Quotes About Leadership

Look for and find the really good "horses" in your organization and run them hard. Push them and challenge them with greater levels of responsibility.

Leaders at all levels must know their stuff, be dead honest, have unquestioned personal integrity, set the example, and treat their people "fair and square.

Never take a subordinate to the woodshed in front of others; do that in private.

She was never bored, and given the slightest chance she would exercise her royal prerogative: she would arrange, advise, caution, and warn.

For a number of reasons, said Atticus. The main one is, if I didn't I couldn't hold up my head in town, I couldn't represent this county in the legislature, I couldn't even tell you or Jem not to do something again. (Lee 177)

Twant me, 'twas the Lord. I always told him, 'I trust to you. I don't know where to go or what to do, but I expect you to lead me,' and He always did.

If I could have convinced more slaves that they were slaves, I could have freed thousands more.

I never run my train off the track and never lost a passenger

Leadership … is a collective and constantly redistributed function, and not the private property of the few or The One.

Forget about trusting the process; trust the people.

I went to sleep with the tape player whispering softly in my ears such ego-building epigrams as, 'You are better than everyone else and you know it, and people who don't know it had better watch out,' and 'They are all fools and if you were in charge things would be different, and why aren't you in charge, it's easy enough.

Minder of my body you may be. But minder of my soul you are not. What do you say I call the shots and you go along to shoot the monsters? O.K.?

One other thing I learned from working in a company was that the majority of people in the world have no problem following orders. They're actually happy to be told what to do. They might complain, but that's not how they really feel. They just grumble out of habit. If you told them to think for themselves, and make their own decisions and take responsibility for them, they'd be clueless.

The world would be a real mess if everybody was a genius. Somebody's got to keep watch, take care of business.

Most managers complain about having too little freedom in their jobs, while their bosses complain about managers' failure to grasp opportunities.

I have never encountered an executive who remains effective while tackling more than two tasks at a time. Hence, after asking what needs to be done, the effective executive sets priorities and sticks

In our studies of managers, we have found that the difference between those who take the initiative and those who do not becomes particularly evident during phases of major change, when managerial work becomes relatively chaotic and unstructured.

Management must think of itself not as producing products but as providing customer-creating value satisfactions. It must push this idea (and everything it means and requires) into every nook and cranny of the organization. It has to do this continuously and with the kind of flair that excites and stimulates the people in it.

emotional intelligence is carried through an organization like electricity through wires. To

In fact, extensive informal networks are so important that if they do not exist, creating them has to be the focus of activity early in a major leadership initiative.

Harvard Business School Press

In companies with healthy cultures, employees aren't kept in the dark; rather, they are supported in the belief that they are part of an exciting future. They come to work with a fire inside them, a result of clearly stated leadership and business practices that everyone explicitly understands.

Executives are doers; they execute. Knowledge is useless to executives until it has been translated into deeds. But before springing into action, the executive needs to plan his course. He needs to think about desired results, probable restraints, future revisions, check-in points, and implications for how he'll spend his time.

Of course, you shouldn't ignore the challenges that individual team members may have presented along the way. If people were repeatedly late or uncooperative, let them know that you noticed that behavior. Help them understand that they will have a better time in the future if they can mend their ways. In your final report, make it plain that you would be glad to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of individual team members with future project leaders. Take