I just dug it out and started rereading it. Its pretty good, a bit pragmatic when it comes to religious leadership though. ( )

I read this book in 2005 as a part of a summer preaching program. Each week, I was assigned one book to read and review. The following may contain ambiguous references to my experiences in that program because these reviews were not originally intended for the general public. However, I believe what I wrote can be helpful to someone who may be interested in this book…

This was a pretty insightful book overall. It is well written. The material would be really dry if the book wasn’t cluttered with so many illustrations and stories. Just about every one was insightful, though, and reinforced his points well. There are a lot of illustrations in here that would fit really well in sermons about various topics. Also, sometimes I got lost a bit in his lists. There are lists everywhere. They are good lists. They are even insightful in a lot of ways. But, I don’t think I can remember many of them just because there are so many.

Probably the book’s most useful quality is its application to so many situations and life experiences. Mr. Maxwell’s advice fits and is extremely important for working with a church, but much of his advice is just as applicable in personal relationships (especially for a husband or a father) and, of course, in the business world. The book is full of thought provoking statements. Some of them can be simplistic an overly used, but he makes his points well. The book was very motivating for me.

His section on people was an interesting one. His main point seemed to be that leaders should be nice and happy and never negative with their “people.” The chapter as a whole probably wasn’t the best in the book and seemed rather gushy. But, in the midst of all the “don’t hurt people’s feelings” he offered some excellent insights. People are “naturally motivated” but they don’t know how to use that motivation effectively to become successful. It is easy to mistake lack of success for lack of motivation. But, the best part of this section is his point that leaders need to train people not just to follow but to lead themselves. We focus on our goals or “dreams” and not on the people. As a result we don’t have the resources or ability to achieve our goals. If we focus on training and building up the people then they can help us achieve our goals. That is integral to the way a church should function.

His advice about how to accomplish that is really good too but almost seemed brief. Most of the specific advice is how Christians should be treating each other anyway. It seems like that’s exactly why God set things up the way He did. We’ll accomplish a whole lot more that way.

Even more, he makes a good point throughout the book that leadership will be more successful if people are following for more reason than just because you are the leader. His five levels of leadership at the beginning of the book opened up some ideas I had never really thought about before.

The section on Attitude was alright but I’m not sure his advice on overcoming a bad attitude was especially interesting. I’ve tried a similar strategy in various ways to overcome bad attitudes I’ve had at times. He suggests writing down a definition of the desired attitude, a way to measure progress, a person who will hold you accountable and associating with people who have good attitudes. As with most things in this book, these are all things I’ve considered but he takes them just one step further.

Much of the material on priorities and self discipline and even some of the problem solving and attitude suggestions closely parallel the strategies of Franklin-Covey, especially the discussion on urgent vs. important things. Other things popped up, though, about planning regularly and basing your use of time on your values.

His discussion on whether we are born leaders or not was a good one. His point is that some people are naturally better than others, but no one can be a truly effective leader without a lot of training, experience, and hard work.

This book was very thought provoking. He repeatedly made points that I hadn’t even begun to consider. I think this book will be helpful to me in my relationships and work with people and will probably be one that I’ll read again. ( )

I read this as part of a program at work and found it to be trite, simplistic, inaccurate, and a little too religious. No wonder the economy's in the toilet. ( )

Self-help books are kind of like horoscopes; they're general enough to apply to almost anyone and yet still personal enough to feel a little eerie. This one did its job - it was uplifting, but not specifically helpful.

I bought this book after listening to a talk on leadership inspired by it. The author is a former minister, and his writing style is in tune with that background. He litters the text with parables and anecdotes. ( )

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