Craig Groeschel - Mastering John Maxwell's Laws of Communication
— Well, get ready. The interview today is gonna be incredibly helpful to you. We’re talking to John Maxwell, arguably the number one leadership expert in the world, author of over 100 books. Three of his books sold over a million copies. The new one we’re talking about today is, «The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication». Incredible book, apply these laws and make the most of your message. Before we go to the interview, I wanted to say a big thank you to our community. If you’re watching online, drop it in the comment section, tell us where you’re watching from. And thank you so much for sharing all over social media. It makes a world of difference to invite others to be a part of our community. I wanna work really, really hard to bring you content that helps you grow in your leadership and inviting others to be a part is a gift to me. Also, I wanna tell you, you do want to get the leader guide. We’ve got detailed communication, additional content questions to help you go over with your team. I promise you it’s worth it. Go to life.church/leadershippodcast, life.church/leadershippodcast. And when we drop an episode, we will give you the leader guide each time. Get ready to take notes, get ready to grow. We’re gonna go now to a very helpful interview with my good friend, John Maxwell. Well, John, welcome back to the, «Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast».
— So glad to be with you, my friend. So glad.
— Man. I am always excited about every minute that we get together, but I think I’m a little bit more excited than my normal excited, because today we get to talk about your new book, «The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication: Apply Them and Make the Most of Your Message». I just wanna say on a personal note, like thank you sincerely for your years and years of investment in leaders. I’ve been learning from you for, gosh, probably close to 30 years, and thank you for this book. This is one of the most important subjects for leaders, and so thank you for your investment in us.
— It’s my joy. It really is. It’s my fourth laws book, Craig.
— Yep.
— I wrote 21 Laws of Leadership. Remember we did a podcast on that? That was fun.
— We did. We did. Yeah.
— And then I did a 17 Laws Teamwork, 15 Laws of Personal Growth, and then 16 Laws of Communication. And it’ll probably be my last quote, laws book, because that takes, I think that takes a different level. But the four books I’ve written on laws have been things that I’m real passionate about, that I just feel have been essential in my life, and so hopefully it’ll help all of your listeners and make them better communicators. That’s what we want, isn’t it?
— It will and it is what we do want. And I’d love to start, and then we’ll kind of get into some of the 16 laws. But, John, I know we got leaders in all different fields with all different span and scope of gifts, how important would you say communication is? Good communication to be a very effective leader.
— It’s the most important skill that you could have. If a person came and said, okay, I can do, I can really get a master one skill, John, which one do you want me to master? I’d say communication. And the reason is because we communicate every day, right? I mean, communication isn’t just being on stage speaking to thousands of people. Communication is one-on-one across the table with your spouse or with your children. It’s talking to a few friends when you’re trying to kind of figure out where you’re going to go next. So every day we communicate, every day we try to get our ideas across. Every day we try to persuade people and every day we learn from people, so communication is everything. And Warren Buffet said, I mean, he’s known for the financial guru, but Warren said as you know, that if you could develop communication skills, he called it the most important skill to develop, that you could increase your worth, net worth, probably 50%. So here’s a guy that deals with finances, but he knows his ability to connect and communicate those finances to people, his team, companies that he’s investing in. He just understands the communication’s the key. So if you and I can connect well through communicating with people, we’re gonna do well, that’s for sure.
— Right. So, if it’s the most important skill in leadership, and let’s say I’m not good at it at all, how much trouble am I in? Can we learn? And then we’ll talk about how we learn.
— Yeah. Well, yeah, you’re in trouble if you can’t communicate, you’re just in trouble. But the good news is you can learn communication skills. Honestly, I’m not sure I would ever write a book or teach anything that a person can’t learn.
— Gotcha.
— Years ago, I kind of crossed that bridge and I said to myself, why would I ever put something out there that’s truly wonderful that a person can’t have? It just doesn’t seem fair or right. So when I talk about communication, a person can learn how to connect and communicate. And it’s like any other skill. You have to practice it. You have to know how to practice well, and you have to be able to develop it, but you can. And in the book, I mean, I talk about one of the laws is the law of observation. And the law of observation just says, good communicators observe great communicators. And, you know, Craig, I spent a good 20 years of my earlier communication life just watching and listening to great communicators. And I realized that it was not so much what they said, but how they did it. And so I would watch, what made that talk effective? And a lot of times, why wasn’t it effective? Why did it not fly? And I kept looking for the why in communication, and I just observed and observed, and then I saw that communicators were very different. The good ones, I mean, they’re very different personalities, different styles, so I very quickly realized it’s not a certain style of speaking certain personality, but the one thing I knew about the great communicators is they all connected. When it was done, everybody listening said, wow, you know, that was for me. So, we just have to understand how to improve ourself in that area, and then begin to practice, begin, hey, begin to train to get there.
— So I was listening to a communicator a few weeks ago, and the content I thought was really, really helpful, but I didn’t feel a connection with the communicator. And it made it more difficult to stay in touch with the content. What would you say, if we’re going to connect, what are some of the practical ways that we can improve our connection? Or maybe even the intangible qualities of good connection between a communicator and her, his audience?
— Well, I have a law of connection in the book called, Communicators Know It’s all about Others. So if you were to come into my life, Craig, and say, okay, give me the one thing. I would say, get over yourself, just get over yourself. For too many communicators, they’re still concerned about, how do I look, do the people like me, I hope I go over okay. It’s impossible for me to truly give myself to you if I’m concerned about me. And I think this is the big hurdle for successful communication. And the reason it’s a hurdle is because people, communication isn’t easy for people. We both know the stats, this is a little hard for me to believe, but they say that the greatest fear of speaking and even greater than death. I’ve never quite bought into that one. That just, I mean, do you wanna speak or do you wanna die. I think most people would say…
— Right. It is intimidating. Yes.
— Who was it, Jerry Seinfeld said, that means if you go to the funeral, you’d rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy. But it’s a scary thing for people, speaking. It really is, communicating. And so therefore, when something makes us nervous and we’re fearful of it, there’s a real tendency to focus on us. You know, how can I do this, how I do it well, did I do it well, what should I do next? So I think the hurdle of getting over myself is a pretty high hurdle. I don’t think it’s an easy one, I don’t think it’s a low one. I think it’s one that we knocked down a lot, trying, not getting over it. I don’t think we’re always successful. The first time I wasn’t. It took me a dozen years probably, and a lot of speaking before I really was freed up of me, so that I could be completely focused on you. But I do know this, when you were talking about the person you heard, and the content was pretty good, but you had a hard time getting into it. Well, you were having a hard time getting into it because he or she, I don’t know, they weren’t getting into you. And the first thing that every communicator has to do is be able to convey to the audience or the person they’re speaking to across the table, that there’s great, that they value that purpose, the person, and they’re focused on it. And I was in northern Ohio doing a large conference, and there, it was one of those speaking conferences. And I was in the green room, and I was about five minutes out. There were a couple other speakers in the green room. And one guy asked me, he said, you know, John, he said, you’re about to go out on stage. What are you thinking about? And I said, well, I’m thinking about the people. And he looked at me and said, you’re kidding him? I said, no, I’m just thinking about the people. And he said, well, I thought you’d be thinking about what you’re going say. I said, well, I know what I’m gonna say, but I have to focus on the people. The people will determine how well I say it and how I say it, and when I say it and why I say it. And I think that’s a big mess. For the book, when we launched this book a couple of weeks ago, we did a webinar. And so the producers were, you know, of course, developing, like, they always did a script and everything. And so I sat down with them a couple days before and I said, now I wanna start the webinar in the audience, not on the stage. I wanna start where the people are. I want every communicator to know it doesn’t start when you stand up and speak. It starts by sitting in the seat of the person is about to listen to you and begin to put your life where they are. What are they thinking? What do they need? Why did they come? Why is this important for them to hear? You’ve just got to put yourself in their shoes, in their seat for you to be able to communicate very well to them. So, that’s where we started the webinar. And that’s where I start all my communicating, all my speaking is to the people. And if I could put the people first, I can promise you what I’m going to communicate is going to do really well. But if I put me first or the content first, it’s not going to sell like it needs to, it’s not going to connect like it should.
— I think that’s so powerful. And it’s funny, John, it took me maybe years to learn that as a communicator, because we are so focused on what do they think of us. And a lot of times when I’m working with a newer communicator, I’ll ask a question, like, after talking, well, you know, how do you think that connected? And they’ll say, well, I liked it. Or I enjoy talking for an hour or whatever. And sometimes I won’t even be polite about it. I’ll be like, «I don’t care what you like, I don’t care how how you felt about it».
— That’s right.
— But the trajectory is toward us. And so let’s say that I can only imagine someone driving their car, they have a presentation coming up at the office, or maybe a first speech, and they’re a little bit nervous. Let’s get really, really practical. Are you saying if we’re gonna do a presentation somewhere, we actually go sit in the seat in the room. You know, what do we observe about the room? Let’s just talk about all the way down to nitty gritty. How much do you care about the environment and what are you thinking about in order to make a connection with the person sitting on the other side?
— It was a great question. Well, there’s a law in the book called, the Law of the Thermostat. And the Law of Thermostat just says, communicators read the room and change the temperature. And it begins with going, when I can, I don’t get to do this all the time, but when I can, if I’m ahead of where the crowd is, if I’m, you know, I do go out of the audience and I sit in the seat. I started that as a pastor, every Sunday I would go and sit in the auditorium for a little bit and think about the needs of the people and why they would be coming today, and could I connect with them where they are. And so, it’s been a practice for a very, very long time. It’s physical for me, because if I sit in the seat, it really forces me to think about the other person. But if I’m in a car and I’m getting ready to go do a speech, I’ve gotta ask myself one simple question, what am I doing the speech for? I mean, am I doing the speech because I need to do a speech? Am I doing a speech because it’s Sunday morning? I mean, you know, why am I in this game? And I’m in the game for one reason. That is to add value to people, to help 'em, and so therefore, if that’s the reason I’m in the game, I better make sure that’s where I am, that I am where they are. And I think one, how many times have I heard speakers say that was a bad crowd? Wait a minute, that’s a tough crowd. Ooh. Ooh, wow.
— Right.
— And I wanna say to them, I don’t know if there is a tough crowd. I think there are only crowds with great potential. I think that… When I think it was it now there’s crowds are more responsive than others, of course so, but it’s not, when it’s not about me, then it’s not about me. In fact, this is kind of fun. In Nashville, there’s a huge writing company there. The guy that did the writing company got a hold of me and said, I built my company off of you 20 years ago. and announced, I think it’s largest writing company in Nashville. Anyway, he gave me an idea, he said, John, why don’t you put, write songs too that are about your books? And of course, I said, well, I’m not a songwriter. And although I do write poetry, 'cause to all of my children and grandchildren on their birthday, I always send 'em a birthday poem that’s about them, and so I do kind of like poetry. So long story short, I went to Nashville, got in the studio, and with real songwriters, I have a statement that says, when you’re the head of the class, you’re in the wrong class. Well, I wasn’t at the head of the class in that room. Hey, I want you to say this. Sometimes when you’re at the bottom of the class, you’re in the wrong class too. It’s kinda like, «What the heck am I doing here»? But they were so good to me, and we were in there for seven hours and we wrote a song. It was so much fun, it was so much fun. And it just came out on Spotify or wherever you get your music. It’s called, but the title of it is, «Get Over Yourself,» right? I get over myself, gotta get over myself. And the whole thing. And I did it out of this book, out of this book. And basically I said, I gave them what I call my credibility journey. How did I get to get over myself? And well, you gotta find yourself to know yourself, gotta know yourself to be yourself. Once you can be yourself, then you won’t have to improve yourself. And then once you start improving yourself, hopefully you’ll get to a mature stage where you can get over yourself. But why do I get over myself? So, I can give myself away.
— It’s good.
— And in fact, that’s the course on this song. It’s an and this too. And I don’t know much. It’s been out for 10 days, but they’ve said they’ve got 30,000 hits on it already, so I think it’s doing okay. I don’t know. I don’t know what that, I don’t even know what that means. I don’t even have Spotify, shows you what I know. But the point being, you really can’t give yourself to others until it’s really no longer about myself. And I think that focus needs to constantly be before you. And I think it takes time to do that. But I think the moment that you can cross that line, everybody in the audience really begins to know now that they truly care, that you truly care for them. And I just think that’s absolutely essential. People don’t care how much till they know how much you care, you know? We’re leaders of value who value people and add value to them. And that’s the great communication message. Once you know I care for you, Craig, honestly, you’re really ready to listen.
— Sure.
— And the subject can be varied. It doesn’t really matter. Once the communicator is the connector, then all things begin to go well.
— Well, I agree a thousand percent. If a communicator, they don’t have to be polished, they don’t have to be powerful. If I know they’re here to try to add value to me, that’s gonna win me every single time. And I think that’s so important. And I wanna ask one more question about that, and I’ll kind of trail what you said, because I wanna try to keep it really practical as your book is incredibly practical. And for our listing audience, when I go to a place I wanna, I call it feel the room meaning like, I wanna walk.
— Yeah.
— I wanna know how the sound carries, and so I’m gonna choose a different microphone if one is stronger. I wanna know where I’m gonna stand on the stage. I wanna sit out if I can like you I wanna be in the seat and try to feel what it’s like to be sitting where they are and really put a lot of time into that. And then I want to talk and ask you about one more practical point before we get into some of the technique behind the communication. But let’s say someone’s about to walk up and they have that panic moment where your heart rate beats so loud that you almost feel like they can hear it or see it. Your hands feel weird. You’re having a hard time getting your breath. At that moment, you’re probably thinking more about you than them, I’m guessing.
— Yeah.
— How do you talk yourself through that? And what do you do to shake that off, so you can get into the talk and be you focused?
— Well, I think we all have those moments. I mean, even as a veteran communicator, there are times when maybe a lot’s on the line. Or I remember I was in a wonderful church in Atlanta, and I was preaching three times and I walked out just getting ready to speak on the second service, Craig, and I looked out, and it seemed to me like a lot of the audience was familiar, like they were in their first service, so I leaned over to the pastor and I asked him, I said, you know, would some of these people, would they have been in the first service too? And oh, he said, yeah, he said, a whole bunch of 'em, they like you, so they wanted to come for the second service. And I’m one minute away. And I said, well, then do I need to preach a different message? And he said that would be good. I literally was walking, walking up in my mind, figured out what I was gonna speak on. I mean, I was three seconds, four seconds, completely wept. And I can remember the panic and the thrill. I just thought, «I’m not even sure I can pull this off, but if I do pull this off, it’s gonna be an incredible story to tell». I think we need to see humor in our situation. The way I do it more than the other way is to just kind of look at myself and say, you know what, you may feel a little bit panicked right now, but there are very few people in the world that really care. And that there are very few people in the world that really, really know. And there are very, very few people in the world that are ever going to hear about it. So it’s just, you’re living in a very, very, very small world, so, John, just smile and get over it. I think we have a tendency to take what we do too serious. I think we have a tendency to even worse than what we do, is who we are, take it a little bit serious. So I kind of, because humor is kind of where I am, a lot of the things, I just kind of look at this, the kind of the humorous side and say, well, this’ll be interesting. This could be my last talk. Maybe this is the day they stoned me, I don’t know. Or throw tomatoes at me. Once you begin to make things, comments like that to myself, which they’re not gonna do any of those things, it begins to reduce the situation down to a place where I think it causes a lot less panic or nervousness. Just because if you can make fun of the situation, you almost always do two things. You reduce it and you bring it to its proper sense of light. And being serious about things does exactly the opposite. It makes it way too big, way too important. And all of a sudden you just think it’s bigger than life. And really it’s not. It’s really not.
— I agree. And if you can talk yourself to that, it helps a lot. And then if you do, even what I’ve found is if you say something dumb or make a mistake, if you laugh about it, it doesn’t cause 'em to like you less.
— Oh they love you more.
— They love you even more. So it’s not, we’re not shooting for perfection, we’re shooting for connection. And people tend to connect with real people, not perfect people, and so I appreciate what you’re saying.
— I’ve jumped in on that, just like, if I could just jump on, just, I’ve told people before, I say, you know what? I’m a little bit nervous about this. And just I shouldn’t be, but I am. But I’m glad to see you and you’re helping me already. And man, I’d tell you, they just lean in, they just lean in. They’re pulling for you and wanting. I think it’s very wise a lot of times to let the people know exactly how you feel or where you are. I think that’s how they identify with you. Success is a terrible separator and keeps us from the people. But the moment we become honest and vulnerable and authentic, I think it narrows that gap real, very, very quick. It’s a bridge for sure.
— It does. Yeah. Yeah. One of the quotes we say a lot on the podcast is people may be impressed with your strengths, but they connect with you through your weaknesses.
— Yeah. I love that quote.
— And so, being being yourself matters. John, I wanna ask you, I think law number four jumped out to me as being just very, very, very, very important. The law of preparation. You cannot deliver what you have not developed. I’d love to hear about, you know, we were talking just minutes before the podcast started, and you said you came up with 13 new talk ideas, which is, blows my mind that you could come up with 13 new talk ideas that fast. Can you talk us through a little bit about, from the conception of the idea to the delivery of the message, how can we learn to become more skilled in the preparation process?
— Well, first of all, first thing I would say about preparation is people say, John, when do you prepare? And my answer is always. I prepare all the time. So when I’m reading your book, and by the way, I’m halfway through it on the power of change. And let me just say this, it’s good, I read all your books. But let me tell you something, it’s very, very good. I’m gonna pull up something here for you. So, what I have here is my little iPhone and I have quotes out of your book right here. You have the quote on habits, how habits are born, you know, by cue, by craving, response, reward. Habit allows good and bad behavior to happen into your brain, helping you with the change. And so I got all these habit quotes and training quotes, training versus trying. And whenever I read something, I immediately file it. So there I would be through your book if I just read your book, but I don’t read your book, I devour your book, I consume your book. I pull stuff out of your book. So, am I preparing a lesson on habits? No, but I’m filing quotes on habits because there’ll be a day I do a teaching on habits. And when I get ready to do those teach teaching on habits, guess what? I’ve got all kind of material. You see, there are some people, they think of a subject and look for material. I do exactly the opposite. I look for material and think of a subject. Totally opposite. And so, I’m consistently preparing. And somebody said, well, what are you preparing for? I’m preparing for someday I’m gonna give a talk on habits. Are you doing it this week? No. No. I don’t even have one in the future. But it doesn’t matter. You know, my dad, he was so wise. When he found out at 17 that I was going to speak a lot and enter the ministry, he said, John, keep the well full, never have an empty well. He said, there’s no excuse of going to a well that’s supposed to hold water and not having water, and why isn’t there any water in there? You didn’t put the water in it. And so you get to the outputs, be sure that when you go over to the well, you just you got a lot of water, pull the bucket up. So in preparation, I am consistently, consistently every day writing, filing, thinking ideas and putting them someplace. Because the number one time waster is looking for things that are lost. And the reason that we’re looking for things that are lost is we didn’t have a place to put it the first time. So I’m extremely disciplined and organized in everything, in material, and just… I mean, I’ll be in a conversation with somebody and I’ll pull up and I’ll say, now look, I’m not texting anybody, but I’m just writing down something you said. So, I’m not trying to be inhospitable to you. I just don’t wanna lose it. Because if I don’t file it quickly, I lose it, or if I don’t have a way, so I mark your book, I marked your, I mean, I got your book all marked up and stuff that. So what I do is I mark your book. The first time I mark the book, and the second, okay, the first time I mark the book, and the second time I read it, the book marks me. Because the second time I read your book, all I do is the markings, I don’t do anything else. And I do the markings, I do the filings, I make sure I didn’t lose anything. But I read it the second time because if I filed it the first time, the second time when I go back through the markings, I’m thinking on it. The first time, I just kind of said, I don’t wanna lose it, so I put it where it needs to be. The second time I’m going through, now I say, there’s a reason I didn’t wanna lose it. It was good. Now, why was it so good? Now, I’m going give some mental thought and mental preparation. And I’ll take your stuff and I’ll pull it out and make it better, better. It’s like your difference between trying and training. But I have a couple of my staff here with me. And so over a lunch yesterday, I was talking to him about what I was learning from you in trying and training. And one of the ways I really do well is I talk it out, one of my preparations, if I talk it out, it begins, I begin to say things that evolve, and all of a sudden I think, yeah, that, it just adds. And I said, because you said, don’t try, try in that whole process. And all of a sudden I said, I think trying is before commitment, I think training is after commitment. Now you said that essence, in essence in your book, that’s what you said.
— You said it better,
— But I said it better.
— You’d said it better.
— Now I only said… But I only said it better for two reasons. One, you gave me the thought. If you don’t gimme the thought, it doesn’t get better. So now what I’m doing is I’m standing on your shoulders. The moment you gave me the thought, the question is, is there a way to take that thought and either say it in a creative way that people go, «Oh my gosh». Or build it in such a way that people say that has such maturity and such meat. Because, Craig, I can hear a person speak and I know exactly how much preparation they do. And a lot of that preparation, and now I’m in another part of your book that I’m taking some side notes on, you know, stuff is stored up before it shows up and you’re talking. Yeah. I loved your part on training when you said, you started talking about when you started doing your, what is it, jitsu or whatever…
— Jujitsu, right? Yeah, jujitsu.
— Yeah, whatever that is. Okay. That’s obvious I don’t do that. I’m a Pillsbury Doughboy, I don’t do that. But anyway, but, Craig, I mean, and so you, and I love that you said in the second time, I’m brand new at this game, I win. And then I won the third time, I won the fourth time, I won the fifth time. And I’m start saying, I think he may be doing drugs. He keeps, and then you weren’t winning the match. You were winning because you were learning something every time you got in a match.
— Yep.
— That made you better. And then you began to say, I’m winning when I’m doing the habits. When I’m doing the habits, I’m winning. And all of a sudden I thought, okay, what he’s doing all these times, he’s storing it up. It isn’t showing up at all. He didn’t win, in fact, you’re on the mat, you’re yellow knuckle, but it was getting stored up. That’s preparation. And I think sometimes we don’t think preparation happens unless it shows up. And I think that’s a big misforce. I value the stored up. In fact, here’s what I say, if it’s not stored up well, it won’t show up well. So when something shows up that hasn’t been stored up, it shows up pretty quick that the person hasn’t given it much thought. They haven’t worked it. So in preparation, I prepare all the time. When I started off as a pastor in a little country church. And probably within three months, I realized that these precious, beautiful, wonderful, solidar farmers would be satisfied with any message I preached. I mean, they just loved me. And that was wonderful pastor, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. And then all of a sudden I got into this temptation. I don’t have to work hard on my message. I can spend a couple hours, get a couple scriptures, tell a story or two, everybody’s happy. And I came to this place, Craig, where I had to ask myself, am I going to wing it or work for it? And it took me a couple months. I had a harder time than I should have on that because I knew I could get by with, here’s when you know that you can get by with winging it, the temptation becomes very big. Now, if I know I’m gonna wing it, I’m gonna flunk the test, then winging it, so temptation. But when I can wing it and pass, then all of a sudden I think winging it’s not so bad. Well, I made the decision to write my sermons out when I was 22 years of age in a little country church and work for it. Little did I know that writing, that the discipline of writing my messages out helped me not only do better messages, but it helped me learn to write, and so I worked for it, I worked for it. And here’s the difference. If you’re gifted and you wing it and don’t really prepare, you can get it in the top 20% if you’re gifted. But if you’re gifted and you work for it, you can get it in the top 2%. And I’m gonna tell you something, the top 2% owns the world, not the top 20. Top 20% makes a good living, top 2%, they own the world. So in our giftedness, it’s kind of interesting, in our giftedness, there’s a tendency for us to want to wing it because we can get by with it. But if we’ll work for it, that return is just humongous in our life. So I prepare every day. I prepare, I’m preparing and filing and thinking and creating and developing and building, because there’s going to be a day when I’m gonna want that. And it’s, I’ve already stored it up and I pull it out and when somebody says, how long did it take you to write the book? 25, 30 years. And how long take you to do this sermon? 25, 30 years, 40 years. It’s taken me a long time because I understand storing up before showing up, which is all part of preparation.
— Well, it works. And when, if people are listening right now and thinking, «Well, does, would he really work on it all the time»? I would just say, from my perspective, I absolutely believe it. And think that any good communicator always has his or her antennas up…
— Always.
— Looking for ideas, looking for illustrations, looking for ways to make emotional connections, looking for ways to make applications.
— Craig, I stop your podcast a minimum of eight times every time I hear you. I’ve never heard a podcast that you’ve given that I haven’t put you on hold at least eight times. Why? Because you just said something, I have got to get put in my files, or that I gotta put in my idea file, or I gotta go over there and put it in my thinking corner to come back. I’ve never listened to you straight through. I don’t even know how to listen to you straight through. If you were, well, if you weren’t any good, I could listen to you straight through, but if you weren’t any good, I wouldn’t listen to you. But I mean, the point being, I stop all the time because I don’t wanna miss what you just said or build on what you said, or I’ve got at least file. So I’ll file it and turn you back on, walk a little bit more, stop and file it. And it’s just huge because of that very thing. If I have a conversation with anybody and I don’t pull my iPhone out and ask 'em to stop for a moment, that other person needs to realize that wasn’t a good conversation. I walked away with nothing. So anyway, enough of that.
— Well, I think it is really worth highlighting that we look at you and say, you are John Maxwell, the premier speaker, communicator, teacher on leadership in the world today. And I think what I want our audience to hear is you are not that by accident. You’re not that by talent alone, you’re not that because of natural gifts, you’re not that because of where you were born, that you’re working at it, developing it, crafting it, honing it, diving into it, internalizing it, incorporating it on and on and on, and on and on. And it’s many ways a full-time job to take in the world, look for lessons, and learn how to bring it about. And I mean, I wanna talk about all your laws, and I wanna say it again, just in case someone didn’t catch it the first time. Hold up the book, «The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication: Apply Them and Make the Most of Your Message». Get this book, get this book, get this book. It’s gonna change your communication. A couple of the things that I just don’t even know how to get into all of them, but I wanna highlight number five, the law of collaboration. Some of your best thinking will be done with others. You said that, even you illustrated it when you’re talking about you like to talk your ideas out. And for me, one of the best things to do is to have other people in the room in the preparation process to talk it out. And then they’ll say things that will spark ideas. And then your law of simplicity, law number 10, communicators take something complicated and make it simple. If there’s one thing that stands out, I think of all of the traits in your communication that I admire, is I always walk away thinking that was brilliance made simple. Like it’s like PhD material put on the bottom shelf that anybody can access. And that’s not easy to do. That is incredibly complicated to make a complicated truth simple. Talk us through that. What’s the difference between simplistic, complex and simple when we’re communicating a message?
— First of all, if they don’t understand it, why did you say it? And in fact, whenever I hear a communicator always explain what they just said, I always wanna roll up my hand and just say, why didn’t you just say the, why didn’t you do the last sentence first, and we wouldn’t have heard the other three. And I wasn’t trained to be simple as a communicator, so it’s a hard process, it isn’t easy. I was trained in college. And my classes, we basically ignored simplicity. I won the senior when I was a senior in college as a theologue, I won the senior speaker award or whatever. And the title of my message, Craig, was the Incompatibility of Sin and Sonship. Well, that tells you. You’re already snickering. Says everything you want to know, doesn’t it? I mean, who in the heck can figure out what the incompatibility of sin and sonship was? And the reason I got the award is I did the sermon for the professors. I didn’t do it for, the students are all howling because they knew that wasn’t how I talked. They were, you know, and so I just went in on the incompatibility of sin. I mean, I could have looked at the kids and said, sin less, you know what I mean? And could got on with a point. But what I realized is the fact that I was trying not to give personal illustrations. Because that would be too much about yourself, so you always give a… And so I tried all this stuff that I was taught the first year that I got to practice a lot as a pastor. And I found it didn’t work. So, okay, now what am I going to do? Well, I’m with farmers. And farmers have to have simple. And so, I would, I literally went down and I had a guy named Claude, I had a guy named Benny. I had a few people that I would throw my ideas around with him and just kind of work 'em until Claude and Benny lights would come on or they would say something that was very simple. And some they were farmers, sometimes incredibly crude. It was a shock for me. But anyway, the whole point of it was I began to understand that I had to speak on their level. Then when I went to California, it was the… Going to California was a beautiful thing for me as a pastor, because those people worked church, they could care less. They didn’t have any kind of biblical background. In fact, they were so bad that I got everybody the same Bible. This was before we had all the visual aids and this, so I could tell 'em what page to turn toward because I got tired of 'em trying to find Nehemiah or whatever. I mean, it didn’t, how long are we gonna wait before we can get there? So, I very quickly began to ask myself and sit again in the pew and say, what do they need, and what do they, and how do they need to hear it, so that they could connect with it? And I began to hear compliments of people that would say, you don’t sound like a pastor. And I’m not trying to that, I don’t wanna say that in a wrong light, but I considered that a compliment because I realize now I was starting. And then I started sitting down, so that I would be more conversation. Because I found that when I stood, in the beginning, I was a little too passionate, a little bit, just, I kind of was a little bit of an overkill speaker. And I kind of overwhelm people. I kinda, oh, whoa, my gosh, here he comes, here comes the fire hydrant. And I found that when I would sit, it would make me conversational with people much more than than what I was standing. So I just began to do specific things that allowed me to know that I was doing well and then that I was connecting with people. But in the beginning, I could still remember in the beginning, I went to the pulpit with my Greek New Testament, 'cause I took Greek. And I mean, I read, I mean, why does the farmer care that I have a Greek New Testament? I mean, I was so stupid, I was so far off, I was so non-connected. And the reason I like to say those illustrations is for people to understand how bad I was. If somebody would say, I get one wish, I know what my wish would be. I would wish people could see me 50 years ago. I wasn’t any good. I would greatly encourage people. If people heard me communicate 50 years ago, if people saw me lead 50 years ago, honestly, they would be greatly encouraged because I wasn’t that good. I’m not trying to be humble, I wasn’t that good. I think that’s the testimony to growth and preparation and discipline in your life to make the needed changes. And any person, I think any person can have greatness within them but greatness doesn’t come out, it has to be worked out. Greatness doesn’t, you know, somebody say, well, I’m just waiting for greatness to evolve. It ain’t going to evolve. You gotta chisel and work at it. You gotta pull it out, you gotta be very intentional in how you do it and what you do. And so in the area of being simple and keep it, I was doing an interview one time and the TV guy said, I read your books in there. And he said it in constant anyway. He said, I read your books and they’re quite simple. And I said, yeah. I said, I work hard to get them there for everybody to understand. But then I looked at him, I said, but they aren’t simple to apply, are they? But here’s what I know. What do I want the people to know, what I want the people to do. You know that, I know that. And I want them to know what I want them to do. If I want them to know something, do something, it has to always be something that they can understand. If they can’t understand it, we’ve lost the value.
— Right. And I wanna highlight that, John, 'cause that’s so important. A lot of communicators start with like, just what I want them to know, and so it’s just a communication of information. You have in law number 16, it’s called the Law of results. The greatest success is communication in action. And what you wanna do is you wanna create a bridge to action, so you don’t just want them to know something, but you want them to do something. And that’s really important. My pastor used to always say, before you preach a message, ask, so what? Meaning I just don’t want to hear information, now what do I do with it?
— I like it.
— So you said it, I’m gonna add one thing to it. You said what I want 'em to know, what I want 'em to do. What I added to that, what I learned from you and from others is the know and the do. I add feel to it, and so I teach our communicators what I want 'em to know, what I want 'em to feel and what I want 'em to do. And the reason I want them to feel something is because knowledge alone doesn’t lead to action, but emotion leads to action. You have to feel something. And so, I’d love for you to comment a little bit about that. I mean, every time, John, I hear you, I wanna run through a wall with excitement and I’ve got a new tool to use. What goes through your mind to make a talk actionable? The law of results, number 16, the greatest success in communication is action. What do you do to create the ability for me to apply what you’re teaching and help motivate me to do it?
— In one of my laws, I talk about in, I think it’s the law of preparation. I talk about best picture and big picture. And the best or the best message and big message. The best message is the message I’m preaching right now. I call it my best because I’ve given it my best shot. It certainly can improve, but it’s my best now. I describe my best as the best I can do right at this moment. It’s the best. It’s all I can do, it’s the best I can do. It doesn’t mean it won’t get better, but it is the best right now, tomorrow that best is the floor that I build on to make it better. But that’s my best message. But there’s a big message I preach, and this is one of my favorite parts of the book, I talk about the big message is your DNA as a communicator. It’s the best message they’re taking notes on because that’s the message they’re hearing. But it’s the big message that goes to that heart. And there are four questions you ask yourself in that. And that is, what do I want them to see, what do I want them to know, what do I want them to feel, and what do I want them to do? And what do I want them to see? My big message, my DNA when you hear me communicate, I’m a possibility communicator, so what I want them to see is possibility. I mean, I lift the lid. No matter where they are, I want them when they walk out to see a little higher, see a little farther. That’s just who I, I want them to see possible, so I’m a possibility communicator. That’s part of the Maxwell DNA. What I want them to know is that I value them. That’s essential to me. I want them to, and especially in the world that I communicate with, it is not a always a faith world. Most times it’s not a faith world. I want them to know how much I value them, because that’s the key to the relationship that allows you to share your faith down the road, so I want them to see their possibilities, I want them to feel that they are, that I value them. And then what I want them to know is I want 'em to see their possibilities, I want them to know what they’re valued. What I want them to feel is empowered.
— Good.
— I want them to feel that what I just shared with them, they can go do. If I communicate something to people and they walk out and they say, that’s just a, I don’t want him to walk out and say, man, John’s amazing. Look what that guy can do. That doesn’t help him. It only helps them if they look and say, I think I’m amazing, then I can do that. And so I want them to feel empowered as they leave that, okay, great, they have that. And then what I want them to do is I want them to apply to their life and then multiply it in others. That’s what I wanted to do. So I would never consider any communication effective unless it brought a person to action. I’ve never known, I’ve never, think of it this way. There is no success without action. None. I mean, when people talk about success, I’ve never known a person who didn’t act but was successful or they thought, but they didn’t act. And you have to, there comes a time when you have to do it. And so my passion to get people to do it is really high. And to me the test of did I communicate well, wasn’t whether they liked it. The test of my communication is when they finished, they did something about it. And then it becomes a, that’s a good message. A great message is when they did something about it and they were so motivated, they got someone else to do about it. Now that that message has legs. So I can’t imagine a scenario where I would communicate without anticipating and showing a plan of action for them to do something about what I communicate. Wouldn’t it be highly frustrating to have knowledge and then not know what to do with that knowledge? To me, that’s kind of leaving them hanging out there. So one of the things I did learn in college is preach for a verdict. You know, preach for a verdict. You’re going to Anderson. So every time I communicate, I’m going after some foreseeable action in a person’s life that I can walk away quite assured that they did something about what I talked about. Does that make sense?
— It does. And I wanna ask you two more questions. One is gonna be a very personal ask to our audience, and then the second one I’m gonna ask you to tell us where we can find out more about you. But I’m gonna say it again, it’s, «The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication». John’s written over a hundred books, and I can go through and talk about individual chapters, individual quotes that have helped change the trajectory of my leadership. And this is one of those books. In it, John, you talked about this one, the law of the change up, the sameness as the death of communication. And I know in you talk a lot about, I mean, varying speed, tone, all this kind of stuff. One of the ways I teach our communicators this is I’ll tell them that the hat you wear determines the emotion they feel. You can put on a pastor’s hat or you can say, Hey, as one parent to another parent, you put on a parent hat. You can say, you can put on a friend hat, Hey, I know what you’re going through and as a friend I would tell you this. You can put on the boss hat, you can put on the coach hat. There’s all these different hats. You said something earlier, you’ll sit down sometimes because you’re more conversational. These are all different approaches to help us connect and move us to action. I would like for you, if you wouldn’t mind, to put on whatever hat you would choose, and you can tell us what hat that is, and I want you to talk directly to our audience, and I want you to feel what they feel right now. We’ve got a stay-at-home mom who’s starting a business and feels overwhelmed as she’s starting to communicate with her team, recruit volunteers, recruit teams, members, whatever. You’ve got a seasoned youth pastor who feels ineffective connecting with teenagers. You’ve got a salesperson that doesn’t feel very effective in communicate, and you’ve got someone who needs to lead up to a boss and wants to communicate. Put on some hat and talk to us and tell us we can get better. The most you centered message. I want them to feel it right now. They’re driving, they’re working out. I want them to feel from one of the best communicators on the planet, just how possible it is for them to become great.
— Well, I’d put on my friend hat, that’s what I’d put on. I mean, you gave me several scenarios, but all the scenarios had something in common in that it was life was not going well for them. It was getting a little difficult, that the hill was a little higher than what they thought they’d have to climb. So for you, my friend, what I would say first of all is I’ve been there. When I say I’ve been there, I’ve had a lot more losses than I’ve had wins. I’ve had a lot more misses than I’ve had hits. And I can feel for where you are because there were times when I looked at myself and I thought, «Wow, is there hope? And how the heck am I going to get some help»? And they weren’t the same. I wanted to have hope that tomorrow would get better, but I had to have somebody come along and help me to make it better, because I didn’t know what steps to take that would be next. So, the first thing I want you to know is I’ve been there. The second thing I want you to know is that there is hope and help. Hope is in you, help is from others probably. Hope is in you having a sense to believe if you’re a person of faith, that God’s going to help you and going to give you that strength. But hope is also within yourself. It is allowing yourself to believe that you can do better and be better, have more than you have today. And the self-belief is pretty important. But the feeder of self-belief is hope. So I just want you to know that you have a reason to hope because there have been people in worse situations than yours that have climbed out of that pit and they’ve done very well. There is help, there is help for you, but you do not get help by hoping for it. You get help by going looking for him. This is where you have to take action. Help doesn’t always find you, help doesn’t always come to you. Sometimes you have to be willing to ask for help. You have to be willing to go to where people are and tell them what you need and have a sense of swallowing pride and say, I just feel that if you could just give me a couple thoughts or ideas or a helping hand for a very short time, I can make it, but you need help. I would also want you to know very, very much that I and my myself personally have discovered that the moment I want to be different, God sends me people to make a difference and situations that make a difference, and ideas that make a difference, and opportunities that make a difference, but that is only taken by action. In fact, I have a little lesson called action attraction. And the lesson just very simply says, the moment I know what I want to accomplish and I start moving, then all of a sudden the things that I’m looking for begin to appear. But they don’t appear while I sit, they appear while I move. And this is the big miss. Because when we’re discouraged and depressed, there’s a tendency for us to hold and not do anything. And that’s not gonna get it. Action creates the attraction. When I move, then the resources move. But I have to move first. And some people say, well, I would move, but I don’t see any resources. I say, you don’t see any resources because you don’t move. And so the action begins to attract the right people to you. And when they come, become a student and start trying, start trying, start trying. And begin to begin to make those attempts. Trying is good as long as it’s not an excuse to stop. I think I’ve tried a lot of things to find out what I needed to do, so that I could then train for. But so I would just say start trying, attempt, do some of the things that people suggest that you do to get yourself out of that situation. And of course, I would encourage you greatly to, if you’re not a person of faith, I honestly, Craig, I sometimes wonder how people who don’t have a relationship with God. It is just hard for me to understand how they ever can get to where they really want to go because of all the assets that come with Christian living and the blessings that come with it. That it gets to be pretty good, so I would hope that you would also begin to trust God to help you with some of those resources that you need in your life.
— I wanna say thank you for that encouragement to our community. I love our community so much, and I hope I just say to those of you listening, I hope you feel that, I hope you feel my love for you. And John, just John loves everybody he comes in contact with it. I wanna just wrap back on what you just did there. And I wanna tell our community what you did that made what you did effective. John put on his friend hat. He called you early on, my friend, and then he connected with you, identified, he said, the hill you’re climbing feels higher than you expected. And he says, I’ve been there. So, the first thing he did is he made a connection. Then he gave you something that was tangible, something you’d hold onto. There’s hope in you and help from others. That’s something I can remember, it’s something that I feel. Then you said, you’ve gotta go look for it. Then you created action. You gave us permission and encouraged us to ask for help. Then what I love is you made it personal again in there midway through, you said, what I want you to know, and so it’s a you oriented message the whole time. You weren’t talking about yourself, you were talking about your listener. And then you started to build faith. First of all, a normal faith that if you want something different, you gotta go get it. And you built this faith that it was possible. Then you built my faith by saying that you have to act first and you’re creating action. And then you save the part about faith in God all the way to the very end of the podcast after you’d built credibility with people. And you just almost can’t spend a whole day with John without him sharing his faith. But you did it at a time when we had, maybe if we weren’t a person of faith, you’d added value to us. We liked you and you had some credibility, and then you shared the real hope that you have, which is in Jesus and in a way that made a difference. So, that’s what John just did. It was natural to him after years of practice. But that’s why you need to get, «The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication». John, thank you a million times over for your friendship, your mentorship, your example. We’ve got a lot of people who’d probably love to find more of your resources. What’s the best way to keep growing from what you have to offer?
— Well, they can just go to the webpage and you know, Maxwell, you know. For the book on the pre-order, it was go to maxwellleadership.myshopify.com. But that sounds way too complicated to me. I mean, dear Lord, it’s gotta be said. So, just go to the Maxwell Leadership app. Go there or go to the webpage, Maxwell page. I mean, you’ll get it.
— Maxwell Leadership app. And don’t forget, John, go to Spotify and get the song.
— Oh yes, get my song.
— «Get Over Yourself».
— Get over myself.
— «Get Over Yourself».
— Get over myself.
— Come on, get over myself. You gotta know yourself, grow yourself, get over yourself. I have not heard the song yet, but we’re going there. John, thanks so much. And thank you to our leadership community. We love you, value you. If this is helpful to you, we’d love for you to share the content. Tag John Maxwell, tag me and we may repost you. If you have time, leave a comment. We work hard to add value to your leadership, and if you can rate a review the content, that is a very real gift to us, and we’ll join you again on the first Thursday of every month. John will be there listening. It blows me away, my hero would listen to the content. And the book is, «The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication: Apply Them and Make the Most of Your Message». Get John’s book, learn from him. We’ll see you next time. Keep growing because we know that everyone wins when the leader gets better.