John Maxwell's #15 Law of Leadership: The Law of Victory

Ed Mylett (0:00)

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21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Series Season 3 premiere. Law 15, The Law of Victory. I'm glad we're talking about this one. There are moments in leadership when the plan just stops working. The market changes sometimes. The team gets hit. Opportunity disappears.

Maybe you lose somebody important, or the numbers don't really look the way you thought they would or you'd like them to look. And in that moment, everybody starts to look at the leader. Not because they expect you to magically solve all the problems, or that you're going to somehow make the problem disappear. They're looking at you to answer one question.

Do you still believe we can win? Because anybody can lead when the scoreboard looks good. Leadership is revealed when you're behind, when you feel like you're losing, when you feel like it's slipping away. When everybody else is losing their minds, you keep yours calm, cool, collected, focused, and believing.

And great leaders have something inside of them that refuses to accept defeat as the final answer. They find a way. That is the law of victory. Welcome back to the final season of this series on John Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. In this series, John Maxwell teaches the law itself, and my role is to try to bring that principle into real life, into business, family, teams, leadership, influence, you name it. Seasons one and two covered the foundation and influence of your leadership, your leadership abilities as well. Now is where the fun comes in. The ultimate test of a leader is not what they accomplish while present, but what continues once they're gone. This final season explores the high stakes laws of sacrifice and succession. This is where success turns into significance. Today's principle is the law of victory. John teaches that leaders find a way for the team to win no matter what's happening. And I want you to really hear the wording of that. He does not say leaders always know the way.

He says they find a way.

That means there's going to be times when you don't know. There's going to be times when the plan fails, when you call the wrong shot, where you make a mistake. There's going to be times when the answer is not obvious.

And I think sometimes we create this picture of leadership where the great leader walks into every single situation and they can just call a shot and it works. They can predict the future. They know exactly what to do. That's not true, and that's not a great leader. And that's never been my experience. I know there's been many times, I want you to hear this, that I feel lost, that I'm not sure, that I've lost a little bit of my confidence, a little bit of that swagger. Maybe some of the things I touch all of a sudden didn't turn to gold. Maybe not all the moves I was making were right, and maybe I didn't even know what the next one was. But I knew quitting wasn't the next move. See, that's different. One of the greatest qualities a leader can possess is resourcefulness. Resourcefulness says, there may not be an obvious way, but I'm going to find one. There may not be enough resources yet, but I'm going to create some. We may have been knocked down, but we are not finished. And this is where leadership and identity intersect. You've heard me talk about identity through my work. Most people think their identity is something that gets revealed when things are going well. I actually think you find out a whole lot more about your identity when things are going badly. Because pressure asks you, who are you when the result doesn't validate you? When somebody you trusted leaves or hurts you?