Quotes About Leadership

Leaders understand the unique roles of confidence and caution. Courage requires both. David's caution did not keep him from the battle, but neither did he allow his confidence to blind him to the need to select his stones with care.

As you evaluate your response to the risks involved in leadership, are you careful or fearful? Every next generation leader must wrestle this question to the ground. What you don't know can hurt you. As a leader, what you don't know can paralyze you. Are you consumed by thoughts such as these: What if it doesn't work? What if I'm wrong? What will others think of me?

This goes right to the heart of leadership. Leaders instill courage in the hearts of those who follow. This rarely happens through words alone. It generally requires action. It goes back to what we said earlier: Somebody has to go first. By going first, the leader furnishes confidence to those who follow. In this way, leaders give permission.

We almost always involve unbelievers in our small groups. And we give them opportunities to lead the discussion.

God had called and equipped David to lead. But it took an act of courage for that call to be recognized by the public.

I don't know about you, but there have been plenty of times when I have driven home from a hospital visit wondering why they let me be the pastor.

As a next generation leader you already possess the talent and intuition necessary to lead. But chances are it is your courage that will establish you as a leader in the minds of others. To put it in perspective, try to identify a leader worth following who didn't pop up on the public radar screen as a result of a decision or action that required courage.

It is amazing what can be accomplished when we wait on God to lead us out. It is equally amazing the mess we can make of things when we charge out on our own.

It's been my experience that great leaders, in spite of a multitude of distractions, know how to keep things focused. They know how to inspire and motivate their followers to keep pushing "the main chance." They don't let side issues overwhelm them.17

Striving for balance forces a leader to invest time and energy in aspects of leadership where he will never succeed. It is not realistic to strive for balance within the sphere of our personal leadership abilities. …discover your zone and stay there. Then delegate everything else.

If your vision is for a year, plant wheat. If your vision is for ten years, plant trees If your vision is for a lifetime, plant people. CHINESE PROVERB

According to Stephen Covey, delegating to others is perhaps the single most powerful high-leveraging activity there is.8 There are people who love what you hate. Strengthen your team by setting them free to do what only they can do. In that way you will ensure that your organization reflects your strengths as well as the strengths of those around you.

As leaders, we are never responsible for filling anyone else's cup. Our responsibility is to empty ours.

If God has birthed a vision in you, he is in the process of developing a similar vision in the hearts of others around you.

An unwillingness to accept risk has swamped more leaders than anything I can think of.

Seasoned leaders rarely regret having taken risks. Even the risks that didn't pay off directly are viewed as a necessary part of the journey. A leader's regrets generally revolve around missed opportunities, not risks taken. Many of those missed opportunities would not have been missed had they been willing to push through their fear and embrace what could be. Fear, not a lack of good ideas, is usually what keeps a man or woman standing on the sidelines.

individual does. Here's the difference: Eventually a leader's lust for progress overwhelms his reluctance to take risks. In other words, failure to move things forward is the type of failure most feared by the leader. For the leader, failure is defined in terms of missed opportunities rather than failed enterprises.

Keep in mind that everything you loathe about your current environment or organization was originally somebody's good idea.

one of the primary reasons that you have to listen to outsiders: If you don't, you will be driven by the complaints and demands of the insiders.

As leaders, we are never responsible for filling anyone else's cup. Our responsibility is to empty ours.

Leaders who don't listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say.

The union is much more than me, and when you think the union is you and it's not about who you represent, I think you've sort of lost your morals and focus and the purpose of your leadership.

The great Powers of the world today as they look at the armaments they have built up, find themselves hopelessly frustrated. If that be the case, what is the use of speaking about first-class, second-class and third-class Powers? That is surely the wrong language to use. It does not comply with contemporary reality. What we have to seek is new ways of being great, new modes of pioneering, new fashions of thought, new means of inspiring and igniting the minds of mankind. We can do so.

The purpose of getting power is to be able to give it away.