Leading through Crisis

I just spent several days in a virtual summit with the John Maxwell Team. Normally, these summits are held twice per year in Florida with approximately 3,000 attending each summit. This year something amazing happened in the virtual mode. John Maxwell, who is recognized as one of the world experts on leadership development with over 100 books, made the decision to cancel the in-person event and hold the summit virtually.

Normally, the summit would be for the certified members of the John Maxwell Team, but this year, in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis, they decided to invite the public to hear John’s three main presentations. In doing so, he was able to positively impact an estimated 1,000,000 people with his practical and inspirational messages – way beyond the 3,000 that would have attended in person – an amazing example of turning adversity into advantage.

One the first day, he spoke on Leading through Crisis. In his message, he focused on four major points: defining the crisis, battling distractions during a crisis, being aware that your character will be revealed in a crisis, and defining real leadership through crisis to include showing up early, showing up with clarity, and showing up with hope.

 On the next two days, his topic was Turning Adversity into Advantage with an acknowledgement that adversity is not unusual but in fact, should be expected. His challenge was to expect it and be ready for it, not only to provide sound leadership and direction in the midst of crisis, but perhaps more importantly, learn from it so as to possibly avoid or better handle inevitable crises in the future.

We all likely have some sense deep in our spirit that our lives will never be the same after living through this crisis. To see that, we only have to look at crises of the past that we all lived through, triumphed over, and went on to create a successful “new normal.” Crises always resolve and life goes on, but not as before. So, our challenge is to learn from the past and envision a bright future. Our bright future is based on prayerful and thoughtful insights and innovations that we deploy to triumph over the current crisis, that will serve us well going into our successful “new normal” future.

I am pleased to offer you the link to Maxwell’s three, one hour presentations: https://bit.ly/33JLpzk

As certified John Maxwell Team members, we now have all of his outlines, notes and related training and coaching modules that can help leadership teams as we get back to work. We will have to fix what’s broken, and recover what we can. But, we need to make certain that we turn our adversity into our advantage to prosper and thrive in our “new normal” world.

Contact john.gardner@TriadLeadershipGroup.com or call 818-292-7156