John Maxwell’s “The Bedrock Principle“

Developing trust is like constructing a building. It takes time, and it must be done one piece at a time. As in construction, it’s much quicker and easier to tear something down than it is to build it up. But if the foundation is strong, there is a good chance that what is built upon it will stand. If you desire to build your trustworthiness — and as a result, your relationships — remember:

Trust begins with yourself. If you are not honest with yourself, you will not be capable of honesty with others. Self-deception is the enemy of relationships.

Trust cannot be compartmentalized. Many people today try to compartmentalize their lives. They believe that they can cut corners or compromise their values in one area of life and it won’t affect another area. But character doesn’t work that way. And neither does trust.

Trust works like a bank account. Mike Abrashoff, author of It’s Your Ship, states, “Trust is like a bank account — you have got to keep making deposits if you want it to grow. On occasion, things will go wrong, and you will have to make a withdrawal. Meanwhile, it is sitting in the bank earning interest.”

This is a solid advice for all young entrepreneurs and students who want to lead people and achieve something big in their career. In his book, On Becoming a Leader, Warren Bennis says,

Integrity is the basis of trust, which is not so much an ingredient of leadership as it is a product. It is the one quality that cannot be  acquired, but must be earned. It is given by co-workers and followers, and without it, the leader can’t function.

That can be said not only of leaders and followers, but also of all relationships. Think any successful relationship between husband & wife, between startup co-founders, or simply between friends – trust is the ultimate driver of all these successful relationships.

Philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said,

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not
the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual
inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else
believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.

Why
do many personal and business relationships fall apart? The reasons for
such breakdowns are many, but the cause that outweighs all others is broken trust.

I wish you have a trustful week ahead!

Related Articles:
Winning With People #11 – The Confrontation Principle
Winning With People #10 – The Number 10 Principle

Winning With People #9 – The Charisma Principle 

To read more principles from this series, please visit: Winning With People.

Background:
Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how
anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in
his book Winning With People.

I  plan to cover each of his principle in this series.  Please read more principles here: Winning With People

John Maxwell’s The Confrontation Principle

Caring for people should precede confronting people. Conflict is like cancer: Early detection increases the possibility of a healthy outcome. While intellectually it’s simple to resolve conflict, emotionally it can be difficult.

It requires honesty, humility and dedication to the relationship. Take these steps when confronting someone:

• Confront a person only if you care about that person. It is more productive to go into a confrontation keeping the other person’s interests in mind.
• Meet together as soon as possible. Putting off confrontation only causes the situation to fester.
• First seek understanding, not necessarily agreement. The person who gives an opinion before he or she understands is human, but the person who gives a judgment before he or she understands is a fool.
• Outline the issue. Be positive, describe your perceptions, state how this situation makes you feel, and explain why this is important to you.
• Encourage a response.
• Agree to an action plan that clearly identifies the issue and spells out concrete steps that will be taken.
• The action plan should include a commitment by both parties to put the issue to rest once resolved.

Believe it or not, we face conflicts almost daily, in every other situation. With our boss, with our family members, with our friends, or with our partners. We may not be in a position to avoid a conflict, as we know – many heads lead to many minds. The key may be not to avoid conflicts, the key may be to win these people by confronting these conflicts.

John Maxwell has superbly explained the importance of confrontation and how to do it. Every single point is worth memorizing. You might argue that such principles sound good in theory, but when you are in a conflicting situation, you don’t think these principles, all you think is to win the conflict.

Agreed. All I suggest is – don’t remember these few principles. Just remember one thing –

Your goal is not to win the conflict, your goal is to win the people.

I’m sure if you decide to focus on winning people, then you will remember these principles automatically, even in the middle of a conflicting situation.

Have a cheerful weekend ahead!

Note: To read more principles from this series, please visit: Winning With People.

Background:
Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how
anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in
his book Winning With People.

I plan to cover each of his principle in this series.  Please read more principles here: Winning With People

John Maxwell’s The Number 10 Principle

All people have potential. Everyone you meet can be a 10. Believing in people usually brings out the best in them. If people believe in themselves, they can reach their potential and become the individuals they were created to be. If you’ve been hurt or disappointed in the past, don’t let that negatively color your attitude in the future. Philosopher and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “Treat a man as he appears to be and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he already were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.”

Two lessons to take away from this principle –
1. Believe in yourself. The obvious and the must one.

What the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve. — Napoleon Hill

2. Believe in others. The uncommon and the tricky one. The uncommon because, believing in yourself is still comparatively easier than believing in others. Don’t we think that we are the smartest one on this earth?

And the tricky because, it’s hard to believe someone just based on his promises of what he could be in the future. I think even while believing someone for his potential abilities, we do consider his past track record, and judge our belief.

But the point is, if we believe in people, and make them realize that we believe in what potentially they can achieve, then there are high possibilities that they will achieve it. Few words of inspiration can mean a lot to many people.

To read more principles from this series, please visit: Winning With People.

Background:
Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how
anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in
his book Winning With People.

I plan to cover each of his principle in this series.  Please read more principles here: Winning With People

John Maxwell’s The Charisma Principle

People are interested in the person who is interested in them. According to Dale Carnegie, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” Carnegie’s teachings in How to Win Friends and Influence People include:

Become genuinely interested in other people.
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Smile. 
If you want to draw others to you, light up your face with a smile.

Remember names. 
A person’s name is the sweetest and most important sound to that person.

Be a good listener. 
Encourage others to talk about themselves.

Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
Treat others the way they want to be treated.

Make the other person feel important. 
Become sincerely interested in others.

This is short, sweet and probably the most powerful principle. Charisma means a spiritual power or personal quality that gives an individual influence over large numbers of people. The interesting irony about this principle is that, for "you" to get influence over "others", instead of thinking about "you", you have to think about "others".

Have a very charismatic weekend ahead!

To read more principles from this series, please visit: Winning With People.

Background: Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in his book Winning With People.

I plan to cover each of his principle in this series.  Please read more principles here: Winning With People

John Maxwell’s The Learning Principle 

Each person we meet has the potential to teach us something. All of us can learn things in unlikely places and from unlikely people. But that’s only true if we have the right attitude. If you have a teachable attitude, you will be positioned well to learn from others. Then all you will need to do is to take the following five steps:

1. Make Learning Your Passion. Management expert Philip Crosby notes, “There is a theory of human behavior that says people subconsciously retard their own intellectual growth. They come to rely on cliches and habits. Once they reach the age of their own personal comfort with the world, they stop learning and their mind runs on idle for the rest of their days. They may progress organizationally, they may be ambitious and eager, and they may even work night and day. But they learn no more.” If you desire to keep growing, you cannot sit back in a comfort zone.

2. Value People. People don’t learn from people they don’t value.

3. Develop Relationships With Growth Potential. Find people who are especially likely to help you grow: experts in your field, creative thinkers who stretch you mentally, and achievers who inspire you to go to the next level.

4. Identify People’s Uniqueness and Strengths. Philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked, “I have never met a man who was not my superior in some particular.” People grow best in their areas of strength and can learn the most from another person’s area of strength. For that reason, you can’t be indiscriminate in choosing the people you seek out to teach you.

5. Ask Questions. Learning begins with listening. The best way to learn is to watch others and ask questions.

This is my favorite principle. This is exactly I have been practicing in my personal life and mentioning on this blog. The passion and desire to learn more and grow more is something which I firmly follow. I become restless when I waste too much time in the comfort zone. Building long term relationships with experts and learning from mentors are guaranteed ways to reach to the next level. Also, asking for help and observing other people are the best resources to grow faster in the right direction.

Have a super learning week ahead!

To read more principles from this series, please visit: Winning With People.

Background: Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in his book Winning With People.

I plan to cover each of his principle in this series.  Please read more principles here: Winning With People

John Maxwell’s The Exchange Principle

Instead of putting others in their place, we must put ourselves in their place. When we fail to see things from the perspective of others, we fail in our relationships. To become better at making the exchange, at seeing things from another person’s perspective, do the following:

Leave “your place” and visit “their place.” Do whatever you can to change your perspective. Listen to people’s concerns. Study their culture or profession. Read in their areas of interest. Or literally visit their place.

Acknowledge that the other person has a valid viewpoint. People’s belief systems and personal experiences are diverse and complex, and even if you do work to see things from another person’s point of view, there will still be differences of opinion. Working to find the legitimacy of another person’s point of view stretches your thinking.

Check your attitude. It is always easy to see both sides of an issue about which we are not particularly concerned. It is much harder when we have a vested interest in it. When that’s the case, we are often more concerned with getting our way than connecting with others.

Ask others what they would do in your situation. The key to the exchange principle is empathy. When you have empathy with others’ points of view, it becomes much easier to connect with them because they know that you care.

I personally started practicing this Exchange Principle in my life quite frequently. Believe me, its definitely not an easy game. You need very conscious efforts and calm thought process to win the argument or to negotiation the deal in your favor using this principle. 

Especially first three suggestions are as hard as they sound effective. Leaving “our” place, acknowledging that other person is right, and checking “our” attitude directly questions our capability of open mindedness and asks us to leave our ego. And that’s where it becomes harder. But with our conscious efforts, its possible to act on Exchange Principle and win the deal.

Have a winning week ahead!

To read more principles from this series, please visit: Winning With People.

Background: Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in his book Winning With People.

I plan to cover each of his principle in this series.

Please read more principles here: Winning With People

John Maxwell’s The Big Picture Principle

People who remain self-centered and self-serving will always have a hard time getting along with others. To help them break that pattern of living, they need to see the big picture, which requires perspective, maturity and responsibility. Here are some steps to follow: Get out of your “own little world.” Go places you have never gone, meet the kinds of people you do not know, and do the things you have not done before.

Check your ego at the door. If your focus is always on yourself, you’ll never be able to build positive relationships. Understand what brings fulfillment. Ultimately, the things that bring fulfillment involve others. A person who is entirely self-focused will always feel restless and hungry because he or she separates him- or herself from what’s most important in life: people.

As we know, networking is always useful in any walk of your life. All human beings possess a desire to connect with other people. Finding opportunities, converting those opportunities into actions, and accumulating these actions for the ultimate success – all these things cannot be achieved single handedly. Building a strong network means building long lasting relationships. 

To build lasting relationships, we must stop thinking about ourselves and begin focusing on the people with whom we desire to build relationships. When we stop worrying so much about ourself and start looking at others and what they desire, we build a bridge to other people and we become the kind of person that others want to be around.

You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. – Zig Ziglar

To read more principles from this series, please visit: Winning With People

Background: Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in his book Winning With People.

I plan to cover each of his principle in this series.

Please read more principles here: Winning With People

John Maxwell’s “The Elevator Principle”

People can be the wind beneath our wings or the anchor on our boat. People who add value to others almost always do so intentionally. Adding value to others requires a person to give of him- or herself. That rarely occurs by accident. In relationships, receiving is easy. Giving is much more difficult. We all want to be a positive influence in the lives of others. If you want to lift people up and add value to their lives, keep the following in mind:

• Lifters commit themselves to daily encouragement.
• Lifters know the little difference that separates hurting and helping.
• Lifters initiate the positive in a negative environment.
• Lifters understand life is not a dress rehearsal.

Superb! One message I strongly learned from this principle is that we need to take conscious efforts if we want to add value in others’ lives. Now we may think that but why do I need to add value to others’ lives? We might think that “whats in it for me?”. The answer to this question is brilliantly quoted by Zig Ziglar as below – 

You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. — Zig Ziglar

The bottom line is, however small it may be, we should work consciously to add values in others’ lives. It will help us to win at one day.

Background: Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in his book Winning With People.

I plan to cover each of his principle in this series.

Please read more principles here: Winning With People

John Maxwell’s “The Hammer Principle”

Psychologist Abraham Maslow observed, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” People require more judicious treatment than that. When little things bother us, our primary objective must be putting our personal agendas aside and building relationships. When tempted to use overkill, the following four Ts can help you temper your behavior: 

Total Picture
If you come to conclusions long before the problem has been detailed, you should listen, ask questions, listen again, ask more questions, listen some more and then respond.

Timing
Noted hostess and writer Lady Dorothy Nevill observed, “The real art of  conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”

Tone
People often respond to our attitudes and actions more than to our words. Many petty conflicts occur because people use the wrong tone of voice. 

Temperature
The size of a problem often changes based on how it is handled. If the reaction is worse than the action, the problem usually increases. If the reaction is less than the action, the problem usually decreases.

We all know that it takes tremendous efforts, care and love to create and maintain lasting relationships. We also know that it doesn’t even take a second to break these relationships. I don’t deny the fact that things don’t go wrong. Rather they often do. The catch is our main focus should not be only on “how to avoid things going wrong”. Knowingly or unknowingly, we do mess up the situation and we do hurt someone. The key is how do we react in such situations.

It’s so easy to loose the temper and curse or scold someone. Because it really doesn’t take any extra effort from our side. Its within us. So loosing temper is not at a challenging act.

The challenging and interesting thing is – 

• To control the temper. 
• To pause our reaction when we see things are worsening. 
• To procrastinate our conclusion process for tomorrow.
• To open up our mind and not being prejudiced.

John has explained the key to achieve above interesting tasks by implementing 4 T formula mentioned above. This is a must implement strategy for all of us especially when we are dealing with people, either in our professional or in our personal life.

To read more principles from this series, please visit: Winning With People

Background: Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in his book Winning With People.

I plan to cover each of his principle in this series.

Please read more principles here: Winning With People

John Maxwell’s “The Pain Principle”

German poet Herman Hesse wrote, “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.” When hurting people lash out, it is in response to what’s happening inside them more than what’s happening around them. They feel or believe something negative within themselves. The problem is that people who don’t believe in themselves will never succeed, and they will also keep those around them from succeeding. Not only do hurting people hurt others, but they are also easily hurt by others. As you interact with others, remember this: Any time a person’s response is larger than the issue at hand, the response is almost always about something else. If you find yourself dealing with a hurting person, don’t take it personally. Look beyond the person and the situation for the problem. Try not to add to his or her hurt. Forgive those who lash out at you, try to help them and move on.

Another classic message by John! In our day-to-day routine, we come across many conversations with our family, colleagues or friends. And very soon, these conversations turn into debates, and then debates into verbal fights. Because, during our conversation, we observe that something is lacking in ourselves. We loose our temper and lash out at someone when we realize some negativity about ourselves. And then we forget the point of original conversation and drag whole bunch of other issues in that conversation. In such cases, it’s our inside pain that speaks and not our thoughts. John’s suggestion to look beyond the person and the situation for the problem is certainly a right way to focus on conversation and not get into heated debates. 

Have a wonderful weekend ahead!

To read more principles from this series, please visit: Winning With People