summary ofThe 5 Levels of LeadershipBook by John C. Maxwell

first KEY POINT

Everyone begins as a positional leader; it's up to you to move up the ladder

How do you define good leadership? Most people have a vague idea. When you take a poll, you will get responses like, “A good leader is anyone who occupies a leadership position and has followers they're leading,” or “I don't know, but when you see a leader, you just know it.”Those responses are good but not enough to define true leadership. There are people in leadership positions who fail as leaders. But for some reason, remain there. And some good leaders don’t even have titles. So seeing leaders as positional isn't good enough.The result of having vague ideas of leadership is that people will resort to leading with gut feelings ― doing what feels right for them — and that's not a profitable path. Not following tested principles can have terrible consequences. At best, you'll learn from experience. But before you learn, fail, and gain mastery from personal experience, you'd have wasted time and a lot of potential.The smart way is by learning from proven experts. It will shorten your journey and help you achieve much in record time.

Gladly, John Maxwell, who has been studying leadership for decades, has done the groundwork. After years of study, he discovered the five levels of leadership we will be considering in this summary. The five levels are:Level 1 — PositionLevel 2 — PermissionLevel 3 — ProductionLevel 4 — People DevelopmentLevel 5 — The PinnacleLeaders move up the levels in serial order, with level 1 being the most basic. All leaders start at Level 1. It takes little to no effort to be on this level, but moving up the levels takes intentionality. We will consider the meanings of each level and the mindsets you need to advance through them in the following chapters.Did you know? Former U. S. President Barack Obama launched his Twitter account on March 5, 2007. He was the first president to have a Twitter account.