Quotes About Leadership

God calls our leaders to serve Him in this way. As we honor them we show love to them and to God. — Sam Donato —

Abraham Lincoln said, "The best way to predict the future is to create it.

When a workplace becomes toxic, its poison spreads beyond its walls and into the lives of its workers and their families. In contrast, positive organizations energize and inspire their workers. When forced to downsize, they try to soften reality's hard edges. Their leaders know organizations thrive when employees thrive.

When the members of an organization engage in communicating appreciation and encouragement in the ways that are most meaningful to their team members, then good things happen.

While we agree with and support the need for workers being held accountable for their responsibilities, we also believe that collegiality in the workplace, helping one's team members, leads to more successful organizations. When our focus is on getting ahead personally or reaching one's goals, regardless of the impact on others, internal tension often sabotages growth. True leadership requires a willingness to serve others, either one's customers or one's collegue.

As one Edwardian expressed it, Britain enjoyed 'government of the people, for the people, by the best of the people.

Aided and abetted by Austria-Hungary, Germany's behaviour in July 1914 was the most important single factor in bringing about the First World War. The German leadership wanted hegemony in Europe and was prepared to go to war to achieve it. Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, the 'war guilt clause', which declared that the Great War was 'imposed upon' the Allies 'by the aggression of Germany and her allies' was, therefore, fundamentally correct.

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you're on a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. Of course, there are other strategies. You can change riders. You can get a committee to study the dead horse. You can benchmark how other companies ride dead horses. You can declare that it's cheaper to feed a dead horse. You can harness several dead horses together. But after you've tried all these things, you're still going to have to dismount.

There's no such thing as "sustaining" leadership; it must be reinvented again and again.

Executives often wrongly equate "good value" with "low price." Instead, "good value" should mean outstanding value for the price.

Every institution is an assemblage of choices about how best to organize human beings in light of some particular goal. The premise of this book is that most of these choices can and must be revisited.

In our company the trick is to change jobs in time to guarantee that the long-term pay-off you promised four years ago in your capital budget proposal becomes someone else's short-term performance target.

dismantling bureaucracy means dismantling traditional power structures. As you may have noticed, people with power are typically reluctant to give it up, and often have the means to defend their prerogatives. This is a serious impediment, since there's no way to build a human-centric organization without flattening the pyramid.

Right now, your company has 21st-century Internet-enabled business processes, mid-20th-century management processes, all built atop 19th-century management principles.

The one who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it. Lou Holtz

It is not unkind to say that the ingrownness of many congregations is the antithesis of the Great Commission to make disciples.

the best in any profession is first a teacher

Leaders give us permission to pursue our own greatness. They encourage us to build a future on our interests, abilities, talents, and dreams.

I do not believe," said Wilson, "that any man can lead who does not act … under the impulse of a profound sympathy with those whom he leads—a sympathy which is insight—an insight which is of the heart rather than of the intellect.

Well, he may be long in the tooth, but one doesn't get to be leader of such a nation if he's mentally confused or doddering in old age.

They say nature abhors a vacuum, but it doesn't like two take-charge personalities in the same vicinity either.

Had it been just the two of us with the flock, I am sure it would have been a complete disaster. But Louie came with a helper, partner, friend, second brain: a border collie named (he must have wanted the similarities in names) Louise, and she quickly—after watching me for a moment and seeing how useless I was—took over completely.

In the future, people who are not coaches will not be promoted. — JACK WELCH, former chairman and CEO of General Electric

Mature masculinity does not have to initiate every action, but feels the responsibility to provide a general pattern of initiative.