The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership is a self-help book that offers insight about the qualities good leaders should possess. It assumes everybody who works hard on those 21 irrefutable clauses can become an influential leader. A potential critique is that this leaves no room for external circumstances that could affect people’s success rates. For example, in Chapter 18 on The Law of Sacrifice, John C. Maxwell argues that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. could not have become as influential a leader had he not been prepared to make personal sacrifices. However, there are many Black leaders who have made equal sacrifices yet are forgotten in history. Maxwell does not explore external circumstances, such as the purposeful erasure of Black voices in a period where racial tensions were high.

Another potential critique is that Maxwell uses anecdotal evidence, which he specifically selects to validate the argument within one specific chapter. He disregards whether that same anecdote holds true for any of the other 20 rules presented in the book. For example, in Chapter 1,“The Law of the Lid,” Maxwell argues that anyone who works hard and smart can significantly increase their effectiveness as a leader. He offers the example of the McDonald brothers; they were only good enough to make their ideas for a fast-food restaurant into a profitable but small-scale business model, but did not have enough leadership ability to make the brand an international success. The entrepreneur Ray Kroc was responsible for making McDonalds the globally recognized franchise it is today. Kroc’s leadership lid, Maxwell says, was much higher than the original brothers’; he pushed for opening multiple McDonald stores across the country, while the brothers resisted the idea.

While this example shows that Kroc was a more ambitious entrepreneur, it fails to detail exactly which of the rules of leadership he performed better than the McDonald brothers. It’s unclear whether his success is attributed to hard work, his inner circle, an ability to read momentum that made his fortune, or the ability to add value to others. Maxwell also doesn’t explore why the McDonald brothers resisted the idea of opening additional franchises. Was it truly because they had no vision, no capacity to harness momentum, and no desire for self-sacrifice? Were they unable to gather enough talents to help them expand their franchise because they did not master the Law of Buy-In or had they simply no desire to expand further? Since these questions are unanswered and none of the anecdotes provided are explored beyond the one rule they seek to validate, the same issue of externalities exists within every chapter.

This is partly due to the book’s design, since every chapter is meant to be read independently. Every law of leadership stands on its own, and every example used from history is analyzed only to the point that it validates that specific rule, with anecdotal evidence. All successful leaders are influential because in one instance, they met the criteria for that one specific rule. However, Maxwell doesn’t take into account whether that same leader possesses any of the other 20 necessary skills for being a good leader or whether other factors outside those rules might have affected their success rate.