Developing the Leader Within You

Developing the Leader Within You, by John Maxwell, is a great book for both seasoned and new leaders. He goes over things that are essential to leadership qualities like priorities, integrity, problem-solving, attitude, vision, people, and self-discipline. Many of the issues he covers are things that you can’t necessarily teach through a book, but he gives stories and principles that help the leader who actually wants to grow in these areas move in that direction. Overall, I was reminded of the importance that people matter, and that a leader’s job is to develop relationships with people, to grow them in their skills, and to help the organization move towards a goal that is set out of a God-given vision. So many leaders these days lead for the purposes of making themselves greater, and many leaders stay in leadership even after they have lost vision and effectiveness, simply because they are “the leader.” Good leaders reproduce good leadership in others, wanting to replace themselves and not preserve themselves.

This book is very principle-based and although it has stories, is a little dry at times. Because I felt like I needed the content of this book, it didn’t really matter to me that much (that’s kinda how my mind works anyway). This will be one that I want on my reference shelf—whenever you face a problem or a situation dealing with a certain area that this book talks about, it’ll be easy to find a few principles to guide you through.