Dr. John C. Maxwell has been a public speaker and motivational teacher for more than 50 years. In his new book, The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication, he shares everything he’s learned from a lifetime of communication. This blog post is adapted from the book’s sixteenth chapter, “The Law of Results: The Greatest Success in Communication is Action.” Good leaders want to influence people to take action, make changes, and achieve goals to make the world a better place.

When providing feedback, we often stand in judgment of others, seeking to impart wisdom or tell others what to do. If we instead frame feedback as an invitation to solve problems collaboratively, we’ll often find that we achieve better short-term results while bolstering our relationship with others over the long term.

Behavior change is hard, but it’s a skill leaders who want to succeed amid near-constant organizational change need to develop. By increasing their self-awareness, committing to change, overcoming limiting thoughts, and deliberately practicing new behaviors, leaders raise the likelihood that the change initiatives they’re tasked to lead will be successful.

Before disregarding your likability and attributing any personality defects as something your coworkers just need to deal with, it’s essential to recognize the invisible impact these skills have on your overall performance. Your ability to effectively communicate with others extends beyond solving your own problems. Your proficiency in listening builds trust and establishes integrity. Your friendships inspire others to reach higher and stretch alongside you.

After a vacation, it can be tempting to double down on work in an attempt to make up for “lost” time, or to try to hurry through the time it takes to get back up to speed. Other times, the urge to overwork stems from a well-meaning effort to relieve team members of the extra work they were covering for you, or a desire to demonstrate that even though you were away, your commitment remains high and you’re still valuable to the organization. Whatever the motivation behind post-vacation overwork, it can leave you boomeranging from one extreme to the other, which increases stress and actually undermines your efforts to catch up.

Team and group leadership skill is the next development frontier. Does your team feel inspired and uplifted with you as their leader? Ask them. Engage in a 360-degree feedback process so you can learn about how your team perceives you. Then fix the stuff that doesn’t work for them. Make changes that matter. How strong are you at clarifying roles? How swiftly and compassionately do you offer needed feedback?

As much as it’s your role to set the pace for the team, that can be harder to do for yourself. It is very easy to feel overwhelmed in leadership roles because of the demanding deadlines, the people problems that fill up your day, the second-guessing and criticism, the pressures to do more with less, and dealing with the crisis of the moment. Work can become a three-shift day the morning emails, taking care of problems at work all day, and then the night shift to catch up on reading and writing and responding to more emails.

BMW is one of the world’s most recognizable brands, the maker of “the ultimate driving machine.” While Ford became famous for the moving assembly line and Toyota for its participatory work methods, the German firm usually made the headlines thanks to technical breakthroughs. Over the years, BMW’s legendary engineering prowess yielded innovations.

Leadership performance is under threat. Many leaders assume that leadership development is a reward rather than an intentional, structured plan to move them through a growth process in support of their continuous improvement on their leadership journey. There are also leaders who assume that excellent financial performance equals excellent leadership performance. For these leaders, the end result justifies the means.

n the dynamic and data-driven corporate world, effective communication is paramount, and one of the key tools for this communication is corporate presentations. Corporate presentations are the perfect way to communicate ideas, proposals, and facts to your business's internal audience as well as external stakeholders. In fact, over 35 million PowerPoint presentations are given daily to more than 500 million people.

What makes someone a growth leader? In conversations we’ve had with business leaders, the answer tends to boil down to a variation of “I know it when I see it.” But it turns out that there is a specific set of attributes that growth leaders share. After carrying out a survey of 165 C-suite executives and senior vice presidents with growth responsibilities and conducting in-depth interviews with 20 executives, we found that growth leaders have seven specific beliefs and behaviors.

If you want to perform at a high level, you’ll need to be resilient. The way to build this mental skill is by overcoming unexpected challenges that come your way. While we all experience roadblocks, you don’t have to wait for one to happen. “Being mentally resilient is the ability to endure pain for long periods of time,” she says. “The highest performers use mental frameworks that fundamentally change the way they see the world.”

“I think I am a pretty good coach,” the executive across the desk said to us. Impressed with his positive attitude about himself, we asked, “How do you know?”. He said he had attended a coaching course and learned many of the techniques of good coaching. That triggered a question for us. How many leaders believe they are better coaches than they really are?

When I was a youngster, my uncle was director of a national laboratory, overseeing several thousand research scientists. As a scientist himself, he loved his work. But the part of his job he hated, he told me, was laying off employees. Firing people no doubt ranks among the least favorite tasks of any leader. Yet executives, driven by the downturn in the economy, are firing thousands these days. But there are better and worse ways to let someone go.

As the world rapidly evolves, HR leaders find themselves at the forefront of driving organizational success through talent management and development. To stay ahead, HR leaders are increasingly recognizing the need to acquire new skills beyond traditional HR competencies. From leadership and language proficiency to "hard" skills relevant to the digital age, the quest to enhance both work and personal lives has led HR professionals to embrace continuous learning and upskilling.

In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, defined by unprecedented technological advancements, shifting climates, geopolitical changes, and evolving work models, there’s one quality that stands out as a make-or-break asset: psychological resilience. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or a newcomer to the workforce, resilience—the ability to bounce back from setbacks, adapt to change, and transform adversity into opportunity—is crucial for thriving in our complex and unpredictable job market.

Here's a scenario that may look familiar. The product development team designs a wonderful new app. The client is positively stoked about rolling it out, and the PR team is building the campaign for its launch. And then this happens: The manager or executive in charge of the project steals the spotlight and takes all the credit for the work. No praise for the team, no celebration of everyone's success, no recognition of team members' contributions.

Years ago, I (MG) was on a small plane flying from L.A. to Santa Barbara. As we approached the runway, a very bad thing happened. The landing gear didn’t work! After it failed on a second and third attempt, our pilot finally gave up. The pilot then announced that we were going to fly around in circles until the gas tank was empty to reduce the chance of an explosion when we landed.

Back in 1957, two engineers invented a textured wallpaper they were sure would become a big hit. Instead, it flopped. After some modest success repurposing it as an insulation for greenhouses, their failures became blessings in disguise, forever altering the history of packing and shipping worldwide, while de-stressing millions.

It’s an open secret that Americans work more days of the year than many other workers around the world. When we do go on vacation, we often fail to maximize the benefits by either cutting our vacations short or trying to do too much while on vacation.