Quotes About Leadership

The truth is that bosses...don't matter as much as most of us believe. They typically account for less than 15 percent of the gap between good and bad organizational performance, although they often get over 50 percent of the blame and credit.

Sometimes, the best management is no management at all. Jeffrey Pfeffer likes to say that managers should be required to take something like the physician's oath: "First, do no harm.

a twenty-year study that tracked six thousand British civil servants found that when their bosses criticized them unfairly, didn't listen to their problems, and rarely praised them, employees suffered more angina, heart attacks, and deaths from heart disease. You get the idea. It doesn't matter whether the assholes around you are getting ahead or (more likely) screwing up their lives, careers, and companies. They pose a danger to you and others.

Confirmation bias can cause bosses to make excessively glowing judgments about people they have invested a lot of time and money in or who they simply find to be likable or admirable. Even if your judgment is generally sound, confirmation bias can blind you to mediocre or even downright rotten performance displayed by your favorites.

As this VP discovered, being a boss is much like being a high-status primate in any group: the creatures beneath you in the pecking order watch every move you make – and so they know a lot more about you than you know about them.

As a boss, you need to establish a pecking order where people who know the most about a problem wield the greatest influence over what is done. You especially need to watch who talks the most (and least). Don't let your people fall prey to the blabbermouth theory of leadership. At least in Western countries, people who talk first and most frequently usually wield excessive influence over others – even when they spew out nonsense.

better to shoot the messenger than to learn about—and fix—the problems. In contrast to such constructive defiance, I know bosses who employ the opposite strategy to undermine and drive out incompetent superiors. One called it "malicious compliance," following idiotic orders from

Organizations that scale well are filled with people who talk and act as if they are in the middle of a manageable mess.

The fourth big lesson is that scaling starts and ends with individuals—success depends on the will and skill of people at every level of an organization.

A Lutheran pastor in Illinois writes: A great deal of the work in our church is done by non-paid individuals who, at times, hurt the feelings of fellow volunteers. Do you have any thoughts on what to do with mean people who volunteer their time?

los líderes eficaces son «además de competentes, benevolentes».

When someone at the Directors' College asked Campbell about the most crucial skill for a senior executive, he said it was the rare ability (which Jobs had in spades) to make sure that the short-term stuff gets done and done well, while simultaneously never losing sight of the big picture.

Performance and humanity are the goals that great bosses aim to achieve. Yet the best bosses devote little energy to thinking about how great it would be to reach these goals, worrying if they can, or even celebrating when they do.

Effective scaling depends on believing and living a shared mindset throughout your group, division, or organization.

Perry "puts all the bad apples in one barrel" so they don't wreck other teams. He then assigns a no-nonsense coach to lead the bad apples or does it himself—he is adept at dispensing tough love.

A 2012 study documented how such shit rolled downhill: abusive senior leaders were prone to selecting or breeding abusive team leaders, who in turn, ignited destructive conflict in their teams, which stifled team members' creativity.

las personas no se marchan de las organizaciones, sino que huyen de los malos jefes».

But an occasional strategic outburst seems to be effective because "targets" construe their temporary tormentor as trying to motivate them to try harder and to be smarter—they don't dismiss it as just the usual ranting from a certified asshole who berates them constantly

Unfortunately, Captain Graf created fear and mistrust in her followers, rather than stoking the courage, skill, and confidence she intended.

Another misguided trick bosses use to demonstrate their brilliance – at least to themselves – is to develop incomprehensible strategies. Unfortunately, if your people can't understand your strategy, they can't figure out what to do. And, even if they can comprehend the twists and turns, the complexity can scatter their attention in so many directions that they won't do any single thing well.

Every boss can't have deep knowledge of every follower's expertise. When that happens, a boss's job is to ask good questions, listen, defer to those with greater expertise, and, above all, to accept his or her own ignorance. Those who fail to do so risk making bad decisions and ruining their reputations.

Here's what I think we face. 2. Here's what I think we should do. 3. Here's why. 4. Here's what I think we should keep an eye on. 5. Now talk to me (i.e., tell me if you [a] don't understand, [b] cannot do it, [c] see

La indecisión es una particularidad de los malos jefes.

He sought out and surrounded himself with people that he trusted to tell him the truth (rather than what he hoped to hear) about the severity and nuances of challenges that he and the company faced—and when he was screwing up.