John Maxwell’s 6th law of leadership is the Law of Respect. This law states that people naturally follow leaders who they respect and are stronger than themselves.
Maxwell continues teaching six ways to gain respect from others:
- Display your natural leadership ability by communicating vision
- Show respect for others.
- Good leaders do what is right, they have courage
- Have success
- Be loyal to your people
- Add value to others
I am struck by how many leaders violate the law of respect, particularly in corporate America.
It’s like there is this alternate corporate universe where leaders think they can make up their own laws. There seems to be an epidemic of cowardice in lower management. After a while, it seems these faux leaders would have a courageous gut check and pursue something else, perhaps the pay is just too good. After a while, it seems the leaders from above would be courageous and intervene. How much more profitable would our corporations be if they did have these gut checks and there was some well thought out intervention more often ?
Developing people requires leadership, developing people requires courage. How dare people occupy manager positions year in year out who have neither?
Patrick Lencioni wrote The Advantage, the subtitle is Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business, I can not recommend this book enough, in my view, this book should be required reading for every leader.
What are some tips for developing people?
