Quotes About Leadership

The single most important ingredient after you get the talent is internal leadership. It's not the coaches as much as one single person or people on the team who set higher standards than that team would normally set for itself.

The same unceasing drive was something displayed by Russell, Puyol, Berra, Richard, and every other captain in Tier One. Early struggles culminated in a defining moment, a breakthrough that left no doubt about their desire to win at any cost. And in each case, after they had established this fact, their teams began to turn the corner. The pattern was so consistent that it suggested their doggedness might, in fact, have been contagious.

Beyond this, most of the Tier One captains had zero interest in the trappings of fame. They didn't pursue the captaincy for the prestige it conveyed—if they pursued it at all. In 2004, when Carles Puyol's teammates unanimously elected him captain, his was the only dissenting vote. "I thought it was more ethical to vote for others," he told me.

Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free and worth a fortune.

What we guard against around here is people saying, 'Let's think about it.' We make a decision. Then we act on it.

I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they've been.

There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.

Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish.

He proved that people can be motivated. The mountain is there, but somebody else has already climbed it.

Watson, Sr., was running IBM, he decided they would never have more than four layers from the chairman of the board to the lowest level in the company. That may have been one of the greatest single reasons why IBM was successful.

I always favored the mavericks who challenged my rules. I may have fought them all the way, but I respected them, and, in the end, I listened to them a lot more closely than I did the pack who always agreed with everything I said.

Two things about Sam Walton distinguish him from almost everyone else I know. First, he gets up every day bound and determined to improve something. Second, he is less afraid of being wrong than anyone I've ever known. And once he sees he's wrong, he just shakes it off and heads in another direction.

Religions need women. Who else would do all the work?

Women will one day rule the world, and when they do, their brains will be so finely tuned from all the years of quiet that I anticipate they will be far superior rulers to men.

I believed that the most important part of decision-making was not the justness of one's intentions but the effectiveness of one's actions.

Listen," he said firmly. "If you hear nothing else, hear this. You work at the White House. There is no other room where a bunch of really smart people of sound judgment are getting together and figuring out what to do. It will be the scariest moment of your life when you fully internalize this: There is no other meeting. You're in the meeting. You are the meeting. If you have a concern, raise it.

Despite the UN secretary-general's grand title, he was named in the UN Charter as the administrator of the organization. For this reason, former secretary-general Kofi Annan described the position as "more secretary than general.

Samantha Power

Without ever discussing it or making a conscious shift, we reflexively engaged one another in meetings. This did not mean we always agreed with one another; some of my most heartfelt arguments were with my fellow female Senior Directors. But we took one another's ideas seriously. This meant never leaving them simply hanging in the air, which typically happened in large group discussions.

It's better to have a hole in your team than an asshole in your team!

If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin

Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.

Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.