The Law of the Lid, Another View
David Freund, Chief Leadership Officer                  

Many of you are familiar with the Law of the Lid, which says your organization can’t rise above your level of leadership. If on a scale of one to ten, you are a five, that’s as far as your organization can grow. I experienced the reality of this law back in 2011 and 2012, and it changed my life. Over the past few days, I was able to take another look at the Law of the Lid and discovered a new and profound application.

I recently led a mastermind study on the Law of the Mirror from John Maxwell’s book, The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. The subtitle of the chapter reads, “You must see value in yourself to add value to yourself.” I have led masterminds before on this chapter and done days of training from the book, but something jumped out at me this time. The Law of the Lid also applies to our self-image. If we are a three in self-image on a scale of one to ten, we will never rise above our self-limiting belief. Worse yet, your team will not rise above your self-image.

I know what you are thinking, we are taught not to be proud or arrogant, and that’s true, we shouldn’t be. A high self-image doesn’t need to become pride or arrogance. It simply means that we believe we are a person of value. A person who is capable of achieving, growing, and adding value to others. If we rate ourselves as a three on a scale of one to ten, we won’t invest in ourselves above a level three. We won’t bet on ourselves above a three. We won’t present ourselves to others as someone who is above a three. Worse yet, we won’t attract anyone to our team which is above a three. You, your team, and your organization always move at the level of your self-image.

How you see yourself also determines how you see others. We lead and interact with others not as they are but as we are. We see their capabilities as we are. We determine what is possible as we are. We build relationships as we are. If we cn change how we see ourselves, everything else changes. The application of the Law of the Lid in self-image has incredible power to change our lives, the lives of our team, and the future of our organizations.

If you would like to hear more about the power of this law and how to grow and maintain a healthy self-image, please join Marisa Norcross and me for Episode 201 of The Next Page podcast, where we discuss how self-image limits us and what we can do to maintain a healthy self-image.

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