Valuentum's subscriber base enjoys reading the latest and greatest investing books. As a result, Valuentum requests and receives business and investing books before they are officially released. Our editorial staff took a look at the following book, and here's what we thought after reading it:

The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential

By John C. Maxwell. Center Street, 2011. 304 p. ISBN 978-1-5999-5365-6.

Book Release Date: October 4, 2011

Maxwell (leadership expert and New York Times bestselling author) further explores his leadership principles in this latest book. Maxwell’s belief is that leadership is about influence, and that “if people can increase their influence with others, they can lead more effectively.” Taking this into consideration, Maxwell has delineated between five separate levels of leadership: position, permission, production, people development, and the pinnacle. Each level requires adaptation and development to build on the previous levels. While a leadership position is all that is required for the first level, the remaining four levels require building trust with those you want to follow you, generating results, and finally, developing other leaders. Each section of the book is devoted to one of the levels and discusses the upside, downside, and the laws of leadership that best apply to each level (from The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership).

Valuentum’s Take: Maxwell strives to provide a practical guide to leadership rather than a theoretical view and presents the principles he has found to be effective in organizations of all sizes. To this end, the book begins with a four part leadership assessment for readers to determine which level of leadership they have currently achieved. While this is written as a stand-alone volume, the frequent references to Maxwell’s other books would make a familiarity with them valuable.