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The Difference Maker
A book for busy executives summarized and reviewed by Soundview Executive Book Summaries
John C. Maxewell, known as America’s expert on leadership, is founder of the INJOY Group, an organization dedicated to helping people their personal and leadership potential. Each year Maxwell speaks in person to more than 250,000 people and influences the lives of at least one million more through his writings and recordings. He has authored nearly 40 books, including The New York Times bestseller, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. In this article, we read a Speed Review of Maxwell’s The Difference Maker.
Not all you’ve heard
The “attitude is everything” has been stated by so many motivational speakers and writers over the years that many of us simply accept it as fact. If so many people believe it, it must be true, right? Wrong, says leadership expert John Maxwell in The Difference Maker. He maintains that while attitude is important, there are certain things it cannot achieve. It cannot change people into something they’re not. Attitude cannot replace , experience or personal growth and it cannot change the facts. Maxwell gives an example of two people applying for the same job. One has skills, talent and 10 years experience, but a so-so* attitude. The other has a super attitude, but no experience. Who gets the job? “Probably the one with the greater skills and experience, ” writes Maxwell. “Why? Because a great attitude will not make up the gap.*”
Attitude as an asset
Despite the “cannots,” Maxwell writes, attitude is a primary component in determining our success. While it can’t alter what exits, it can influence our future via how we choose to deal with* things we encounter in everyday life. “The happiest people,” he notes, “don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they make the best of everything.” , if we expect bad things, he says, we get them. Conversely, we often get good things by expecting them.
Vocabulary Focus
so-so(adj)--- between average and low quality
make up the gap (v phr)--- to provide something good or useful as a replacement for something that is missing
deal with (phr v)---to develop a way to manage something
Specialized terms