Quotes About Leadership

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?

Management is the breaking down, the analysis, the sequencing, the specific application, the time-bound left-brain aspect of effective self-government. My own maxim of personal effectiveness is this: Manage from the left; lead from the right.

More than doing things right, it's focused on doing the right things.

Taking initiative does not mean being pushy, obnoxious, or aggressive. It does mean recognizing our responsibility to make things happen.

Creating the unity necessary to run an effective business or a family or a marriage requires great personal strength and courage.

Holding people to the responsible course is not demeaning; it is affirming.

The PC principle is to always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is.

I'm convinced that too often parents are also trapped in the management paradigm, thinking of control, efficiency, and rules instead of direction, purpose, and family feeling. 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.

In fact, our most difficult experiences become the crucibles that forge our character and develop the internal powers, the freedom to handle difficult circumstances in the future and to inspire others to do so as well.

The leader's task in a crisis is to create a "contribution-focused" workplace. Tell prospective new hires, "Don't ask me for a job—bring me a solution.

el énfasis del doctor Covey en la necesidad de que las personas nos renovemos, y su convencimiento de que el liderazgo y la creatividad nos obligan a hacer uso de nuestro potencial físico, mental y espiritual;

But one of the executives was proactive. He was driven by values, not feelings.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind®. Another Quadrant II activity is to take the time and initiative to develop a mission statement based on principles. A good mission statement is the key that effective people use to discern which things are important—

Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people.

Many people experience a similar fundamental shift in thinking when they face a life-threatening crisis and suddenly see their priorities in a different light, or when they suddenly step into a new role, such as that of husband or wife, parent or grandparent, manager or leader.

ACT OR BE ACTED UPON

Is there a chance the way I look at the people who work for me is part of the problem?

Stewardship delegation is focused on results instead of methods.

Many of the great things in the history of our civilization have been achieved by the independent will of a determined soul. But the greatest opportunities and boundless accomplishments of the Knowledge Worker Age are reserved for those who master the art of "we." True greatness will be achieved through the abundant mind that works selflessly—with mutual respect, for mutual benefit.

Parents often are constantly telling their kids what to do. There's no real leadership, no companionship, no friendship, no common vision, no common purpose. No building of an internal compass, in either the parents or the children.

To paraphrase Peter Drucker, effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity-minded.

Again, you simply can't think efficiency with people. You think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things. I've tried to be "efficient" with a disagreeing or disagreeable person and it simply doesn't work. I've tried to give ten minutes of "quality time" to a child or an employee to solve a problem, only to discover such "efficiency" creates new problems and seldom resolves the deepest concern.

Management works in the system; Leadership works on the system;

Stephen R. Covey