Quotes from Mary Parker Follett

Part of the task of the leader is to make others participate in his leadership. The best leader knows how to make his followers actually feel power themselves, not merely acknowledge his power.

Coercive power is the curse of the universe, coactive power, the enrichment and advancement of every human soul.

While leadership depends on depth of conviction and the power coming therefrom, there must also be the ability to share that conviction with others.

The insight to see possible new paths, the courage to try them, the judgment to measure results - these are the qualities of a leader.

Democracy is self-creating coherence.

the best leaders try to train their followers themselves to become leaders. ... they wish to be leaders of leaders.

And the most successful leader of all is one who sees another picture not yet actualized. He sees the things which belong in his present picture but which are not yet there.

The ablest administrators do not merely draw logical conclusions from the array of facts of the past which their expert assistants bring to them, they have a vision of the future.

We must face life as it is and understand that diversity is its most essential feature.

Fear of difference is fear of life itself.

The state accumulates moral power only through the spiritual activity of their citizens.

The divorce of our so-called spiritual life from our daily activities is a fatal dualism.

We are sometime truly to see our life as positive, not negative, as made up of continuous willing, not of constraints and prohibition.

we certainly do not want to abolish power, that would be abolishing life itself, but we need a new orientation toward it.

We can never catch up with life ... we shall always be eating the soft part of our melting ice and meanwhile the nice hard part is rapidly melting too.

Power-over is resorted to time without number because people will not wait for the slower process of education.

Law should seek far more than mere reconciliation; it should be one of the great creative forces of our social life.

I am free when I am functioning here in time and space as the creative will. ... freedom by our definition is obedience to the law of one's nature.

That is always our problem, not how to get control of people, but how all together we can get control of a situation.

In crowds we have unison, in groups harmony. We want the single voice but not the single note; that is the secret of the group.

Many people tell me what I ought to do and just how I ought to do it, but Few have made me want to do something.

Most people are not for or against anything; the first object of getting people together is to make them respond somehow, to overcome inertia.

It is not opposition but indifference which separates men.

Leader and followers are both following the invisible leader-the common purpose.