Time For an Image Alignment

By Dr. John C. Maxwell

When I was fairly young, I was a pretty decent communicator. The upside to that was that I received some great opportunities to speak. The downside, however, was that I was often in over my head at these events.

For example, when I was 33, I was asked to speak at a youth conference at a state university campus. A few aspects of this engagement made me very nervous. For one thing, there would be 14,000 kids in the audience. For another, I had never spoken in such a big arena. And to make matters even worse, I was following a speaker who was much better and much more experienced than I was.

Looking back, it's easy to see how my self-image - how I viewed myself - had a direct bearing upon my effectiveness - or lack thereof - that day. After that experience, I began to understand that leaders must believe in themselves before they can ever hope to believe in their people. I also realized that, as a leader, if I've not bought in to myself, no one else is going to buy in to me either. Follow this link to read the complete article.