At 78 years old, leadership legend John Maxwell still meets mentors every single month. His strategy for finding mentors and unlocking their wisdom is to invite and buy lunch for somebody who is “bigger, better, faster, smarter” than him. Although he dubbed them “Learning Lunches,” John never eats. “The real meal is what my mentors are going to teach me,” he explained to MSPs attending a TMT top-tier peer group event in the fall. (Read what he told attendees about getting your MSP’s growth “unstuck” here: The Leadership Lid That’s Killing Your MSP’s Growth—And John Maxwell’s Blueprint to Bust Through.)
“Mentorship is very important to me. I’m glad to have been doing learning lunches for over 40 years. It’s the greatest tool for growth.”
Mentorship Strategy
After 40 years of perfecting this approach, he’s distilled the ultimate mentorship strategy into seven questions that he asks at every learning lunch:
1. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned in your life?
“I start here because there’s usually some wisdom that they’ll drop on you,” Maxwell said.
2. How has failure shaped your life?
“I find that successful people have learned more lessons from their failures than they have from their successes,” he explained.
3. What are you reading that I should read? And why should I read it?
“Almost all of the books I buy are from recommendations from the learning lunches,” he said.
4. What are you passionate about right now?
When successful people pause to think about this question, John knows the answer. “If they must think about what they’re passionate about right now, I almost promise you they’re not growing.”
5. What experience should I experience?
“Experience is NOT the best teacher,” John insists. “If it were, everyone would improve with age. I know many people getting older who aren’t getting better—they’re just aging.”
However, Maxwell has written that mentors who have already gone through experiences and more importantly, reflected on them, provide a shortcut to the wisdom they’ve gained. “Evaluated experience is the best teacher,” Maxwell wrote. “Reflective thinking is needed to turn experience into insight. We draw lessons from the past only when we study it.”
6. Who do you know that I should know?
A great networking question, this introduced Maxell to one of his greatest mentors, John Wooden, American basketball coach at U.C.L.A. “Mentoring is not only taught, it’s caught,” he said. “Who mentors you is as important as what they say. I never met a greater man than John Wooden. He lived with great values, and he instilled in me the values and principles that I teach in Transformation of Nations around the world right now.” [Transformation of Nations is the Maxwell Leadership Foundation’s global initiative to create large-scale change through values-based leadership training.]
In addition to Wooden, Maxell revealed his top three mentors also include American author Dr. Les Parrott, an author, minister, and professor of psychology who inspired him to start writing books, and his father, Melvin Maxwell. “My father would be my top mentor,” John said. “He was an incredible leader. Two days before he passed, I spent five hours just saying thank you. I mean, where would I be without him? Without his teaching, his mentoring, his coaching in my life?”
7. How can I serve you? What can I do for you?
“Anytime somebody deposits gold into my life, I think the least I could do is show gratitude to them,” Maxwell said.
Your Wisdom Deposit
Every month, someone deposits gold into Maxwell’s life through a Learning Lunch. The compound interest on that wisdom has paid dividends for four decades. The question isn’t whether you can afford to start having Learning Lunches; it’s who will you be buying lunch for this month for your wisdom deposit?
