Quotes About Subordinates

As Moltke observed, "It shakes the trust of subordinates and gives the units a feeling of uncertainty if things happen entirely differently from what orders from higher headquarters had presumed."9

staff are terrified of them, and not without reason.

Female-female aggression (starving, abusing) causes spontaneous abortions. Hrdy notes that dominant, higher-ranking female primates overtly harass subordinate females. Such behaviors are "implicated in delays in maturation, inhibition of ovulation, or in extreme cases, spontaneous abortion by subordinates.

Leadership," said Nimitz, "consists of picking good men and helping them do their best for you. The attributes of loyalty, discipline and devotion to duty on the part of subordinates must be matched by patience, tolerance and understanding on the part of superiors.

By their own actions, not their words, do leaders establish the morale, integrity and sense of justice of their subordinate commanders. They cannot say one thing and do another.

The people "placed me in an office of the highest dignity and charged me with the duty of maintaining that dignity and proper respect for the office on the part of my subordinates. . . . By your own conduct you have destroyed your usefulness as a helpful subordinate.

I have always told my subordinates that when they commit any mistakes, the blame must be laid on the superior officers.

Weak emperors mean strong viceroys.

A sure indication of a successful leader is the collective and consistent testimony of subordinates who are grateful for what they learned and how they grew while they worked under that leader.

You must win the respect of your subordinates by treating them with absolute fairness. Of course it helps to have an inherently dominant personality and a character both strong and just, commanding and yet tolerant…

If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates ' then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny.

Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.

Any commander who fails to exceed his authority is not of much use to his subordinates.

I no longer think that learning how to manage people, especially subordinates, is the most important for executives to learn. I am teaching above all else, how to manage oneself.

Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the interests of a whole to the interests of a part. Worse still, the fraction so favored is determined by an accident of birth or residence.

We are an important check on the powers of the executive. Our consent is necessary for the president to appoint jurists and powerful government officials and, in many respects, to conduct foreign policy. Whether we are of the same party, we are not the president's subordinates. We are his equal!

When you pretend to be an authority on everything, it forces your subordinates to defer to your opinion - which may not be the most informed in the room. If you have humility concerning the gaps in your experience or ability, it allows others to shine.

The more frequently you intrude, implicitly reminding them it is your change, the less they will believe it is theirs. Successful implementation, in short, depends upon them. The leader cannot hold individuals accountable for driving change if he refuses to let go of the steering wheel. He must trust his subordinates, replace them if necessary. But he mustn't micromanage them.

Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues: always insist on it in your subordinates.

Be an example to your men, in your duty and in private life. Never spare yourself, and let the troops see that you don't in your endurance of fatigue and privation. Always be tactful and well-mannered and teach your subordinates to do the same. Avoid excessive sharpness or harshness of voice, which usually indicates the man who has shortcomings of his own to hide.

Monitoring the results of delegation resembles the monitoring used in quality assurance. We should apply quality assurance principles and monitor at the lowest-added-value stage of the process. For example, review rough drafts of reports that you have delegated; don't wait until your subordinates have spent time polishing them into final form before you find out that you have a basic problem with the contents.

As a rule of thumb, a manager whose work is largely supervisory should have six to eight subordinates; three or four are too few and ten are too many. This range comes from a guideline that a manager should allocate about a half day per week to each of his subordinates.

The biggest problem with most reviews is that we don't usually define what it is we want from our subordinates, and, as noted earlier, if we don't know what we want, we are surely not going to get it.

As a supervisor, you have to be very sensitive toward the various money needs of your subordinates and show empathy toward them. You must be especially careful not to project your own circumstances onto others.