Ep. 053 — The Most Important Law of Communication with John Maxwell

Release date: March 2 , 2026

Hosted by Roddy Galbraith

A Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production

Weekly highlights from The Speaker’s Edge — a Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production hosted by Roddy Galbraith. Learn how to communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact — in business, on stage, and in life.

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This Week’s Big Idea

The most important law of communication is not about sounding impressive. It is about connecting. In this episode, Roddy, Susan, and John Maxwell unpack why great communication starts when you stop focusing on yourself and start focusing on the audience — what they need, how you can help them, and how you can add real value.

Key Takeaways

• Communication is a learnable skill, and it matters in everyday life far beyond formal public speaking.
• The law of connecting is the most important principle in The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication.
• If you focus on yourself, you cannot truly connect with the audience.
• Great communicators shift from “What can I get from them?” to “How can I serve them?”
• Authenticity does not mean winging it; preparation is part of honoring the audience.
• People do not need a perfect communicator. They need someone real, prepared, and committed to adding value.

Quote of the Week

“It’s not about me, it’s about others.” — John Maxwell.

Resources & Practice

This week, before your next meeting, Zoom call, presentation, or difficult conversation, pause and ask:

1. Who is my audience?
2. What do they need?
3. How can I help them?

Then take one more step:

• Prepare intentionally.
• Cut anything that is there only to impress.
• Keep anything that helps people feel seen, understood, and served.

That is one of the clearest lessons from this episode: connection is not performance first — it is service first.

Get the companion guide here > MaxwellLeadership.com/TheSpeakersEdge

Learn about the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team: maxwellleadership.com/speak

Full Transcript (Ep. 053 — The Most Important Law of Communication with John Maxwell)

Released: March 2, 2026

This transcript was auto-generated. It may contain minor errors. *Copy text adds attribution automatically

Roddy Galbraith:
Hey, guys, welcome back to the Speaker's Edge podcast. This is the podcast that's dedicated to helping you to learn from some of the world's very best speakers and communicators so you can learn to master your message and inspire your audience every single time you speak. I'm your host for this podcast, Roddy Galbraith. I'm thrilled you're here with us today, and you're in the right place if you want to be a better communicator, which I hope you do, because it's a great skill to develop. You're in the right place because on every episode we look at the simple idea that communication is a learnable skill. I know many people think that it's not. Maybe you think that it's not, but it is. It's a learnable skill and it's worth learning because it will do more for you than any other skill you can develop. It will do more for your business, it will do more for your career, it will do more for your confidence than any other skill you can develop.

So it's definitely worth spending some time working on your communication skills. Now we have a great expert, one and only John Maxwell, joining us on today's episode, and he's going to share with you the most important principle when it comes to communication. So all of that to look forward to in this episode. But before we get to that, if you haven't downloaded the companion guide, then simply go to MaxwellLeadership.com/TheSpeakersEdge. You can download the companion guide, and if you enjoy the episode, we'd love it if you rate and review the show as well, and maybe share it with someone that you think might find it useful. All right, let's get into today's episode then, because Susan and I had an opportunity to sit down with John and talk to him about his speaking, talk to him about his great book, The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication, which if you haven't got, highly recommend you pick up a copy of this great book. It's packed with so much great stuff. But one chapter in the book is on connecting, and John says in the book — and we talked about it in the episode which you're going to hear in a moment — he said that this chapter, Chapter 7, the chapter on connecting, is by far the most important idea in the whole book.

I love this. It's about connecting with the audience. It's all about the audience. It's about building relationships and connecting and building rapport and building trust with the people in the audience. See, many people get this the other way around. They don't think about the audience first of all, like John recommends. They think about themselves. It's all about me.

It's all about me. What do I want? It's all about me. What do I want? And then finally, who's going to give it to me? How am I going to get it from the audience? So it starts with them in the middle, then it's about what they want, and then finally the audience. They're the ones that I want to get it from. That's how most people think about speaking. But John's approach kind of turns that on its head, and rather than starting with me, it starts with the audience. Who's in the audience? What do they want? And how can I serve them? How can I help them? So finally, it comes to us adding value to them rather than starting with what can we get from them. So as a philosophy, I think it's so good.

It's so easy to understand, and it makes it accessible for everyone. If you can build trust with your audience by making it about them and how you can help them, then anyone can influence their audience. So let's dive into the episode, listen to John talking about this, and then we'll come back at the end and we'll pick up on some of the key points that he mentions. Enjoy. Okay, so here we are then with the one and only John Maxwell. We thought if we're going to talk about The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication, then we should probably start with you.

Susan: I think that's the best idea.

Roddy Galbraith: Yes.

John Maxwell: Well, I know the author. Yeah, I know the author. I think it's a good book.

Susan: It's a good deal.

Roddy Galbraith: It is a good deal. I think this might be your best book, John, to be honest.

John Maxwell: Well, it's just my best book because it's my last book, and I always think my last book is my best book. But, you know, when you talk about communication, a lot of times people read that book and they say, well, that's not for me because I'm not a speaker.

Susan: That's me.

John Maxwell: Yeah, okay, well, because — so, okay, so that's a perfect example. Yes, you're not like a platform stage professional speaker, but it's for you because, I mean, think of your children. Every day you're communicating to your children. In other words, if you are talking and you're trying to influence somebody and you're wanting to have somebody to connect with, then this book is for you. So it's not about making speeches, it's about making an impact on somebody's life because I know how to connect with them. In fact, you think of Warren Buffett, who's known in the financial world. I mean, they don't look at Warren Buffett and say, oh my gosh, he's a great communicator. He's a financial guru.

And yet Warren Buffett said the most important skill you can develop is communication because he knows that every day we're trying to help people understand things, follow, influence, and it all comes out of that communication bucket. So it's for you, Susan. You're — when you think of all the — every day, every day,

Susan: something like this, being able to communicate even just on a Zoom or a presentation at work or anything like that.

John Maxwell: Every day we're communicating. Now the question is, it's not are we communicating every day, are we getting better at it? That's the book, is to help you get better at it.

Roddy Galbraith: Would you say, John, that every kind of social interaction is pretty much an attempt to influence? Almost everything we do, we're trying to influence people.

John Maxwell: I think so.

Susan: I definitely am.

John Maxwell: You're trying to influence Roddy and me right now. You're just trying to pull us along. Yes. Oh no, I think so. By all means. And so this is what I love about this book is the laws just work, right? They just really work. And so when somebody says, well, I've never studied this, or I've never been trained in this —

I just say, no, just learn the laws and practice them. And you practice them one at a time. Maybe take a week and practice one law. And you say, okay, I think I'm getting pretty good at that. Well, go to another law and do it in a process.

Roddy Galbraith: One of our daughters, one of our daughter's friends was looking for tips on communication the other day, wasn't she? And so she's 18. It applies to students as well, doesn't it?

John Maxwell: 100%.

Susan: Job seekers, college interviews.

John Maxwell: Yes, correct.

Susan: All of that stuff.

John Maxwell: Absolutely.

Roddy Galbraith: So what's your favorite law then in this book? We're not going to jump ahead, but if you had to pick a law?

Susan: No, no, what's the most important one first?

Roddy Galbraith: Okay, what's the most important one?

John Maxwell: Wow, now these questions are getting good.

Roddy Galbraith: And then what's your favorite?

John Maxwell: I think the most — I think the most important one is the law of connectingness, probably. Yeah, it's probably the number one. When somebody says, I really want to learn how to communicate, I can in one sentence tell a person how they can communicate and improve themselves immediately. Because the law of connectingness says basically that it's not about me, it's about others. If you can get over yourself, you'll become a good communicator. I mean, when we start communicating, so many times we're saying, boy, I hope I do a good job. I hope they like me. Are they listening?

Roddy Galbraith: Standing ovation?

John Maxwell: Are they listening? You know, my first one, I just asked for — what if they'll give me an ovation? They're not going to stand for sure. But you're so conscious of you. And here's what I know: if I'm focusing on me, I cannot connect with the two of you.

Susan: It's our law of connecting.

John Maxwell: That's the law of connecting and connection. I can't focus on you, so I have to get off of me so that I can get towards you and concentrate, focus on you, because that's where it starts. And in fact, we did a little video when we wrote this book, and I asked the producers to let me start not on the stage, but in the auditorium.

Roddy Galbraith: I remember that. Yeah.

John Maxwell: Because it doesn't begin with me speaking, it begins with me thinking, where are the people?

Susan: Yeah.

John Maxwell: And what do they need? How can I help them? And what do I need to do to connect with them?

Roddy Galbraith: At the beginning of this — of that chapter, Chapter 7, talking about the law of connectedness, you say that authors sometimes put great stuff in the book and just leave you to find it yourself. This is not one of those times. This is the most important idea in the whole book. I love that. Real clear.

John Maxwell: Oh yeah, just be real clear. Yeah, don't let them miss it.

Roddy Galbraith: Yeah, it's important.

John Maxwell: And what I tell in good communication is you assume that they will miss it, right? So therefore you make sure they don't miss it.

Susan: But I do think it's very pertinent, like, in today's society, because, you know, we're in this era of influencers where it's all — it's ego and it's all about me and look at me, look at me. But this isn't really — isn't true servant leadership, isn't it?

John Maxwell: It's true. And it's all about you.

Roddy Galbraith: Yeah.

John Maxwell: But you're so right. Social media has really kind of — we put ourselves on this pedestal and we're always showing our best picture and the best of us, which we all know. We all know that's a bunch of BS. I mean, honestly, really, are we that good? No, nobody's that good. And I think people — I don't even know communication or leading, I don't think people want a perfect leader, but I do think they want an authentic leader. They just kind of love somebody that says, oops, I got to back up, I didn't do that that well. They like that.

Roddy Galbraith: So do you remember you showed me that — or you, we were talking about preparation and you said there's that video of Beyoncé when she turns around, blows a perfect bubble, it pops, it comes back in, and it looks really cool when you see it on the video, but Susan saw the making of that and that was take 40, you know.

Susan: Yeah, have you ever blown a bubble? Do you know you're picking bits off...

John Maxwell: ...your cheek and you're — yeah, it's messy. Yeah, it's not perfect.

Roddy Galbraith: Whoever did it —

John Maxwell: They don't show you that.

Roddy Galbraith:— hey, they don't show you that.

John Maxwell: If it's a perfect bubble, it's 40 takes.

Susan: Yeah, exactly.

Roddy Galbraith: Exactly. One of the things that really stuck with me when I heard you say it was connecting is not trying to impress the audience. So you're trying to impress them, then you're setting yourself up and you're standing apart. But connecting is meeting them where they are.

John Maxwell: When I'm done speaking, Roddy, what I really want is I want the people not to say, John's amazing. I want the people to say, I'm amazing. I don't want the people to say, look what he's done. I want the people to say, look what I could do. I want to have an empowering effect. And it only can happen if, again, if it's all about them and they can — you know, people can tell when you're rooting for them and pulling for them, and they can tell when you're not. And again, people want to feel valued.

People want to feel appreciated. And that's I think what we do in our teaching and communicating is let them know that. Let them know that right on the front end. You know, my name is John, I'm your friend. Let's start there. Let's close that gap. We don't need fans, we need friends.

Roddy Galbraith: But you also, though, need to deliver some value to them, don't you? So it is about providing value to them. So one of the things that people often say is, oh, I want to be authentic, I'm just going to speak from the heart. You know, if you have no experience —

John Maxwell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of times I say the heart's not that good.

Roddy Galbraith: Yeah.

John Maxwell: Hey, try a little bit of the head. Could we have a little preparation? You know what I mean? I mean, how long are we going to sing kumbaya before we get going somewhere?

Roddy Galbraith: Exactly. Yeah, so you are connecting, but you're equipped to provide value to them.

John Maxwell: Well, in fact, let me just say this on the law of preparation. I think, Roddy, it's an insult to people not to be prepared, right? It's kind of like, you're my audience and I don't think you're worthy of me spending a lot of time to deliver my best. So what an insult that is. Yeah. So I think that we prepare because the people are worthy of our best.

Roddy Galbraith: Yeah.

Susan: It's a way of honoring the audience.

John Maxwell: It's right, it's a way — I love that, it's a good phrase, way of honoring the audience. I agree.

Roddy Galbraith: So I think if you're going to speak from the heart, prepare from the heart first of all. Do all your preparation from the heart, and then you can speak, like, not making it up as you go along, but from heartfelt ideas. Wonderful.

John Maxwell: Totally, totally, totally agree with it.

Roddy Galbraith: So the most important then, the law of connecting, is the law of connecting we've established. So what's your favorite after that then?

John Maxwell: I love the law of anticipation. Oh my gosh, you know.

Susan: You are so good at that. You are so good at that.

John Maxwell: You know, when you can't wait to say it, the people can't wait to hear it. And I have a lot of kid in me. I really do. We know, we know. Really? Sometimes I look and I say, I wonder if I'm ever going to grow up. I wonder if I'm ever going to get sophisticated. I hope not. Yeah, I don't.

And there's something about knowing something that's going to really be good and you really want to tell them, but you know that if you could just let them wait a little longer, it's kind of like Christmas. You know, if you open up your gifts on December the 4th, right? Christmas isn't going — but there's something about, oh my, you know, 10 days, 9 days, 8 days. And I think in communicating, first of all, I get a lot of joy in adding value to people and helping them. And so it's kind of like I could hardly wait to share this with you because I know it's so good and it's gonna help you in that whole process. But the more they see I'm excited about what I'm gonna teach them, the more they get excited about what they're not even sure what it's gonna be, but it raises that anticipation. And I think that when people anticipate greatly, when they receive it, it has a greater impact on them. It's kind of like, oh my gosh, this was worth waiting for.

Oh, I had no idea. So I think when I do the power of the pause or when I hold it or I'll start to say it, I'll kind of come back and then I'll bring it back out again. Every time I come back to them, they're leaning in a little bit more. It's just kind of like, I'm about to jump here if you don't tell. And then when you tell them, it has such an impact upon them because you made what you're gonna say so important that when you say it, it's kinda like, I'll never forget that. I was set up to remember that. And I think that's what the law of anticipation really does with people.

Roddy Galbraith: I think you do that so well. One of the things that you said just a few months ago, I picked up on this. You said that when we were talking about information, it's not all equal in your talk.

John Maxwell: God, no.

Roddy Galbraith: Not all of it's equal. Some bits are like your best bits that need to stand out. How do you make them stand out? Well, the law of anticipation is one way to do that, isn't it?

John Maxwell: Oh yeah. All, all, all information is not equal.

Roddy Galbraith: Yeah. You can't just deliver it all the same because you drop a bomb and they just miss it.

John Maxwell: Yeah. So what you do is you look at your talk or what you're gonna say and you say that here are 2 or 3 things that I just wanna make sure that they get.

Susan: Roddy does this teaching where he's using one of your videos and he clips the teaching just to, you know, make the point. But you're in the middle of a story, and every time he does it, people in the comments are like, "What

John Maxwell: ...are the 3 things? What are the 3 things?" That's exactly — come on, come on, what are you doing?

Susan: Because he just cuts it off, and people are like, "What?

John Maxwell: How can you do this?" You're holding out on me. Yeah, yeah, it's like that. I can still remember this with our children, literally, when our children were in grade school. One year during Christmas holidays, I decided to go to the nail place and on my toenails have them put Christmas, you know, like an angel or a Christmas bulb or Christmas tree.

Susan: We need a picture to prove. Where's the picture? Where's the picture?

John Maxwell: And so of course, I put my shoes back on, I picked up school, and I said, I am so excited about Christmas. In fact, I'm so excited I couldn't help myself. I did something that just brings Christmas to me. Those kids, for the next few days, I wouldn't tell them. And for the next few days, they're trying to figure it out. And on Christmas Eve, I took my socks off. And they saw. And now, you know what's a tradition? Now, about 3 or 4 days before Christmas, we take the children, the grandchildren, and we rent out a nail salon.

And Margaret, we have brunch brought in. We have brunch there. And we have contests. It's a tradition. You know, who's the most creative, you know, and I give out awards on Christmas and I called it "You Nailed It Award."

Roddy Galbraith: Ah, that's lovely. Isn't that funny?

John Maxwell: That's brilliant. But again, it's anticipation.

Roddy Galbraith:But that's a great example of making memories, isn't it? Which is also a good way to connect with people. It's a great way.

John Maxwell:It's a great way.

Roddy Galbraith:It sure is. Fantastic. Okay, well, we better let you get on to your next session.

John Maxwell:Well, I just love you guys and I'm so happy that you're taking the book and making it live for people. And I'm just excited about what you're gonna be sharing each week about the book. And, you know, it's a great time to hang in there with you and learn and grow and get better.

Roddy Galbraith:Yeah. People are gonna love this. Yeah. It's a great book.

Susan:Thanks for being you, John.

Roddy Galbraith:Yeah. Thanks, John. 

John Maxwell:
I sure love you guys. You're the best.

Roddy Galbraith:
You too.

John Maxwell:
Take care.

Roddy Galbraith:
God bless. Oh my goodness. He's so good, isn't he? So good. So charismatic. And he always makes it about the audience and how he can connect with them. Spends a great deal of time thinking about that and working on that — connecting with the audience initially and then all the way through when he's speaking. So there's no one like John.

He really is, in my opinion, the world's best. So I love the way he makes it available to everyone. Communication is for everyone, he said, didn't he? And then almost all interactions are attempts at influence. So if we get better as communicators, and particularly if we get better at connecting, so we can become better at influencing people, then we have a responsibility that goes with that. And that is that we want to make it all about the audience and how we can serve them, not what we can get from them. So anyone can do this, anyone can get better. But when we say get better, what do we mean? Get better at adding value to the audience. So it's not manipulating them, it's adding value to them.

Anyone can get better because everyone can get better at adding value to the audience. I love the way that he emphasizes over and over, it's not about you, get over yourself, it's not about you, it's about others, it's about the audience. It's always, always about the audience. So try and take the focus off of yourself, stop being so self-conscious, and focus on other consciousness. Rather than focusing on yourself, focus on the audience. Not what you can get, but what you can give. And it's a great way of honoring the audience, isn't it? And people feel that, they feel that, and then they lean into you. So it's a great way of connecting.

He said we don't need to try and be perfect because too often we're trying to impress the audience, aren't we? And he said, no, it's not about that. People don't want a perfect speaker, people don't want a perfect leader, they want an authentic one. Now it's easy to get this mixed up with speaking from the heart and thinking that that's authentic, but that's not adding value to them. So I love the way — go back and listen to that bit if you missed it in the interview. I love the way that he's saying, no, you need to be able to add value. You need to be equipped to add value to them. So it starts with a philosophy, an approach, a mindset of connecting with them, but you also need to be able to add value to them.

So that's where the working hard to be able to add more value to them comes in. You're getting better at adding value to them, not getting better at impressing them, not getting better at manipulating them, but getting better at adding value to them. Such a great shift, isn't it? I love it. So, so much good stuff in this episode. Next week we've got another great episode, another lesson from John talking about the law of anticipation, again from The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication. So we'll see you next week, but don't forget to download the companion guide if you haven't done so already. Go to MaxwellLeadership.com/TheSpeakersEdge, and remember, communication is one of the most important skills you can develop. It is a learnable skill, so keep learning, keep getting better, and you'll learn to master your message and inspire your audience every time you speak.

Hope you found this useful. Look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Thanks for listening today. Bye-bye. Lots of love. God bless.