Book Review: The Complete 101 Collection: What Every Leader Needs to Know by John C. Maxwell

I am currently getting a Masters in Public Health with a focus on Leadership and so naturally this book was of interest to me. I had not heard of the author before because in my studies I focus mostly on authors that apply leadership theories to public health and healthcare. But clearly John Maxwell is an incredibly prolific author. Reading his biographical information, I found out that he had published more than 70 book that have sold in many different countries and several of his book were on the NY Times Bestseller list.

In this book, Maxwell attempts to summarize a lot of the leadership articles he had published over the years. He succeeds in writing a book that provides a comprehensive overview of leadership theories and advice to the reader. The book despite its seemingly complex goal is still written in plain English, which makes it easy to read for just about anyone. You certainly do not need to be academic to read this book and benefit from it. 

Maxwell covers several leadership topics in this book, namely:

• Leadership
• Attitude
• Self-Improvement
• Relationships
• Teamwork
• Success
• Mentoring
• Equipping

Since this book is a compilation of earlier books on the specific topics, there is some overlap. But that does not take away from the overall quality of the book. Mentioning a similar lesson in more than one topic makes sense at times and so the reader may appreciate, just as I did, that some statements seem repetitive of earlier chapters because the same issue applies to more than one nuance of leadership.

Overall, I found this to be a well written book on leadership that is general enough that it can apply to people in a number of professions. The author paints a comprehensive picture of how people can improve leadership skills and succeeds in writing a book that is easy to comprehend, yet complex in its coverage at the same time.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The opinion expressed in this post is solely my own and has not been influenced by any third party.