Law #1: Law of the Lid

Valerie Parham-Thompson

Premise: Each person has a lid on their leadership influence.

Maxwell described a few heads of businesses and sports teams, and their relative leadership potential. This potential is the lid, the threshold of leadership. Some people have a higher lid than others. Success can get you only so far; with a higher threshold of leadership, success is multiplied.

At first, it sounded like Maxwell was arguing that different people have different levels of potential (the lid), and there wasn't anything to do about that potential. In the last few sentences, though, he hinted that a leader's potential can be raised by following the other laws. Ah, read on...