared it, every time they've made the idea better. They just have. And so when I started really serving people, I just began to value teamwork and see the return on teamwork. The third thing was when I started serving people, I just became greatly fulfilled. And I became greatly fulfilled because...

I was going now from success to significance, and I teach often successes about what I accomplish, you know, significance. It's all about you. And the moment that I started valuing people, I found that fulfillment comes in living a significant life. It doesn't come in living a life for myself. And so as I served others, I began to value teamwork. I began to be fulfilled in my life.

And so I sat down after understanding the value of serving others, and I asked myself a simple question. What do the people need? Well, I didn't know what the people needed. So I went to them and I said, I would like to lead you well. I'd like to serve you well. What do you need? And they began to talk to me about what they needed. I literally have written all my books off of the fact that when I was in my late 20s, I came to the conclusion that if I can help people do four things well,

If I could really serve them in these four areas, they would be very successful. If I could help them develop relationships, if I could help them learn how to equip others, if I could help them have a phenomenal attitude in life, and if I could help them to lead. And so I just took those four things, and every book I wrote was either relationships, equipping, attitude, leadership. It was, again, serving and asking myself, what do the people need? And then once you define what the people need,

Then you say, okay, now how do I meet that need? What do I do? In the case I just gave you, I started writing books for people. But I started asking questions. I started listening. I started developing what I call heart skills, which are skills that you show people that you truly care for them. And so when I started valuing people and asking these servanthood questions, I just began to ask myself, how can I inspire other people to serve other people?

And the answer is very simple, by modeling it. So with my team, I constantly serve them. In fact, it's kind of a joke because when you watch our team together, we're always looking for ways to serve each other. And it's almost like, who's the king of the servers? Who's the king of the serving? Well, I did this for you. I did that for you. But it's all in fun. But it's all because we understand that when I started serving people, I started valuing people.

I started valuing what teamwork was all about. And I really started to be fulfilled in my life. I think you're going to find that in your servanthood also. I just want to encourage you to learn what I have said and practice it and serve people and see if it doesn't bring you maybe a little bit greater sense of fulfillment because you've begun to live this life of significance.

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Hey, welcome back, everybody. Chris, I'm glad you're here. I look forward to wrestling with this content in application to our podcast listeners. I watch you serve others. You're one of the best at it. And so it's going to be fun. I'm reminded today of Gandhi's quote when he says, the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. When John

In the lesson today, he said, a great leader serves others. Wow. I think Gandhi, I think Maxwell, I think people that have this great ability and great opportunity to be self-contained, to get into the believing their own press clippings and to keep that leadership from a servanthood mindset is pretty spectacular. And so I'm really excited to be able to share this with you today. I would love to kind of just talk through this.

You know, this concept of what John says in 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, the Law of Addition, leaders add value to others by serving them. I want you to talk to me just a little bit, Chris. You're all about giving people experiences that they couldn't get on their own. Tell me how you've kind of developed this mantra and this mindset into your life and leadership. Yeah, well, I mean, this was a paradigm shift. I mean, I remember, you know, the Law of Addition, but it goes all the way back to the Law of the Lid.

You know, in the law of the lid, it shows a graph on page five of leadership ability versus dedication to success on page six, the exact same thing. But it shows with that increased leadership ability. And I remember looking at that page that day and over time and eventually looked at it going, man.

You know, I could dedicate my skill set to my success only. And if I stay in that lower part of that grid, I can be really good at what I am and I can be the star or, you know,

I could buy into what this John Maxwell is talking about and becoming a leader. And I could be greater than the star. Like at first I thought, you know, come on. Cause the, you know, the ego wants to go, Oh, I can be a superstar. But something shifted when I really bought into this philosophy of serving others of, Hey, I cannot be the star or the superstar. What if I was the star creator? And when I made that shift of really putting my focus on,

on helping others. And I remember specifically going, man, if I could help

more people become managers than anybody else in the company how much more valuable would I be to the organization and when I made that shift and then when that became the motive naturally what happened was all of my sales numbers went up our everything you know we begin to win often I begin to attract great leaders why because they knew I had one motive and one motive only and that was to get them to the management position to help them get pro on the job and when I took that

I mean, it was everything in life changed for me and I fell in love with it. So this philosophy that Zig Ziglar talks about, about helping people get what they want and

And with John saying, instead of asking people to serve me, I need to serve them. Instead of asking people to add value to me, I need to add value to them. You know, that is usually coming from a lack of abundance mindset when we say, well, I don't want to give people. I don't want to serve them. They need to serve me. But when you can give that and when you begin to serve, man, life really begins to expand. And I mean, it's good on the other side of serving. You know, when you base serving others to John's first point, yeah.

He says, here's what serving others has taught me. And that's kind of the whole point we're bringing to you in the podcast. He said it taught him to value people. And it struck me because as long as I've been with John, 25 years, there's still so much about John's developmental of leadership mindset, philosophy, and actions that I don't know. It was all developed before I came on the team. But I often wonder because I have felt like that

valuing people is why you want to serve them, not by serving them, understand a greater value of people. But John's teaching, hey, I really understood the value of people and how to add value to them when I had and when I adopted this servant leadership mindset.

So as John was teaching that today, I was going, wow, it's truly this exponential factor that comes into place when you truly want to value someone and you begin to serve them for their agenda, for their accomplishments rather than my agenda or my pursuits. Right, yeah.

And then you start seeing that success. It awakens the next gear of valuing people. It really awakens this concept. I know we spent all of 2024 kind of creating, distributing and proving the model of high road leadership. I talked about it. I know. I know podcast family. I probably talked about it to the point of nausea.

But it's become a mantra for us. Right, yeah. And it became a mirror for people to look in and go, ooh, that's not high road leadership. That's low road leadership. It created a mirror for us to go, ooh, I'm not very high road right there. I think when you...

purpose that you are going to lead others for their benefit. In other words, you're leading them for what they want to accomplish rather than what you can get out of them. I think you begin to have this cake and eat it to perspective. Most leaders, they want their cake and eat it too, right? They want something that benefits them and they want you to feel good about it. That's the cake and eat it too. Hey, I really have a passion here. Feel it and maybe you'll get happy too. Right.

I've watched you. I've watched John. I've watched other servant leaders that I admire so much really, truly begin to value those people because of an intrinsic passion to value them. But I also see now that there is a greater capacity to create value for people. You do that. You look for people to expose them to opportunities they couldn't get on their own. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. But it's a hard shift. And what I love about this teaching, because you can't see it on the front side of this. John is teaching what he's learned from serving others. Like you can't see this benefit on the other side. Like I think for the most part, a lot of people will take it as, well, this is a tactic or a strategy.

For me to get what I really want. So it's almost starts out with the wrong motive of manipulation. And so you never actually reap the benefit of what he's really talking about here. But when you really embrace this and you buy into this idea of genuinely putting other people's motives first, generally serving people, generally adding value to people, there's a joy, there's a fulfillment. There is a growth on the other side that you cannot see on the front side of this strategy or tactic.

You know, I'm glad you said that because in this idea of valuing teamwork, which is the next thing that John said at talk, I've watched a lot of leaders that don't have servant leadership at the heart level start out with nomenclature, with language about serving others. Let me serve you. Let me help you get what you want. But then you start putting the team around them where there are multiple people.

things at play. There's multiple agendas. There's multiple complexity because now you have a team. And I've watched leaders lose their credibility because when you get a team of leaders,

aspirational leaders or aspirational people and they start wanting this, the true colors of whether someone is a servant leader or not begins to show up. I can give you story after story after story of people that talked a great game. And even when it was small, lived out that game. But

But the more complexity, you begin to see their aspirations and their real desire to manipulate people begin to roll out. It's almost turned into me interviewing you. How do you determine within people that you have led before?

whether they're talking a good game of servant leadership that works when it's small, but then it begins to transition to manipulation when the complexity or the challenge happens. How do you detect that early on? Well, I mean, once you're truly serving and once you truly understand these principles, it's actually really easy to see. I mean, you can see the motive very quickly. And I say the greatest way, and if you don't live this way and you can't see and you don't understand servant leadership,

Once you begin to understand it, time will always reveal it. Time will always reveal the person's true motives. And so if you cannot tell or you're not really sure, I got to do it way a little bit, you know, because they're going to show up. That real person is going to show up and you're going to see, are they there really to serve others? Are they really there to serve themselves? And without fail,

It shows up every single time. It may be a month, it may be a year, but it's going to show up. Time will always tell a person's motive. So recently, John and I were talking. I think this will benefit definitely as relevant here. And John had a phone call come in that the person wanted to talk to John, knew I was in the room. So John popped it on speakerphone where we both could weigh in on it.

And this particular leader that was asking advice was they were really not asking advice. They were telling what they were going to do. But they packaged it as I'm going to ask you advice. But by the time John gave them one, maybe two things to think about from a different perspective, they shut him down. And it was obvious to me. It was obvious to John. We've been in a lot of these situations.

Finish the conversation, John said, well, I'll bless you for that. I'll give you my blessings or my accolades or my permissions, a bad word, but I'll give you that. Go ahead and go for it. We get off the phone and I go, John, I got two questions for you. How, number one, do you bless something that you know from a leadership perspective is not right? And number two, how do you...

not defend and try to convince that person that what they are. And it was really a true mentorship moment for me. Sure, sure.

And so John said, well, let me tell you this, Mark. He said, number one, I bless people that's already got their mind made up because what do I want to do? Try to tear down their made up mind? I just want to let them know that I'm behind them. And by the way, when they figure out down the road that it's a bad idea, I want them to want to feel welcome to come back to me. Not going, well, John's going to go back. I'm going to go back to John and they'll say, I told you so. And I went, whoa. He said, but here's the bigger reason. He said, within all of their processing, I feel like there's greatness that I can't see.

Because I believe in every person, there is greatness that I cannot see. And if I try to convince them to the greatness that I can see rather than to celebrate the greatness that I cannot see, I have found that I stymie people's value rather than enhance it. Wow.

I went, oh, my goodness. Because too often, Chris, I do this. And I really needed mentoring from John on this. Because too often I sit in this setting where somebody's making a decision. I go, this is the biggest bonehead decision that I've ever seen. And by the way, I'm a leader that sees more than before. And God's given me to you to tell you how wrong you really are. Right.

You're welcome. Right? I mean, you're welcome. I'm getting ready to lay into you. And what John did that moment was to help me understand how to, number one, read the person. Are they really asking for advice? Are they really telling you and wanting your approval? Sure. Sure.

And how to give approval, even if from your leadership vantage point of seeing more and before you see that there could be some tough times on it, because people need to feel the value of being able to make their own decisions. But here's what I love about this story that I didn't even start today's podcast to share the story. The next morning, John came to me and he said, hey, Mark, I'll tell you something.

I couldn't get my mind off the conversation we had last night. And he said, I don't think I was clear enough as a person, as a leader in that person's life to give them the other side of the perspective of what they need to do.

But how I do it is important as doing it. So would you like to watch how I do it? I went, yeah, I'd love to see it. Called the person back and he said, hey, I want you to know I see the greatness in you and there's a chance I'm not seeing everything that you're seeing about yourself. But can I give you a vantage point of what I'm seeing about this? Shared it with the person. I'm not kidding with you. It wasn't five minutes later. It wasn't two minutes later. It was 30 seconds in the day. This was a big decision. The person went.

I wasn't even seeing that. I'm going to make the other decision. The decision I knew they should have made all along. But how John helped them do that was serving them according to the value he saw in them, which was brilliant. Incredible. And too often, us leaders that see more and before, we weaponize what we see rather than serve with what we see. Yeah.

And I'm just telling you, I learned something valuable just a couple of weeks ago in watching John serve with seeing more and before rather than beating or mandating or weaponizing seeing more and before. And the last thing that he learned on there was that he became greatly fulfilled.

that he was going from success to significance. We talk about this a lot. How have you felt significance through serving people in whatever capacity of life? Yeah. So, you know, where we get a lot of significance around here is through the work of our nonprofit. We've done really well with John's intellectual property. John sold, sold is the key word there, 36 million copies of books. And so there's an economic...

model there. We've been able to monetize instructionally designing his content for sell in corporate and entrepreneur spaces and personal development, self-help spaces.

And it's wonderful because our content truly brings life change. And there's significance in what we sell as a business. But I think the greatest form of significance that we felt is in serving people that don't have a chance of ever giving anything back. Right.

They have a chance of paying it forward, which is a great sense of significance and fulfillment, but they don't ever have a chance of paying it back. And there's a big difference in paying it forward and paying it back. In our corporate space, we try to offer enough value that when you pay for it, you go, oh, that was a great exchange. You paid back. We paid back with what you gave us in the contract.

But in our nonprofit, there's this pay it forward perspective and the significance of a relationship that is commissioned to pay something forward rather than pay something back. It's a depth of appreciation for what we get to do that I can't describe. And so just this past year in 2024, we're doing transformational work in the country of Panama. Yeah.

And you've been a few times. I've been a few times. I love, I love, yeah, I love Panama. And John and I's schedule could not match the most recent trip that we had there. And so our entire team went over without us, like 70 something. You were there, right? Yeah, that's correct. It was about 70 something there, Chris. Yeah.

And I started getting these reports back. And I can't tell you the feeling of significance that came at that moment. Now, I just described the significance that comes from our nonprofit work to our for-profit work. I gave you that. But the significance of when somebody is creating environments to where other people can pay it forward, that is off of the vision and the energy you've created, it's amazing.

To me, it's without comparison with how that feels when you have inspired. I mean, imagine you and I both trying to get our kids to do something and they finally get it and then they inspire somebody else to get some life principle too. There's just a great fulfillment when reproduction happens at the third generation. Yeah, and the reproduction was strong there in Panama. I remember sitting inside that room because this was the first trip that we had done for a country transformation trip without kids.

you and John Maxwell there. And it was on the shoulders of me and Juan Varrican, the president of our Spanish platform. I'm going, hmm.

What's this going to be like? But then I found myself in this space going, hey, there's going to be a time and a place where John is not going to be there. And I think it was really at that point in time, because shortly after that, I found myself going over to Cambodia without you, John. Yes. And I'm meeting with government officials, the princess and all these people. And John's not there. And it was there where I had this light, this fulfillment of like, wait a minute.

the multiplication's happening. Like I'm in these rooms now where John was, but now it's my goal and my vision to be where John is not. So for all these years, it's been for me to be around you and John, but now it's like, not that I don't want to be around you, I don't want to be right beside you, but there's places that I have to be that you and John cannot in order for it to continue to multiply. And seeing that servant leadership expand generationally is,

over multiple people, generations of leaders is real fulfilling. And I think that's why John says he became greatly fulfilled when he served others and then watched them serve others because there's...

To the point of this entire podcast, I think there's an intrinsic value that you communicate to someone when you truly serve them without agenda. When you truly serve them without an anticipation of an exchange back. There is an intrinsic value. We did a podcast a couple of weeks ago that I would encourage all of you to go listen to about passion, getting more passion back.

What makes you sing? What makes you dream? What makes you cry? And there is the next generation of fulfillment, the next multiplier of fulfillment that happens when you see people inspired to serve that inspires others to serve. Yeah.

So anyway, I'm extremely thankful. I'll tell you, I want to go today to a listener comment. Colin, Colin, listen to the podcast, The Best Thing You Can Do for Yourself and Others. We'll put that in the show notes because you'll like that. But Colin says the ability to see more and before others is a powerful leadership trait. I agree, Colin.

He went on to say, it's inspiring to think about how we can develop that skill through practice and discipline. And that is the thing. That's the purpose of this podcast is we want to help you develop your skills and your abilities. Today, I want to share with you this four figure digital product that we've created. It's an online course on 21 laws. It's typically $1,050 online.

And today, for those of you that really want to take the rest of 2025 and develop a leadership course to enhance, to develop your leaderships, we want to give you this 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership online course for $199 today. And we want to do that simply because we believe in you. We want to serve you. We want to add value. We want to cultivate that value that's in you and

and see it impact others around you. You can get more information about that in the show notes. You can find out the link to the best thing you can do for yourself and others. You can watch this podcast again on YouTube. You can get a bonus resource that we have there for you in the show notes. Thanks for joining us today. We do this so that we can bring powerful, positive change to the world around us because everyone deserves to be led well. Are you ready to elevate your leadership to new heights?

Join the movement towards high road leadership with John C. Maxwell's latest book. In High Road Leadership, John explores the power of valuing all people, doing the right things for the right reasons, and placing others above personal agendas. Learn how to inspire positive change and bring people together in a world that divides.

Order now and receive exclusive bonuses, including a keynote on High Road Leadership by John Maxwell himself and a sneak peek into three impactful chapters. Take the first step towards becoming a High Road Leader. Visit highroadleadershipbook.com to order your copy today.