Matthew Clark's Key Ideas from Leadershift
by John C. Maxwell

This is the ability and willingness to make a leadership change that will positively enhance organizational and personal growth.

Leadershift is the act of nimbly adapting one’s leadership in the midst of rapid change.

1. Continually learn, unlearn and relearn. Update yourself constantly.
2. Value yesterday but live in today. Focus on current challenges, and leave the past glories to the past.
3. Rely on speed but thrive on timing. 
4. See the big picture as the picture keeps getting bigger. Never fool yourself that you’ve learned everything there is to know about a subject.
5. Live in today, but think about tomorrow.
6. Move forward courageously in the midst of uncertainty. Being a leader is all about risk.
7. Realize today’s best will not meet tomorrow’s challenges. Upgrading, upgrading, upgrading.

• To learn something new. Ask yourself, “When’s the last time I learned something for the first time?”
• To try something different. Ask yourself, “When’s the last time I did something for the first time?”
• To find something better. Ask yourself, “When’s the last time I found something better for the first time?”
• To see something bigger. Ask yourself, “When’s the last time I saw something bigger for the first time?”

Thirty years ago, being a leader was all about being a soloist, being the one who can do everything on his own and doesn’t need a backing orchestra.

Today leadership is much more akin to being a conductor: the one who directs everyone in the right direction so that the symphony is harmonious.

You need to redeploy your attention and interest toward the latter: as important as goals are, growth should come before them.

The four areas you need to focus on the most are the following: attitude, leadership skills, developing strong relationships, and equipping others to carry on without you. 

Great leaders don’t become leaders because they want to get something, but because they know they can give something.

Great leaders act before others, and they do more than others. Great leaders face their uncertainty and doubt, and they move through it to pave the way for others.

Leadership, by definition, means challenging others to go beyond their comfort zone, and people don’t like to be uncomfortable.

In a fast-changing world, maintaining best practices should be balanced with creating, and leaders should teach their employees to stop thinking in terms of “I do what I have always done” and start accepting as a motto the “creative zone” adage: “I attempt to think what I have never thought before.”

• “How high can I go?” was the question of the ladder-climbers of the greedy 80s. Then it evolved to something a bit more human as “How high will others go with a little help?”
• These ladder-holders recently became ladder-extenders, and started positing themselves the question: “how high will others go with a lot of help?”
• We need to make the final step and become ladder-builders. The new question leaders should adapt as an objective is: “Can I help them build their own ladder?”

The leaders of tomorrow are the leaders who connect today: they are trustful and talkative, they listen, they ask questions, and they have answers.

Become one of them, become a connector.

Diversity, according to Malcolm Forbes, is “the art of thinking independently together.”

And it is the hallmark of a great leader.

The 21st century is the age of virtuous leadership. The mere position of leader doos not grant one authority: we are more inclined to leave our jobs if our leaders are not morally authoritative as well.

Strive for moral authority, “the recognition of a person’s leadership influence based on who they are more than the position they hold.”

Unlike trained leaders who both act and teach following by-the-book guidelines, transformational leaders encourage and inspire people around them to become more through their very existence. 

So be the change you want to see in the world.

There are three kinds of people in the world:

• those who merely do a job
• those who want to have a career
• those who have a calling.

Great leaders can only be born out of those in the third category. So, it’s not about becoming a leader just because you want to emulate your idols: it’s because you can’t be anything else and your skillset is suitable for the job.

By definition, your calling is never merely about you, but about the whole world as well.