Quotes About Leadership

Stephen R. Covey

So often the problem is in the system, not in the people. If you put good people in bad systems, you get bad results. You have to water the flowers you want to grow. As people really learn to think Win/Win, they can set up the systems to create and reinforce it. They can transform unnecessarily competitive situations to cooperative ones and can powerfully impact their effectiveness

what is the truth about the inner motivations, character, and ambition of those who hold power?

They want other people to be the way they want them to be. They often want to clone them, and they surround themselves with "yes" people—people who won't challenge them, people who are weaker than they.

And the metamorphosis taking place in most every industry and profession demands leadership first and management second.

And leadership is even more lacking in our personal lives. We're into managing with efficiency, setting and achieving goals before we have even clarified our values.

if "success" were important in any area of life, it was supremely important in our role as parents.

It simply makes no difference how good the rhetoric is or even how good the intentions are; if there is little or no trust, there is no foundation for permanent success.

Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

leadership is communicating others' worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves. Right

Independent people who do not have the maturity to think and act interdependently may be good individual producers, but they won't be good leaders or team players. They're not coming from the paradigm of interdependence necessary to succeed in marriage, family, or organizational reality.

Management is a bottom line focus: How can I best accomplish certain things? Leadership deals with the top line: What are the things I want to accomplish? In the words of both Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. You

We're into managing with efficiency, setting and achieving goals before we have even clarified our values.

For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have" (Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind).

Stephen R. Covey

Stephen R. Covey

Unclear expectations in the area of goals also undermine communication and trust.

Efficient management without effective leadership is, as one individual has phrased it, "like straightening deck chairs on the Titanic." No management success can compensate for failure in leadership. But leadership is hard because we're often caught in a management paradigm.

Y qué ocurre cuando cambia o desaparece la fuente de la fuerza, ya consista en el mayor tamaño o la mayor fuerza física, en la posición superior, en la autoridad, en credenciales, en símbolos de estatus, en el aspecto personal o en logros pasados?

Organize and execute around priorities.

proactive people have a Circle of Concern that is at least as big as their Circle of Influence, accepting the responsibility to use their influence effectively.

But Lilienthal took several weeks to create a high Emotional Bank Account. He had these people get to know each other—their interests, their hopes, their goals, their concerns, their backgrounds, their frames of reference, their paradigms. He facilitated the kind of human interaction that creates a great bonding between people, and he was heavily criticized for taking the time to do it because it wasn't "efficient." But

There are organizations that talk a lot about the customer and then completely neglect the people that deal with the customer—the employees. The PC principle is to always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.

Or even Winston Churchill, who took naps throughout the Second World War, thereby giving himself "two mornings" every day (Sharpen the Saw).