Quotes About Leadership

Our fine Governor called me here to ask me to talk to you--said you didn't seem too happy here. He knows we're pals. He wanted me to just--I don't know, make sure you weren't going to cause any trouble or something.

Schools were designed to produce good employees instead of employers

If an undertaking was easy, someone else already would have done it. —  If you follow in another's footsteps, you miss

In the absence of The King the Warrior becomes a mercenary, the Magician becomes a sophist (able to argue any position and believing in none), and the Lover becomes an addict.

Mindless, stupid men! Playing with the lives of other men

It's not the meek who are inheriting the earth, Jason, it's the corruptors

There's a rift in this country between the people and its leaders. There is corruption at the highest levels of government; it goes beyond mere power politics. The Constitution has been seriously assaulted, our way of life threatened.

Numerical superiority is of no consequence. In battle, victory will go to the best tactician.- G. A. Custer

Everybody needs a career manager.- Lady Macbeth

To function efficiently, any group of people or employees must have faith in their leader.- Capt. Bligh(ret.)

Winston Churchill had grasped Eisenhower's hand and told him, with tears in his eyes, "I am with you to the end, and if it fails we will go down together.

quoted General William T. Sherman that "every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster." And I concluded with General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell's warning that "no matter how a war starts, it ends in mud. It has to be slugged out—there are no trick solutions or cheap shortcuts." We

The challenge is to maintain a high-level, broad perspective, understand enough details to make sensible and executable decisions, and then delegate responsibility for implementation. "Microknowledge" must not become micromanagement, but it sure helps keep people on their toes when they know that the secretary knows what the hell he's talking about. If the secretary of defense doesn't

And then, after publication of Bob Woodward's book Obama's Wars

Core to leadership is the ability to relate to people—to empathize, understand, inspire, and motivate.

I took a telephone call from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He told me that he was the one who had talked Obama into running for president (a lot of people were claiming that) but there was no candidate for vice president. Reid said he was thinking about me, and that was the reason for the call. It took a lot of willpower for me to keep from bursting out laughing.

President Lyndon Johnson once said, "If the first person who answers the phone cannot answer your question, it is a bureaucracy." Don

We have a long tradition in America of electing a president, celebrating him for a few days, and then spending four or eight years demonizing him, reviling him, or blindly defending him.

A leader, or those who aspire to that role, regardless of whether in the public or the private sector, must have integrity.

Before issuing a single directive or making a single decision, a leader should talk to people at every level of her organization, from the front office to the mail room. Career employees often have startlingly insightful views about the strengths and weaknesses of their organization, which of course they know well; as a result, they often have well-informed ideas for practical ways to improve it.

A leader must be friendly, approachable, and accessible but ought not to allow too much familiarity. After all, he's still the boss. It may sound stuffy, but a leader has to maintain his dignity, another old-fashioned notion. He must be cautious about the activities he agrees to join.

A leader must not only explain to and reassure employees that their jobs are important to the overall mission of the organization; he must ensure that their work really does contribute, that it is not pointless make-work or wheel spinning.

It is a rare company where the head of a line unit—an operating division—will offer the CEO a dramatic proposal for transforming (or eliminating) his own organization. I never had a line of executives outside my office anywhere I worked who were there on their own initiative to tell me what was wrong with their outfit and how they intended to fix it. I am confident the same is true of most CEOs. Leaders have to understand that a bureaucracy is incapable of reforming itself.

Robert M. Gates