Quotes About Leadership

We're all flawed, but basically, effective managers are people whose flaws are not fatal under the circumstances. Maybe the best managers are simply ordinary, healthy people who aren't too screwed up.

I don't understand why people whose entire lives or their corporate success depends on communication, and yet they are led on occasion by CEOs who cannot talk their way out of a paper bag and don't care to.

Politics changes lives. You would expect me, as a politician, to say that. But I don't say it as a politician: I say it as someone whose own life was changed.

I've got corporate executives, my bosses... this is true... who will text message me... and say, 'Hey a, heard you had chemotherapy today, want me to stop by and pick you up something to eat and bring it to you?' Whose boss does that? My bosses do that.

I like to think of myself as a leader whose door is always open. But I recently learned that an open door isn't enough.

Out of all my friends, I believe I'm the only kid whose dad made us work to cut rebars; we laid bricks in construction sites and did other real work every summer for minimum wage. Our dad said that it's important in the future that when we tell people to dig a hole, that you personally know how long it will take to dig that hole.

I submit that those who run the American military at the top, and those whose boots are on the ground and who run the machinery and equipment, are sending a signal: You asked us to do something. Give us some time and we will solve the problems and we will do it.

Well, it really describes what it feels like to be a normal person whose boss and friend suddenly runs for the president, and then becomes the president.

Throughout his presidency, Clinton made a point of getting close - physically and emotionally - to the people whose problems his administration was working to solve.

There are many men whose tongues might govern multitudes if they could govern their tongues.

I always find it much easier when there's one person whose vision you're following, as opposed to many people.

But I would defy anyone to go back over the years and tell me anyone whose career I've ruined, anyone whom I've driven out of the service, anyone I've fired from a job.

Washington, D.C. is full of think tanks, theoreticians and advocacy groups. Governors are the ones whose feet are on the ground.

You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and five the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all.

I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I've done that sort of thing in my life, but I've always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don't know why. Because they're harder. They're much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you've completely failed.

I like policy. It's why I decided to enter government. The other thing I like about government - you have good days, you have bad days, but you never have a boring day, and that's important to me.

Good leaders organize and align people around what the team needs to do. Great leaders motivate and inspire people with why they're doing it. That's purpose. And that's the key to achieving something truly transformational.

Why should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction and expenditure?

I'm just trying to be the best I can be. I try to surround myself with people who are strong in areas I'm weak. Which is why I have such a big staff.

One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.

Why is Poroshenko going for a second term? So that he doesn't get a first.

When you're around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you're supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

Directions are instructions given to explain how. Direction is a vision offered to explain why.

If I am fit to rule the largest state of India, why can't I run the whole country?