In “High Road Leadership,” John C. Maxwell masterfully guides readers through the essential strategies for bringing people together in a world fraught with division. This transformative book equips leaders with the tools to navigate challenges, foster unity, and achieve remarkable results.
Discover the secret to becoming an exceptional leader who can bridge divides and inspire positive change. Keep reading to unlock the wisdom within “High Road Leadership.”
Table of Contents
Genres
Leadership, Personal Development, Business, Self-Help, Organizational Behavior, Psychology, Communication Skills, Conflict Resolution, Teamwork, Inspiration, Management
“High Road Leadership” by John C. Maxwell is a powerful guide for leaders seeking to unite people in a divided world. Maxwell draws upon his extensive experience to provide practical strategies and insights for navigating challenges, fostering collaboration, and achieving shared goals.
The book emphasizes the importance of integrity, empathy, and effective communication in leadership. Maxwell encourages leaders to rise above divisive tactics and lead with a focus on the greater good. Through real-world examples and actionable advice, “High Road Leadership” equips readers with the tools to build bridges, inspire unity, and create positive change in their organizations and communities.
Review
“High Road Leadership” is a must-read for anyone in a leadership position or aspiring to make a positive impact. John C. Maxwell’s wisdom and practical guidance shine through on every page. The book’s central message of bringing people together is more relevant than ever in today’s polarized world.
Maxwell’s writing style is engaging and accessible, making complex concepts easy to understand and apply. The real-world examples and case studies bring the principles to life and demonstrate their effectiveness. “High Road Leadership” is not just a book; it’s a roadmap for transformative leadership that can unite people, overcome obstacles, and create lasting change. Whether you lead a small team or a large organization, this book will provide you with the insights and strategies to become a more effective and inspiring leader.
Introduction: Want to lead with an open heart and a clear mind? This is the way
High Road Leadership (2024) is a guide for leaders who want to make a positive, lasting impact through integrity and generosity. It has insights and advice for anyone interested in becoming a successful leader who makes a meaningful difference.
It might seem like a profoundly obvious thing to say, but leaders are important. The influence and power they wield make all the difference. They can be responsible for uplifting people – or equally, for bringing them down.
Through his organization, the author, John C. Maxwell, has overseen the certification of 50,000 coaches in 72 countries. This has given him a unique vantage point to see what makes both good and bad leaders tick. The difference between them can be boiled down to two things: skills and values.
As he sees it, leaders with high values and low skills are generally ineffective. Those with low values and high skills lack integrity and tend to manipulate people for personal gain. It’s leaders with both skills and strong values in place who succeed in uplifting people.
In this summary, you’ll discover the values that can help you become the best kind of leader. So let’s take the high road and get started.
Taking the high road
Everyone loves a win-win situation, right? Well, when it comes to leadership, the only win-win situation is to be a leader with good skills and strong values. If you’re lacking in either, it’s going to be a losing situation for you, the organization, or both.
But if you’re strong in both departments, then you’re what’s known as a high-road leader.
So, what kind of values are we talking about? First, and perhaps most important, is the genuine willingness to put others first. This is what the high road is all about.
People who take the low road are only in it for themselves, which is pretty much the opposite of being a leader. Those who take the middle road enter into a transactional approach – an I’ll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch-mine leadership style.
The high road, on the other hand, is about putting others first. High-road leaders give without expecting anything in return. They accept that life isn’t always fair. They treat everyone with respect, regardless of how they are treated in return, and strive to make the world a better place by maintaining a balance in others’ favor.
When you focus on collective benefit over personal advantage, you avoid a lot of traps that people fall into when they take the low or middle roads. But there are barriers that people can hit when they try to embark on the high road.
These days people have a hard time realizing the virtues of seeking common ground and collaboration. Instead, it’s common to view those who disagree with us as being disagreeable and not worth listening to. When we start to question someone’s motives, trust erodes, making collaboration difficult.
High-road leaders rise above this mindset, fostering a strong bias toward collaboration. They work to understand different perspectives and are committed to finding the best solutions – even if those come from opposing views. This approach is essential in any setting, whether it’s a workplace, community, or broader society.
This brings us to the second characteristic of the high-road leader: you must value all people. This begins with recognizing everyone’s inherent worth and treating them with dignity. It’s not enough to see people’s potential; you must also appreciate and act on it. This includes acknowledging others with kindness, finding common ground, recognizing their value, and treating them with dignity.
By being humble and valuing others, you can build a culture of mutual respect and collaboration, paving the way for a united and thriving community.
If you can’t engage with people who disagree with you, your leadership potential remains stunted. Successful leaders know that cooperation with everyone, not just their allies, is crucial for progress. Blaming “the other side” for your problems misses the point. To create a better culture and world, you must reflect on your contributions to division and strive to bridge gaps. This means taking the high road.
Be a self-aware leader
Let’s delve deeper into the values and characteristics of effective leadership. When it comes to those who unite, connect, and uplift, there must be an understanding of fundamental humanness.
Recognizing what makes us human comes with an understanding that we’re all flawed. This is a key part of that common ground we all have. High-road leaders know deep down that they’re neither better nor worse than anyone else.
This perspective is crucial, and a leader must know themself before they attempt to lead others. This means being self-aware about your strengths as well as your weaknesses.
Let go of any misguided ideas about perfection and lead by example. You can do this by recognizing your potential for growth and being supportive and nurturing toward yourself, just as you would be with others.
Everyone falls short, and holding yourself to unrealistic standards can be deeply discouraging. Once you forgive yourself, it becomes easier to take things lightly and move on healthily. Even better, it becomes easier to use mistakes as an opportunity to learn and grow. It’s about balancing self-confidence with humility, which is essential for genuine leadership.
Self-awareness also applies to understanding your motivations. Every leader should ask themselves whether they’re doing this for the right reasons. In other words, whether they’re in it for personal gain or to benefit others. Healthy leadership, high-road leadership, is about serving others, not self-interest.
If your motives are centered on power, recognition, or financial gain, then you’re entering the realm of selfish leadership. In particular, here are some common misbehaviors to avoid:
First, stop chasing what’s easy. Often, the right path isn’t the simplest one. Get used to this idea and spend less time looking for shortcuts.
Likewise, stop seeking applause. Authentic leaders don’t lead for praise.
Next, stop insisting you’re right, and stop blaming others. Be open to outside perspectives and own your actions and decisions, even when they’re unflattering. Remember, to err is human.
And finally, stop paying lip service. You can tell people you’re a high-road leader, but you have to back those words up with action if it’s going to be true.
Doing the right things for the right reasons can be challenging. It may cost you time, effort, and even some personal gain. But the rewards for staying on the high road are profound: personal growth, inner strength, true wealth, and genuine credibility. Plus, when you see the positive impact you have on others – which is what leadership is all about – you’ll realize it’s worth every bit of the effort.
A capacity for generosity
There’s a popular image of the domineering leader, barking orders and commanding respect through a mix of fear and intimidation. But this kind of leadership won’t get you very far in the real world.
An effective leader is pretty much the opposite of that fear-based leader. In one word, the high-road leader is generous.
As we mentioned earlier, leadership isn’t about taking, it’s about giving. It’s about three kinds of giving in fact: open-hearted, open-minded, and open-handed generosity.
Open-hearted generosity is about using leadership as a way of adding value to others. Your questions to yourself should be: What can I do to amplify those around me? How can my leadership bring out the best in others?
Likewise, open-minded generosity is about thinking the best of people. You give people the benefit of the doubt. You see their potential, and you don’t hold back in letting them know.
Open-handed generosity is another way of offering support, by giving freely and often. What do people need in order to flourish? Is it time, resources, encouragement?
Open-handed generosity can make you think about all the ways in which a leader can give.
Sometimes, an opportunity may be the best thing you can give someone. A chance for someone to step up, take the reins on a project, and really show off their potential.
Or maybe it’s a connection. You can give someone a life-changing gift by sharing the contact information of a mentor, or by welcoming someone into a network of like-minded professionals. The point is that there are more ways to give than just time, money, and expertise.
Generosity can go hand-in-hand with another essential value: an abundant emotional capacity.
Emotional capacity is about how well you respond to challenging situations, whether it’s adversity, failure, criticism, or stress. Strong leaders have a strong emotional capacity, which means they’re resilient. They can manage their emotions and reactions effectively, which in turn allows them to lead others well.
There’s no switch to flip in order to build your emotional capacity, but consider these tips:
First, refuse to see yourself as a victim. When you start the good habit of taking responsibility for your actions rather than blaming others or seeking scapegoats, you’ll be on your way to being a positive and proactive leader.
Then, remember to keep short accounts. This means staying away from grudges and long-brewing resentments. Get in the habit of resolving any conflicts promptly so that you’re not burdened by emotional baggage.
Third, understand the difference between problems and facts of life. Many problems can be the result of things that are out of your control. Focus on what you can control, including how you react.
And lastly, it’s also important to note the difference between being a selfless leader and being a leader who doesn’t take care of themselves. Don’t undervalue self-care. You can’t lead if you don’t take care of yourself first.
Authenticity and accountability
If there’s another popular image associated with leadership, it’s of the confident, charismatic personality that draws people in and motivates them to do their best. But more often than not, what’s really going on in this scenario is authenticity, which is another characteristic of the high-road leader.
A leader’s success is dependent upon the success of the people they’re leading. This is a relationship that requires mutual trust. And trust requires authenticity. Your team needs to know that you’re coming from an honest place. For that genuine connection to happen, and for everyone to be able to step into their full power and purpose, you need to be willing to be vulnerable, humble, and willing to admit their faults.
Embracing authenticity can be framed in a few different ways. For instance, you can let go of thinking in the binary terms of “success” and “failure.” The more honest place to live is in between those labels.
If you walk around thinking you’re a success, it’ll lead to being in denial and trying to cover up your mistakes when times get challenging. Likewise, if you think of yourself as a failure, you’ll wallow in defeatism instead of rising to the occasion. Both labels are a trap. Stay grounded by avoiding them and living in between.
Along the same lines, consider character over reputation. What really defines you, and the thing you can control completely, is your character, not your reputation. Your character is defined by who you are, the choices you make, and how you interact with others. Maintaining this focus on character can help in difficult times and keep you on the high road.
As Mahatma Gandhi said: “A man of character will make himself worthy of any position he is given.”
Another cornerstone of trust is accountability. We’ve already mentioned the bad habit of not owning up to your mistakes, but accountability is bigger than that. Few things are more important in leadership than making decisions, and embracing accountability is how leaders maintain discipline and show consistency in their values. It also enables them to learn and grow from experience.
Without accountability, leaders risk going astray and descending down the low road. It’s like the saying goes, power corrupts if we don’t have checks and balances in place.
To reject accountability would be to reject the high road. Leaders who shirk responsibility are the ones who lose the trust of their people and don’t learn anything from life. Meanwhile, the ones who embrace their responsibilities are the ones who build genuine connections, earn respect, and maintain a positive, consistent influence on their teams.
Big-picture positivity
Let’s wrap things up by focusing on a few of the major remaining qualities of the high-road leader.
Today, perhaps more than ever, it’s important to keep your focus on the bigger picture. Things can change so quickly, and there’s no shortage of distractions vying for your attention. So if a leader wants their organization to thrive, they need to maintain a big-picture perspective.
For this to happen, you need to develop your maturity. Maturity is the quality that keeps you from overreacting or doing things out of a short-sighted blindness. It’s the quality that helps you navigate complex situations and consistently make decisions that benefit the greater good. Without maturity, it’s nearly impossible to live by the bigger picture.
When someone mentions the “bigger picture,” what they’re often talking about is context. Understanding the greater context of a situation requires continual, intentional effort. Context can change day-to-day, but leaders must know the context to make the best decisions and understand the far-reaching consequences of their actions.
Often, a leader will consider the context only in terms of keeping score. Their decisions are based on knowing who owes them a favor or who’s done them wrong. To put it simply, high-road leaders don’t keep score. Keeping score puts guilt on others, creates feelings of unfairness, becomes an act of control, and breeds entitlement. Leaders who keep score inevitably fall victim to manipulating others and creating a transactional environment that damages trust and relationships.
Focus on your own behavior rather than competing with others. And consider the platinum rule: treat others better than they treat you. This rule is the essence of high-road leadership. Be kind and forgiving, regardless of how others behave.
When you put all of the principles of being a high-road leader together, what you end up with is a set of practices designed to put others ahead of you, which is the definition of true leadership.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, life consists of what you think about all day. High-road leaders think about how to benefit others. Think positively, and turn those thoughts into actions that positively impact others.
Conclusion
The main takeaway of this summary to High-Road Leadership by John C. Maxwell is that there are many principles to consider when it comes to high-road leadership, which is committed to leading with integrity and uplifting others.
Maxwell emphasizes the importance of taking the high road by giving more than you take, developing emotional capacity, placing people above your own agenda, embracing authenticity, and being accountable for your actions. The way of the high-road leader is one that strives to see the bigger picture, avoids the pitfalls of keeping score, and genuinely desires the best for others.
Through maturity, understanding context, and intentionality, you can create a distinctive, positive impact. By fostering a mindset of generosity, humility, and resilience, you can inspire trust, build strong relationships, and lead effectively in a way that benefits everyone.