Maxwell's 18th Law: The Law of Sacrifice

John C. Maxwell's 18th Law, posted on pp. 183 of The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Follow Them and People Will Follow You (Nelson Books, 1998): "A leader must give up to go up." He elaborates on p. 188:

You have to give up to go up. Many people today want to climb up the corporate ladder because they believe that freedom and power are the prizes waiting at the top. They don't believe that the true nature of leadership is really sacrifice.

The corporate ladder still exists, but it's been sorely weakened. Companies are flatter. People collaborate in a flatter corporate landscape. It's harder to see over to the next peak. There's less desire to start in the mail room with hopes of being president in 15 or 20 years. The business environment is more like a random chess game now. But, still the tendency is to go for too much. Set yourself up in a company as CEO, rent some furniture, and you're a corporate executive. Easy to do but hard to succeed at without sacrifice.

On various tennis coverages, John MacEnroe, whom I think is the best commentator out there, often criticizes players for trying to go for too much with a shot. Rather than make that good clean passing shot that would have either won the point or forced their opponent to make a weak shot which they could have put away easily, they try to go for the winner and hit it out of the court or dump it into the net.

In short, the winning is in the sacrifice.

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